Alice Fuchs was a distinguished aviator who became the first female instructor of cadets at the Air Force Academy. The Penn State graduate trained countless new pilots and was a well-known author on aviation subjects.
While a master’s student in English at Penn State in 1939, Fuchs earned tiny silver wings with the letters “SCAD” as an alumna of the State College Airport Depot. She was the fourth woman – one of 477 people – who completed the depot’s aviation training course under its long-time instructor, Sherman Lutz.
Her training happened faster than she had anticipated. “I phoned the depot just to inquire about flying lessons, and Sherm said he’d send a car around for me in 15 minutes,” she told an interviewer in 1987. “When I got out to the depot at Boalsburg, he put me in an airplane right away. I never had time to change my mind – not that I wanted to.”
Planes had fascinated her from an early age. Born in Pultney, Vermont, on June 22, 1917, her father nourished the interest. When she was 11 years old, he arranged an airplane ride for her. From that time on, she knew she wanted to be a pilot.
While training for her license, Fuchs (then Shutts) met her future husband, William R. Fuchs, who also earned his wings under Lutz. Bill Fuchs piloted a plane that included Alice during a competition in which contestants hand-dropped projectiles from the cockpit. Alice’s “bomb” missed, but not her glasses – the airstream blew them off her face but they were found unbroken in the center of the target. The Penn State airmen who sponsored the competition gave her an aluminum drinking cup engraved with “Alice Shutts, Best Bifocal Bombardier.”
After graduating from Penn State, Shutts went to Hillyer Junior College in Connecticut to teach math and English and serve as assistant dean of women. In 1942, during World War II, she married Bill Fuchs, then an officer in the Army Air Forces. After the war Bill remained in what became the Air Force. When he was assigned to teach at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs in 1955, his wife became the first woman to teach cadets in a soaring program that the couple created. She was a qualified instructor in airplanes, gliders, and instrument flying.
Her expertise in gliding helped her navigate a perilous situation in 1971. When the engine on her plane died on an approach to Harrisburg-York State Airport, she piloted the powerless craft to a near-perfect crash landing on a gravel-covered driveway in the William Howard Day Cemetery.
Fuchs distinguished herself as an author on aviation topics. In 1947, she began writing for magazines and eventually published more than 100 articles, many of them under the pseudonym Arthur Fairbanks to avoid having so many in her own name. She contributed to “Right Seat,” a publication of the Piper Aircraft Corporation; produced a section on aviation for Brittanica Junior Encyclopaedia, for elementary-school students; and wrote an aviation column for the Fort Wayne (Indiana) Press. She also edited the American Soaring Handbook, a series of ten books, and wrote a book titled Multiengine Flying (1969).
After Bill Fuchs retired from the Air Force, the couple returned to Pennsylvania in the 1960s. Alice at the time had been leading a flying school in Washington, D.C. Once back in central Pennsylvania, the couple ran a flight service business, Eagle Aviation, at Piper Memorial Airport in Lock Haven.
Fuchs administered flight tests as one of the first female flight examiners designated by the Federal Aviation Administration. She flew in national and international airplane competitions, including the Angel Derby covering 2,185 miles from New Orleans to Managua, Nicaragua. And the couple sponsored Home Coming Breakfasts at the State College Airport every October from the mid-1970s into the 1980s, welcoming back pilots who had earned their wings under Lutz.
Fuchs died on September 19, 2012, while living at the Village at Penn State in State College. Her husband had died in 2010. Their survivors included a son and daughter, William and Nancy, graduates of Penn State – as well as countless aviators she had trained to fly.
William Blair
Sources:
“ ‘Bifocal Bombardier’ on Target in Flying Career,” Centre Daily Times, May 22, 1974.
“A Special Alliance: Generations of Women Have Earned their Wings While under Lutz’s Wing,” Centre Daily Times, June 22, 1987.
Alice S. Fuchs, Multiengine Flying, Modern Aircraft Series (2nd ed., New York: Crown Publishers, 1969).
“Remembering Alice Fuchs, 22 June 1917-19 September 2012,” AV Sport of Lock Haven, https://avsport.org/memoriam/fuchs_alice.htm.
First Published: May 18, 2025