Faith, Flying and Pluck: Life and Times of Caroline Ackerman
by the Rev. Constance F. Parvey

Caroline Iverson Ackerman’s life sounds like a modern fairy tale, a child’s dreams come true, charmed at every rough turn.

A University of Wisconsin, Madison, honors graduate in journalism and education, she got into flying after she lost her first job as shopper’s reporter for the Janesville (Wisconsin) Gazette. It was the Depression. She went back to live with her parents and talked the Milwaukee Journal into hiring her in advertising sales.

"Then, one day," she says, "I found an ad in the Journal for free flying lessons in an Aviation Course at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, sponsored by the U.S. Government. Flight instruction was to be at an airport near my home. So, the next morning, I went right to the school to sign up, only to be told that the program was for men only."

Caroline Ackerman (right) with Jean Speiser, party editor for LIFE magazine.

Not to miss a beat, she left her name and phone number just in case there might be a change. It so happened that the school ended up accepting only 14 men and they needed 15 recruits in order to qualify for a federal grant. A few days later she received a call, "Do you still want to fly?"

"Yes!" she answered, and the next morning at 6 a.m. she showed up for her first flying lesson.

The first lesson was not promising. Excited and nervous Caroline got airsick, turning her stomach inside out. "In fact, she recalls, "I was such a bad student that after a few flights my first instructor refused to teach me any longer. But that turned into another lucky break." She got a new instructor, "When I was ready to give up, he babied me through. I know now that except for his patient instruction I would never have completed the course."

Challenging as this initial learning curve was, she, to this day, views that first flight as one of her greatest thrills. She describes flying at 5,000 feet and "being able to see our house on the west side of Milwaukee and at the same time look over to the east and see the vast expanse of the blue green waters of Lake Michigan… It was always awesome, fascinating and scary…That’s when I fell in love with flying."

The pilot training program was so intense, says Caroline, "that we had no time for anything else, no dances, no social life." But the payoff came in the fall of 1940 when she received her pilot’s license. From there she moved to advanced lessons in open cockpit, acrobatic, flying — practicing over and over in the sky her slow roles, Immelmann turns, wingovers, and tailspins, plus buzzing daily her parents Wauwatosa home. The next spring she also passed all the exams to become a CAA Ground School instructor and began teaching young want-to-be pilots in the U. S. Civilian Pilot Training programs. Among the courses she taught at UW–Milwaukee, Milwaukee School of Engineering and Carroll College were navigation, meteorology, theory of flight, engines, and Civil Air Regulations. Looking back, she chuckles, "It’s lucky I remembered my math."

Teaching brought her more challenge and good fortune. One of her college students purchased a deluxe new Taylorcraft plane and the two of them decided to fly to Nevada to visit his cousin, then fly on to Caroline’s sister in Seattle, and then off to Alaska! On a road map, the capital city, Juneau, looked as though it were only a few miles north on the coast. But, said Caroline in characteristic understatement, "We had to have a float plane over the water route; our flight over land also proved to be quite difficult."

All sorts of obstructions got in their way, the first of them being how to get around the mountains of the Canadian Continental Divide. Because of the height, they had to fly perilously between them. Once in Alaska, they had the thrill and terror of flying beside America’s highest peak, the solid, spectacular, mass of Mount McKinley soaring above them to 20,300 feet, between Fairbanks and Anchorage. To make things worse, they had to cope with water in their gas. "Our emergency solution, she explained, "was to filter the gas through an old felt hat that we had on board, a trick we learned from the bush pilots." That should have been enough, but nature’s fierce winds, lightning and thunder storms reared up. Caroline’s acrobatic training must have kicked in here as she remembers how "we ducked around, over, and through the unexpected storms."

Another crisis occurred when they almost ran out of gas over a scarcely populated part of Wyoming. They saw a man walking below, swooped down dangerously low to shout, "Where can we land this thing?" He pointed to a landing field at 7,600 feet, near Knight, Wyoming, the highest landing field in the U. S. Caroline still jokes about that as "the high spot of my life."

Others were yet to come. While on a vacation trip to Mexico with Jean Speiser, LIFE’s party editor, the plane lost altitude as they were flying near Mt. Orizaba, Mexico’s highest peak. They hit a down draft that landed them in a field at 11,000 feet. Local shepherds rescued them and got them down to Mexico City for help. The Mexican Air Force offered to drive them back up the mountain to take apart their plane and truck it back to Mexico City to reassemble. Caroline, with companion, Jean, then flew the plane back to the States.

