In her short 37 years of life, McKeesport native and aviator Helen Richey was a trailblazer.

She was the first female commercial pilot, the first female airmail pilot, and she broke endurance records, flying with fellow female pilot Frances Marsalis for 10 straight days. When World War II ended, she was a major with the Women Airforce Service Pilots.

But many of her achievements went unheralded. After years of unsuccessfully pursuing a career as a commercial pilot, she died alone in her New York City apartment from an overdose of barbiturates, in an apparent suicide, and was buried without military honors.

Her legend has faded in the minds of McKeesport residents, and many don't know who she is, beyond the namesake of the ball field in Renziehausen Park.

"She had not received the honor she had deserved," said McKeesport resident Evette Wivagg, who read Ms. Richey's biography and decided to help organize a year-long exhibit on her. "To me, it was a great injustice that her own hometown didn't even know what she had done."

On Saturday, on what would have been her 100th birthday, Ms. Richey finally received her military honors in a gravesite ceremony, complete with the playing of "Taps" and a 21-gun salute. The ceremony concluded a year-long exhibition on Ms. Richey at the McKeesport Heritage Center and was followed by a birthday celebration.

It was an attempt to correct some of the injustice done to her over the denial of military benefits and honors she deserved. Those benefits and honors weren't granted to female veterans of World War II until the 1970s.

The gravesite ceremony was the idea of McKeesport Mayor James Brewster, said Ms. Wivagg, because he wanted to honor her lesser-known military achievements.

In 1942, following stints as a commercial air pilot and a stunt pilot, Ms. Richey moved to England and joined the Airforce Transport Auxiliary. She shuttled planes around western Europe so they could be deployed for military operations.

She came back to the United States the following year, working until 1944 as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots. In the United States, she tested military aircraft and ferried planes from various bases to the coast, where they were then deployed to Europe.

But at the end of the war, Ms. Richey was essentially out of a job. Though at one point she had trained male pilots, she found that some former students got jobs ahead of her because companies would not hire a woman.

"She was the first woman trainer of air cadets," said Bob Houser, a McKeesport Heritage Center board member who is familiar with Ms. Richey's life. "She taught them, but she was a woman and they were men ... and they got the jobs."

She had wanted to be a pilot in some capacity, but her one full-time stint with Greensburg-based Central Airlines in the mid-1930s ended when the all-male pilots union pushed her out. And even during her tenure there, she was expected to serve more as a spokeswoman for the company than as a pilot.

Her career as a stunt pilot was essentially finished, too, Mr. Houser said, because flying was no longer considered novel.

"After World War II, flying was much less exciting because people were now doing it commercially," he said.

Ms. Richey was able to get only occasional work as a commercial pilot and was unable to do what she loved. She fell into a depression.

"She lived to fly," Mr. Houser said. "She commented she had not felt as alive as when she was flying. And now she faced the prospect that she wasn't going to be able to fly. There was no opportunity for her."

In 1947, following a visit with her ill father in McKeesport, Ms. Richey returned to New York and had a gathering of six friends at her apartment. She talked about suicide, but her friends didn't take her seriously until they didn't hear from her for days.

A friend found her in her apartment shortly after her death.

Ms. Wivagg said Ms. Richey's story saddened her. She believes Ms. Richey might have lived a longer life had pervasive discrimination not prevented her from fulfilling her dream of flying full time.

"She certainly was a victim of discrimination," Ms. Wivagg said.

"I'm sure she wouldn't have committed suicide if she was gainfully employed with what she loved to do. She was obsessed with flying."

Ms. Wivagg said the female aviator's struggle is part of what compelled her to publicize Ms. Richey's story, and to try to ensure that more McKeesport residents were more familiar with her.

The McKeesport Heritage Center is now raising money to put Ms. Richey's biography, "Propeller Annie," in local schools and libraries.

"I was so wanting to bring her out of the dusty past," she said. "I feel satisfied in my heart that we've reintroduced her."

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