INDIANAPOLIS — Heather Penney hailed from Reno and was a liberal arts major at Purdue University before she followed in her father’s footsteps to become America’s first female fighter pilot in the 1990s. Her dad was a combat pilot during the Vietnam War.
That’s how Penney came to be at the controls of an F-16 flying out of Andrews Air Force Base on 9/11.
“As a young lieutenant in my fighter squadron in the DC Air National Guard, I should have been flying some sort of training mission, but instead I was in the middle of a scheduling meeting,” Penney said. “And that’s where I was when we learned that our nation had been attacked.”…