But that is getting ahead of the story. In the spring of 1942, LIFE magazine contacted Caroline and invited her to be their aviation researcher in New York City. Encouraged by her father, she went to the interview in Chicago. She said, "I was happy with my job and not sure about living in New York." Finally, she decided to accept the offer and, if she didn’t like it, she could return to Milwaukee. "A summer in New York sounded like fun," she remembers, "and it extended into years."

Her greatest challenge was "learning a new way of thinking, thinking entirely in pictures." And just as she was sold on this new approach to research and writing and was settling into her assignments, she received a telegram from a famous woman pilot, Jacqueline Cochran, which read: "If you are interested in women’s flight training for ferrying duty with American Air Corps, qualifications are 200 hours certified flying time, passing an army physical, and a personal interview."

The country was now at war. She didn’t want to leave LIFE, but she said, "I felt it was my duty to answer the call." She took and passed the qualifying tests, but she was still torn between two duties. Finally, she informed LIFE that she would be leaving.

LIFE’s editors were startled. They tried to convince her to stay by arguing that the magazine maintains "close work with the Army and Navy," and that "keeping the public informed of what goes on in a world conflict is war work too." To help solve her quandary, she consulted with the General in charge. Her key question to him was: "Do you want LIFE to cover aviation, or do you want one more girl pilot?" You can guess his reply. Caroline stayed. Her first assignment after that was to tell the story of "the girl pilots" who were then working out of Sweetwater, Texas. It made LIFE’s cover.

Following that, she wrote a story personifying a B-17 bomber that had brought home safely an entire crew after year-long dangerous missions in the Pacific. She called it, "Susy Q: The Fightingest Flying Fortress." With the publication of this story she was promoted by LIFE to aviation editor. At 26, she had a high profile position with the world’s most prominent, popular, newsworthy photo magazine. "The Suzy Q" was chosen for a book chapter in, The 100 Best True Stories of World War II, (1) published in 1946 with the byline, Caroline Iverson, her family name.

As LIFE’s aviation editor, Caroline’s assignments often were to visit flight training sites around the country to develop picture scripts for LIFE’s phenomenal photographers so that the public could be kept informed about the different missions of the new warplanes. "In the co-pilot seat," she remarked, "I got to fly the B-17, B-24, B-25, B-26 and later the B-29 bomber right out of its Wichita factory. Her early training in teaching the mechanics of flying as well as her many past aerial adventures qualified her well for these assignments. However, she adds another essential ingredient, "More than anything else on that job, you had to like people and be able to meet them and talk with them in flyers’ own language."

As Americans began to worry about bombing civilians in Europe, Caroline wrote a nine-page picture feature on "Precision Bombing." She says, "I was sent to bombardier school in Texas and was permitted to break the secrecy of the Norden bomb sight (which enabled accurate hitting of targets) in our story. We showed men readying the bombs as well as flying the planes. We were given in-flight photos from our England-based B-17s. These photos confirmed the B-17 hits against German submarine pens, authenticating the precision then possible." Daughter Karin, now married to an Air Force officer, says "At LIFE, Mom’s passion for journalism and flying coalesced."

With an eye toward the GI, in 1944 Caroline and photographer, Margaret Bourke-White, traveled nearly 10,000 miles up and down and across the U.S., Caroline doing the background research and Margaret photographing from the air every part of the country for a LIFE special issue, "A Letter to the GI’s," a reminder of home, solace for weary soldiers. Later that year, she was invited by the Air Transport Command as one of 12 journalists and radio notables to be part of a two-week tour of little-known American bases in Newfoundland, Greenland, and Iceland. The only woman in the group, she is described by Sally Knapp, author of New Wings for Women (2) as the "slim young woman" stepping off the plane into 30 below zero weather "looking trim and smart in her war correspondent’s uniform."

With all of her achievements, at war’s end Caroline, with many women, lost her job as the American public welcomed back our armed forces and integrated them into the domestic job market. "Again, I was lucky," she comments. "Right away I was hired by the Shell Oil Company to design and set in place a special travel service for women and families." New highways were being built, new cars were in high demand and while men were away at war, women learned to drive. She had her own column, called "Carol Lane: Tips on Touring" that ran in 200 newspapers. She traveled all over the U. S. speaking to large gatherings of women’s clubs, and doing radio and TV talks. She taught mothers how to pack suitcases efficiently, how to entertain kids in the car, how to find child-friendly destinations for weekend trips, which she called, "Tourettes." She charted family travel adventures to places as far away as D.C. and Yellowstone, the Florida Everglades, and the San Francisco Bridge.

