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Kay Kennedy

Kay Kennedy was born as Elizabeth Margaret Kennedy on December 24, 1905 in a mining camp. She graduated from the University of Wyoming with a degree in geology. She worked as a teacher in the Badlands of South Dakota and a hunting guide and dude rancher in Wyoming. She also wrote a column for the weekly newspaper. Kay came to Alaska in 1936 at the height of the glory days of early aviation and bush flying in Alaska and she began to realize the dramatic transformation it was having on Alaska. During World War II, she was a reporter for the Great Falls Leader in Montana and The Denver Post. After the war she returned to Alaska, beginning a long association with the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. In 1966, she took a position as the press and public relations director for Wien Consolidated Airlines in Fairbanks and Anchorage, and a year later published a book, The Wien Brothers Story. She is well-known as a journalist of Alaska's aviation history. Kay Kennedy died in 1993. Her collection of aviation related photographs and oral history recordings is available at the Alaska and Polar Regions Archives and Collections at Elmer E. Rasmuson Libary, University of Alaska Fairbanks. For more about Kay Kennedy, see "The Kay Kennedy Story: Chronicling the Alaska Bush Pilot."

Kay Kennedy appears in the following new Jukebox projects: