Iris Cummings

Who is Iris Cummings?

Iris C. Cummings Critchell is an American aviator and former competition swimmer who represented the United States at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. After an active athletic career in swimming, which included a reign as U.S. national 200-meter breaststroke champion from 1936 to 1939, she was accepted into the University of Southern California's first Civilian Pilot Training Program in 1939. After graduation she worked as a flight instructor prior to being selected to serve her country during World War II as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots. Following the conflict she returned to California, where she developed and taught a curriculum on civilian flight for veterans returning from the war at the University of Southern California.

After racing airplanes competitively during the 1950s, Cummings and her husband Howard Critchell helped found the Bates Aeronautics program at Harvey Mudd College in 1962. They ran it together until he retired in 1979, at which point Iris continued alone until the program's end in 1990. A long-time certified FAA Pilot Examiner, she is the recipient of several international aviation awards and is a member of the National Flight Instructors Hall of Fame. In her later years she has remained active as a lecturer, consultant, and curator of the Aeronautical Library Special Collections at Harvey Mudd.