While at Shell she lived in White Plains, N.Y., and needed to commute into the city. She got to know her husband-to-be through a deal. If he would drive her to work, in exchange, she would cook dinner for him. Caroline Iverson and Leslie Ackerman were married on Dec. 31, 1949, in her home town of Wauwatosa at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church. Caroline planned their delayed honeymoon. They flew to Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, the Grand Canyon, and other places she had seen and wanted to share with Les.

Caroline and Les have three children — Karin, Terrell, and Jon, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. They enjoyed 51 years of life together until Les’s death in 2001. Shortly after their marriage, they moved to Warwick, R.I., where Les worked as a chemical engineer and commodity manager for the U. S. Rubber Company and Caroline was able to realize her most important dream — to be a mom and raise a family.

In Warwick, son Terrell remembers that "Dad’s job included lots of travel. It was Mom who kept the family together. She did that and was a professional volunteer as well, always a leader." She was president of the PTA, a Girl Scouts leader, a Sunday school teacher at Pilgrim Lutheran Church when Pastor Carl Bloomquist was there. "Whatever she did," said Terrell, "She was always upbeat, a 'can do' person, no negative thoughts. She was an amazing kind of person in dealing with tragedy and adversity. I still learn from her. She gave me a good ethic — against all the peer pressure."

"The church always meant a lot to me, says Caroline, "and I wanted to give back." Pilgrim gave her that chance; she started with 54 children in a preschool group, nine tables and a teacher for each group. There was a prayer time, a teaching time, a candle lighting, and singing time. "Having my own children and working with this larger group," she remembers, "evoked my own childhood." Thinking back she says, "Every night after supper in our home, my mother played the piano and my father sang. We often sang the hymns of the church. And Dad sang regularly in the church choir. My earliest memory of church is age 4 when I sang a solo, 'Jesus Loves Me,' in front of the whole congregation."

Terrell says, "Mom encouraged travel, but we also did a lot at home — gardening, weeding, growing different kinds of vegetables, and yard work was always a family event. Mom gave us the love of nature and sports that she had in her growing up." Les’s family had a cabin in the Adirondacks where Les, Caroline, and the children went every other summer. Terrell says, "Mom taught us hunting and fishing, how to sing, swim, and row a boat." Now Terrell, living in Montana, does similar things with his family — camping, hiking, campfires, and roasting s'mores. In 1965, the Ackerman’s moved to the Boston area and settled in South Natick, Mass., attending Christ Lutheran Church during the time of Pastor Philip Kylander. When the children were grown, Caroline went back to school for a master’s degree in journalism at Boston University. After graduation, she joined the faculty at Northeastern University as assistant professor in journalism. During these years she brought her vast experience to communications developments within the New England Synod and the Lutheran Church nationally. After her retirement from Northeastern, she was offered the job as editor of the New England Lutheran.

Caroline Ackerman (right) was one of three laypersons awarded the first Soli Deo Gloria citations for distinguished service from the New England Synod in 1992 after her retirement as editor of the synod publication, the New England Lutheran. The others are Emilie Hansen and Ted Womer. Caroline continued to write and take photos for the publication for another eight years.   Caroline with Ed Trexler, then editor of The Lutheran. Caroline had served as a correspondent for the publication.

Caroline (in March 2004) celebrated her 86^th birthday. Not long ago, she fell in her kitchen injuring her back and ended up in hospital rehab. Suddenly she shifted from her spacious, suburban home to living like a bird in a nest. Recently when I visited her she was just back from trying out her new walker; with a broad smile, she greeted me, "I’m learning another new talent." Propped up in her bed, covered with a bright red blanket, she has phone, notebooks, pens, a file system, and reading materials all within reach.

With these many circles, challenges, and changes, the evolutions of a growing family, the death of Les, her life partner, the struggle with breast cancer in her 80’s, and now the harsh fall, I asked her, "How do you view all this?" And without hesitation she answered, "I’ve always had faith. Life is a mystery to me. It’s God’s hand at work. It’s a comforting feeling."

Still thinking about Caroline after I left her nest, I ask myself: "Perhaps it all started with that 4-year-old’s church solo more than eight decades ago, "Jesus Loves Me This I Know." Caroline flies on May 10 to Billings, Montana to live near Terrell and Jill. Faith, flying, and pluck still characterize pilot-journalist, Caroline Ackerman.

End notes:
(1) The 100 Best True Stories of World War II: New York. Wm. H. Wise & Co. Inc. 1945 p.107ff. (Note: No name given to Editor; the Forward is simply signed, "The Editor")
(2) Sally Knapp, New Wings for Women: NY. Thomas Y. Crowell Company. Chapter, "Caroline Iverson." 1946 p.100ff

The Rev, Dr. Constance F. Parvey is a pastor of the ELCA, New England Synod, recently retired as a chaplain at MIT.