EAA Young Eagles Horizon Award: A Shared Honor

Written By Beth White

This summer, I received an incredible honor: the EAA Young Eagles Horizon Award, presented at AirVenture Oshkosh 2025. I remain deeply grateful to the friends and champions who made this moment possible and to EAA for recognizing the work that has taken shape at Franklin County State Airport and beyond. Knowing that this award reflects the dedication of our young aviators, mentors, families, and partners makes it especially meaningful.

Because I could not attend in person Captain Lynn Rippelmeyer offered to accept the award on my behalf alongside our beloved Habitat for Aviation/EAA Chapter 613 family Bonnie Pease and John and Shirley Fitzgerald. They were there to represent us with warmth, enthusiasm, and love. 

I was honored when Captain Lynn Rippelmeyer, a pioneering airline captain, accepted the award. Captain Lynn Rippelmeyer is the first woman to fly the Boeing 747 and later captain it on a transoceanic flight—and a steadfast champion for girls and women in aviation—reached out to see if she could accept the award. She traces her flying roots right across the lake from us, where she took her very first flight in a Cub on floats off Savage Island, an experience that set her on a path to the 747 flight deck.

Author of Life Takes Flight and Life Takes Wings, Captain Rippelmeyer donates proceeds from her work to help Roatan Support Effort (ROSE), the international nonprofit she founded after witnessing need on her Honduras route. Through ROSE, she continues to deliver essential supplies, equipment, and support to schools, clinics, elders, and families on Roatan—quietly changing lives long after her airline career.

Together with Bonnie, Shirley, and John, these powerhouses provided wonderful representation from Vermont, where we advocate for youth and women in aviation. In lieu of a live speech, Zoë skillfully created a thank-you video that weaves together our story—we encourage folks to watch and share it, recognizing this award truly belongs to everyone who has said “yes” to flying a Young Eagle, volunteering at a summer camp, joining in at a BBQ or pancake breakfast—to building this runway with us.

Beth White

Education Possibilitarian, Artist, Writer, Doula, Mentor, Aviatrix, Breast Cancer Survivor, Pilot-in-Command at Habitat for Aviation


In the spring of 2022, Beth White emerged from a 10-month battle with breast cancer with an idea: to create an apprenticeship program at Franklin County State Airport where youth work alongside adult mentors servicing conventional and electric aircraft. A pilot and airplane mechanic apprentice herself, and with family roots in the trades, Habitat for Aviation provides an taxilane for world learning opportunities for youth and adults who love to work with their hands to enter the FAA’s apprenticeship certification track. Each day she puts systems in place that make real John Dewey’s philosophy that we “learn best what we live” – a deep throughline from her time at Antioch University New England and as Regional Director for Big Picture Learning. Each learning experience is grounded in relationships, relevance, and practice. In October, 2023, Habitat for Aviation launched its Women Build Planes program, where an all-female team of Modern Day Rosies is building an airplane at Franklin County Airport, in northwestern Vermont, to show folks everywhere that despite the fact that only 2.6% of airplane mechanics are female, women BUILD, FLY, and FIX airplanes.

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