When she was 9, her family moved to California.

Her brother Ernie was one of several USC football players who modeled for the Tommy Trojan sculpture on campus. Well-known astrologer and psychic Jeane Dixon, who died in 1997, was her older sister.

In 2004, she established the Brier Foundation to provide scholarships to young women interested in aviation or maritime careers.īorn April 12, 1909, in Medford, Wis., Brier was the eighth of 10 children of German immigrants. “She had to be to do what she did in her time.” Her flights were about the only way to get to Vegas in a hurry,” Lemann said.Ī little taller than 5 feet, Brier was “petite but tremendously strong, very opinionated,” her niece said. “It was not uncommon for Pinky to fly wise guys to Sin City in the afternoon and transport agents - who were tailing them - to Las Vegas that night. Long before commuter airlines were commonplace, Brier flew three short hops a day from Tri-City to Los Angeles International Airport. Pinky advertised that she would fly anywhere at any time, and she did,” Jessen recalled. “Pinky flew charter, and Joe kept the airplanes under repair - a man with a magical ear for a sick engine. exemplified the heart and soul of aviation’s postwar development in the U.S. In the 2002 book “The Powder Puff Derby of 1929,” author Gene Nora Jessen wrote that the Briers’ “busy, grass strip airport.

Tri city airport san bernardino ca