Cherie Martinez, a retired United Airlines pilot, turned 65 (the mandatory retirement age) in March 2020, just as COVID-19 hit the United States. The virus spread so quickly she had to cancel her retirement party.
The story of Martinez’s professional life is a testament to women’s empowerment in the late 20th century.
Told by an airline at age 18 that she “wasn’t good looking enough” to be a flight attendant, and later challenged by a man who said “girls can’t fly” airplanes, Martinez not only learned to fly, she ascended to the pinnacle of commercial aviation, captaining wide-body Boeing 777 passenger jets from Washington, D.C., to Europe for a time.
If her professional life was inspiring, it played out against a backdrop of personal tragedy.
Martinez’s first husband, an Englishman named Tony Herbert, was killed in an airplane crash in the Bahamas in 1991. Her second husband, Hector Martinez, died of cancer in 2003. And her twin brother, David Dyche, along with her sister-in-law and 17-year-old nephew, were among seven people who died when Dyche’s 60-foot sailing schooner went down in a storm off the coast of New Zealand in June 2013.