Early Life, Education, and Air Force Service
Wilson was born in Keene, New Hampshire, the daughter of Martha Lou, nurse, and George Douglas "Doug" Wilson, a commercial pilot and member of the Experimental Aircraft Association. Wilson grew up around aviation and hoped to become a pilot like her father and grandfather before her. Her paternal grandparents were born in Scotland. Her grandfather, George Gordon "Scotty" Wilson, flew for the Royal Air Force (RAF) in World War I and emigrated to America in 1922 where he was a barnstormer and airport operator in the 1920s and 1930s. He served as a courier pilot during World War II and started the New Hampshire Civil Air Patrol where he was a Wing Commander. Her father started flying at age 13 and enlisted in the United States Air Force after high school.
The United States Air Force Academy began admitting women during her junior year at Keene High School (Keene, New Hampshire), and Wilson applied and was appointed to the Academy. At the Academy, she was the first woman to command basic training and the first woman Vice Wing Commander. She graduated in 1982 as a Distinguished Graduate (magna cum laude equivalent). Although she had planned to go to flight school, Wilson earned a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford during the sixth year that women were permitted to apply and continued her education at Jesus College, University of Oxford, earning a Master of Philosophy and D.Phil. in International Relations by 1985.
In 1990, Oxford University Press published her book, International Law and the Use of Force by National Liberation Movements, which won the 1988 Paul Reuter Prize of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Paul Reuter Prize is awarded for a major work in the sphere of international humanitarian law. Wilson won the second Reuter prize ever awarded.
An Air Force officer for seven years, Wilson was a negotiator and political adviser to the U.S. Air Force in England, and a defense planning officer for NATO in Belgium, where her work included arms control negotiations.
Read more about this topic: Heather Wilson
Famous quotes containing the words early, air, force and/or service:
““next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims” and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn’s early my
country ‘tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jing by gee by gosh by gum”
—E.E. (Edward Estlin)
“Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more modern. It is written as if the specator should be thinking of the backside of the picture on the wall, or as if the author expected that the dead would be his readers, and wished to detail to them their own experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Happiness ain’t a thing in itself—it’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasant.... And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain’t happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some skill to do useful service, some urge to fit that service into the well-being of the community,—these are the most vital things education must try to produce.”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)