Edith Cheatham was born on March 8, 1917, in Lunenberg, Virginia to John Floyd Cheatham and Susie Fowlkes Cheatham.  Her father came up to Ossining in about 1911 and is said to have helped build Maryknoll. 

In about 1924, her parents were both living in Ossining, and in the 1930 census we find the family living at 59 Durston (now Hunter) Street. Her father was a carpenter who had his own business, and her mother was busy raising Edith and her six siblings.

Edith attended Ossining High School, graduating in 1936.  A member of the National Honor Society and numerous music clubs, she had hoped to go on to Howard University.

According to the 1940 US census, Edith was still living at home and working as a clerk.  She also was apparently taking business classes at NYU. Then, in 1943, she accompanied a friend who wanted to volunteer for the Red Cross into the city and ended up volunteering herself.  She was first assigned to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland and then sent overseas in 1944 to support the men of the 332^nd Fighter Group, aka the Tuskegee Airmen, a pioneering group of Black aviators who fought in WWII.  

Thanks to the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, we know that Edith was one of the first “Colored women to operate Clubmobile Service in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations,” delivering coffee and donuts to fighter pilots at Ramitelli Airfield as they returned from their bomber escort missions.  She also may have assisted in the base hospital in the nearby town of Campomarino.   Perhaps she was occasionally stationed at the Officers Club at the 332^nd base.  Maybe she even snuck onto a plane on a covert mission to photograph future bombing sites. (Things like this ARE documented!)  

But whatever her specific activities were, they involved courage and resourcefulness. (Read this thesis by Julia Ramsey on Red Cross Volunteers during WWII, which offers great information about what the Red Cross volunteers did.)

In January 1946, she left Naples on the USS General W.P. Richardson, a troopship with about 4,000 on board, and arrived in New York City two weeks later. 

She would return to Ossining and then take flying lessons at Zahn’s Flying Service in Amityville, Long Island, where her instructor was Archie Smith.  They married in October 1946. (Smith was a graduate of Tuskegee University in Alabama and had been a Flight Instructor and Commander at the Tuskegee Institute during World War II.  After his stint at Zahn’s, he would go on to found Warhawk Aviation Service, based at the Westchester Airport, in the 1950s.)  

Archie and Edith settled on Batton Road in Croton-on-Hudson, and raised their three children, David, Tim, and Dolores.

Archie passed away suddenly in 1966 and Edith took over Warhawk Aviation, running it until 1969.  Below are two images from an October 1967 article in Ebony Magazine, titled “Spunky Widow Runs Modern Pilot School”:

She would then work at IBM for nearly 20 years, before moving to Mesa, Arizona to be near her daughter Dolores.  Edith lived there until her death in 2007.  

Her relatives remember her as independent, strong-willed and kind. She loved to do New York Times crosswords and could usually fill them out in one pass.  Not surprising for a former member of the National Honor Society.

If she could do what she did in the 1940s – volunteer overseas on the battlefield, learn to fly, run a business – what’s stopping the rest of us?

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^[1] https://www.zahnsairport.com