Born in Waverly, Kansas

Olive Ann Mellor was born on September 25, 1903, in the small town of Waverly, Kansas. She was the youngest of four children raised in a modest farming community, an unlikely starting point for a woman who would go on to help found and lead one of America's most important aircraft manufacturing companies.

From a young age, Olive Ann displayed a sharp aptitude for mathematics and business, skills that were relatively uncommon pursuits for women of her era. After completing high school, she enrolled in the Bryant & Stratton Business College in Wichita, Kansas, where she trained as a bookkeeper and secretary, developing the financial acumen that would later prove indispensable to her career.

Her early exposure to office administration and accounting set the stage for her entry into the aviation industry, an emerging and volatile field in the early twentieth century. Few could have predicted that this determined young woman from rural Kansas would eventually become known as the "First Lady of Aviation" and shape the trajectory of American aircraft manufacturing for decades.