Marianne Beard Nutt, a member of the WASP class of 1943, died Jan. 16.
Nutt developed a passion for aviation when she was 7, after seeing Amelia Earhart. She did not have the money for flying lessons and was told girls could not be pilots. Nevertheless, she learned to fly, working odd jobs at an airport.
She joined the Civil Air Patrol, then the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots program in 1942.
She became a squadron commander, ferried high-performance fighters, and was co-pilot on large bombers until the WASP were disbanded.
The war not yet over, she joined the Marines as an air traffic controller, later marrying David Nutt, a career Air Force officer.
She was a senior air traffic controller and tower supervisor for Grumman from 1953 to 1984, then opened the control tower at Stuart, Florida, working there for 27 years.