Evelyn Esther Waldren, nee Nicholas, was born in Sutton, Nebraska, in 1908. She was the first woman in Nebraska to earn a pilot’s license, and one of only eight women to be licensed before 1932. From 1931 to 1937, she operated an airport in Jamestown, North Dakota, and from 1937 to 1941, she operated an airport in Albany, Oregon. In 1939, she became the second woman in the United States to qualify as a flight instructor. In 1941, she set the women’s records for speed and distance when she flew a light plane nonstop from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to Tijuana, Mexico. During World War II, she served as a flight instructor for Air Force cadets in Alturas, California. She also later flew on fire patrols for the U.S. Forest Service, organized a women’s flying race in 1948, and was a charter member of the Oregon chapter of the Ninety-Nines, an organization for women pilots. She worked as a flight instructor at the Evergreen Airport in Vancouver, Washington, from 1976 until her death in 1986.

Evelyn Waldren was married three times and had one child. She was also known by the names Evelyn E. Burleson and Evelyn E. Whitmaker.

Sources: Vital records in Ancestry.com; information provided by Waldren in her interview; “Old Time Women Pilots Relive Pioneer Days,” by Suzanne Richards, Oregon Journal, November 6, 1974, Page B6; “Veteran Aviator, Flight Instructor Evelyn Waldren Succumbs at 78,” Oregonian, October 27, 1986, Page D17; “Clark County History: Evelyn Waldren,” by Martin Middlewood, The Columbian, October 21, 2023 (accessed January 14, 2025), https://www.columbian.com/news/2023/oct/21/clark-county-history-evelyn-waldren/