Festival Feature: Richman – The Amazing Nellie

September 13, 2025

NOTE: A version of this story appears in our 2025 South Dakota Festival of Books guide, produced by South Dakota Magazine. Brittany C. Richman – bestselling children’s author, Presidential Leadership Scholar, former political staffer in the White House and Congress, and cofounder of The American Moms blog – will appear at the Festival of Books, Sept. 26-28 in Spearfish. Her most recent picture book, Dreams Take Flight, represented South Dakota on the “Great Reads from Great Places” list at the National Book Festival, Sept. 6 in Washington, D.C.

There’s a picture of Nellie Zabel Willhite — the first deaf woman in the nation to earn a pilot’s license — inside the Rapid City Regional Airport. Brittany Richman had passed it many times, but when a friend saw it and sent Richman a text, she started digging. “She said, ‘I think this is someone you would want to learn more about,’” Richman says. “She was right.”

Richman tells Willhite’s inspirational story in her new children’s book Dreams Take Flight: The Story of Deaf Pilot Nellie Zabel Willhite. Willhite was born in Box Elder and lost her hearing as a result of measles as a child. Her father enrolled her at the South Dakota School for the Deaf in Sioux Falls, the community where she stayed for the rest of her life. As a young adult, Willhite fell in love with aviation by watching planes take off from the Renner Airport. She earned her pilot’s license in 1928.

Richman says she grew to admire Willhite as she researched her life. “She seemed like this superhero,” Richman says. “But I loved learning that she was still very much human, like the rest of us. She had self-doubts. When she first signed up for flying lessons, she was so afraid that she would fail that she didn’t tell a soul about what she was doing. After news had spread that she passed and got her pilot’s license, many people were shocked that she would dare do this. They criticized her and called her unsafe. But Nellie took it in stride.”

Willhite’s trailblazing offers an important lesson for young readers. “As a parent, I often want to shield my children from the hard things in life. But it’s overcoming those hard things that shapes us into who we are,” Richman says. “All the things that Nellie had to overcome gave her this tenacity and made her brave enough to be bold. I think that’s what we all want for our kids.”