Dot Lemon

Dorothy, known as "Dot", was born in 1907 and adopted as Dorothy Martin by a pastor, Albert Martin, and his wife. Her birth certificate states that her biological father was a member of a Chicago family surnamed Whitney. She gained the name she is best known by following her 1937 marriage to fellow pilot Richard (Dick) Lemon.^[1]

In the early 1920s, Lemon took up flying in Syracuse, New York, learning from the early aviator and barnstormer Merrill K. Riddick. She flew her first solo flight in a Curtiss Jenny when she was 16. She became a barnstormer herself later in the decade.^[1]

Unable to make a living as a pilot, Lemon moved to Cicero, New York, where she took a job in advertising with the American Eagle Agency as New York state sales manager for Hayes Aviation.^[1]

Lemon claimed to have been the first person to intentionally fly into the eye of a hurricane, in 1932 in a Stinson Reliant monoplane, though there is no proof of this claim. If true, this would have been more than a decade before the flight by aviator Joseph Duckworth that is commonly accepted as the first premeditated foray into a hurricane's eye.^[2]

In the late 1930s, Lemon and her husband lived in Florida and together ran a flight school at Belvedere Field, an airfield later renamed Palm Beach International Airport.^[3] During World War II, Belvedere Field was used as a military training site.^[1]

In 1940, she became the chair of the newly formed Florida chapter of the Ninety-Nines, a leading international organization for women pilots.^[4]

After World War II, Lemon took up air racing, participating in the 1946 Halle Trophy Race^[5] and the 1948 Kendall Trophy Race, finishing third in the latter.^[6]

By the early 1960s, she had moved to southern California, where in 1961, she became the first woman to serve as president of the scientific Institute of Navigation (ION).^[7] During this period, she wrote an allegorical book, One One: A Story of the Life, Death, and the Resurrection of an Airplane (1963).^[1]

In the 1960s, Lemon became interested in Venezuelan gold mines. In 1964, the Venezuelan government granted her title to a group of 25-year gold-property concessions collectively known as “Las Cristinas”.^[8][9] They are reputed to be potentially very valuable and have been the subject of worldwide ownership litigation since Lemon’s concessions expired with her death.^[9] Lemon died in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1986.^[1]

While working with Hayes Aviation, Lemon became involved with World War I veteran Leon Perl Brink (1895–1944). She had four boys with Brink named William, Sherwood, Clinton, and Wellington.^[1]

Lemon's life story was the subject of an exhibition at the International Women's Air & Space Museum in 2012.^[1]