History with ‘Hud’: The story of a Wilmington pilot who left her mark in the sky
WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — This Sunday marks 120 years since the Wright brothers became the first in flight when they soared their Wright Flyer along the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. Their longest flight went 852 feet, lasting 59 seconds at an altitude of 10 feet off the ground. A Wilmington woman followed in their footsteps several decades later.
Anna Feenstra was born in the Netherlands on December 26, 1922. She moved to Wilmington with her family the following year, and went on to develop a love for flying.
Anna was a 15-year-old New Hanover High School student in 1938, dating a boy who was learning to fly. He took her to Bluethenthal Field one day and introduced Anna to his instructor, James “Skinny” Pennington.
Pennington gave Anna her first flight ever. She was hooked and went on to take flying lessons for her 16th birthday, completing her first solo flight in 1939, weeks after graduating high school. She would earn her pilots license in 1941, becoming just the third woman in North Carolina to do so.
Anna married her former flight instructor in 1942, becoming Anna Pennington. She wanted to join the Women Air Force Service Pilots (also known as WASP) but was too young (pilots had to be 25 or older) and had too few flying hours to quality.
Instead, Anna and her husband James operated a plane shuttling business together along eastern North Carolina for years. James Pennington died in 1999, but Anna remained active in the aviation industry. She even lived in a house near the airport all the way up until her death in 2014 at 91 years old.
While Pennington died nearly a decade ago, her legacy lives on. Two roads near the old Pennington Flying Service hangar — Anna Pennington Lane and Anna Pennington Drive — are named for the Wilmington pilot who set the stage for female pilots of the future.
