This is a photograph of Olive Ann Beech, wife of Walter H. Beech. She was born and raised on a farm south of Waverly, Kansas. Olive Ann attended business college in Wichita and worked for the Travel Air Manufacturing Company in Wichita. She married Walter H. Beech on February 24, 1930. In 1932, they co-founded the Beech Aircraft Corporation. After her husband's death in 1950, Olive Ann assumed the position of president of the corporation and was named its chairman emeritus after her retirement in 1982. She brought the company through fifty years of growth from the Staggerwing Biplane to Skylab, and from ten employees to ten thousand. Her other honors include: woman of the Year (1951); Kansan of the Year (1958); and nomination to the NASA Space Shuttle Study Committee (1971).
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