Ann Rothwell An Icon of The San Diego Skies Soars Again

How cancer slowed her down for three years and now she is unstoppable.

Congratulations to a lady pilot who not only soared before her battle with cancer but soared again after her battle with cancer.

Ann Rothwell, a 75-year-old pilot, once again took to the skies after her cancer battle with the help of a fellow female aviator’s help. She has been called an icon of the San Diego skies.

She chose to fly a Cessna 172 at the San Diego’s Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport. Thi75-year-old titan completed her first solo flight in five years after her battle with can cancer.

Rothwell was a familiar face piloting small planes in the airspace around San Diego County, her voice over the region’s air traffic controllers was very recognizable, the moment she would speak.

For over 26 years, she has been a pilot and regularly flew Cessna and Piper Archer planes in and out of the airports in San Diego, Ramona, Carlsbad, Oceanside, and others.

During her four-year battle with cancer, she was grounded from 2017–2020. Due to a GoFundMe campaign that was launched on her behalf by a friend, it afforded Rothwell the flight lessons need to return to the skies completing her first solo flight in five years on October 1.

Flying is an expensive hobby and usually a younger female sport. Rothwell possesses neither as she lives modestly in a senior apartment on a fixed income and works as a greeter at a local hospital.

Rothwell felt she was born to fly and flying she is doing along with her flying lessons at Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in Kearny Mesa. Flying was and is in her blood, her parents were avid pilots who flew in the 1940s and 1950s out of the same airport but was called Gibbs Flying Service at that time. Since the age of three, she sat in the cockpit in her mother’s plane. Her mother, Dodie Prario, flew planes until her death in 1997 at age 89, and Rothwell’s desire is to carry on her mother’s flying legacy.

Rothwell was raised in San Diego by a father who was a former Navy dentist who served in World War II. They moved to San Jose and her father took his first flying lessons at Moffett Field in Mountain View in the mid-1940s.

When Rothwell’s mother learned to fly, she was one of only two women pilots in the local Armed Forces Aero Club and was initiated in 1947 to the Ninety-Nines, the international association for women pilots. She even competed in the fourth annual All Women Transcontinental Air Race, came in fifth place with her partner, flying 2,400 miles from San Diego to Greenville, S.C. in just over 24 hours.

So it can be readily seen that flying was in her blood and she was born to fly. She grew up with the hope to have her own plan but settled for being able to fly regardless. Her dream was to fly but her mother wanted her to get an education first, so she took some classes over a two-year period in Houston where her family, her mother and now step dad, after her parents separated, had migrated from California.

When her family moved back to California, she dropped out of college and got a job as a flight attendant for two years until she got married and had a son. Due to finances being tight, she had to refrain from flying planes for two decades.

Returning to flying after that time seem too far-fetched due to it being an expensive hobby, therefore her next step was acquiring a job at the Scripps Hospital and moonlighted as a house sitter.

It took a few years before she was able to save enough money for flying lessons, which afforded her to do a solo flight on December 2, 1995. After this she became a fixture of the San Diego flying community.

Also, she volunteered every Sunday as a mobile greeter at San Diego International Airport and worked there for more than 20 years doing secretarial and volunteer work for the Federal Aviation administration.

Flying is an expensive hobby, the initiation fee to join the Ninety-Nines association was too expensive so a friend, another flying legend, stepped up and paid it for her.

Rothwell, for many years, lectured new pilots and continued until she got esophageal cancer and the chemotherapy and radiation took its toll on her brain, breathing, and emotions and she chose to ground herself.

Three years later, she finally was healthy enough to flay again but money was an option for flying lessons to requalify. Another friend who knew how badly Rothwell wanted to fly again stepped up to the plate, as Rothwell lived a dream only she could imagine at that time and later saw her own dream to fly come to fruition. This friend pursued working as a private pilot for a local real estate developer and as a flight instructor. To date, she Rothwell get together for flights every Friday. In conclusion, Rothwell’s determination to fly again has inspired others to pursue their passions and the rest is history. Rothwell has become once again, a beacon of light for others to follow as she continues her mother’s legacy. Soar high Ms. Rothwell!!

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