Lady Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay died of coronary thrombosis at the Lexington Hotel in Manhattan, New York, on 12 February 1946, aged 50.
Lady Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay died on 12 February 1946 at the Lexington Hotel in Manhattan, New York City, of coronary thrombosis, at the age of 50.
Her death marked the end of a remarkable life that had spanned the entire golden age of airship travel, from the early transatlantic crossings of the Graf Zeppelin in 1928 to the ill-fated final years of the Hindenburg in the mid-1930s. In the years following her aviation exploits, Drummond-Hay had continued her career as a journalist, reporting from various international hotspots, including covering the Second Sino-Japanese War, during which she was interned by Japanese forces during World War II—an ordeal that took a severe toll on her health.
By the time of her death in 1946, Drummond-Hay had largely faded from the intense public spotlight that had once made her one of the most famous women journalists in the world. Nonetheless, her legacy as the first woman to fly around the world by air, and as a trailblazing correspondent who brought the excitement and danger of early aviation to millions of newspaper readers, endured. Her passing in a modest Manhattan hotel room stood in quiet contrast to the global fame she had achieved less than two decades earlier, aboard some of the most celebrated aircraft in history.