Georgia Jipp: Blizzard Pilot

Winner of the 2025 Spur Award for Best Western Children’s Picture Book

Winner of the Bronze Medal for Best Illustrator in the 2024 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards

GEORGIA JIPP MIGHT BE SMALL, BUT SHE WAS BRAVE, FLYING 150 MERCY MISSIONS FOR THE AMERICAN RED CROSS DURING THE WINTER OF 1949.

Georgia Hoyt Jipp (1926–1987) spent her childhood in and around small airplanes in western South Dakota. She loved flying. Despite her petite size, she earned her pilot’s license at age nineteen. In 1948, at age twenty-two, she married Richard Jipp. Their wedding took place in an airplane circling above Philip, South Dakota, while wedding guests listened in on the radio.

A blizzard struck on January 2, 1949, ushering in three months of snowstorms that ranked as the worst in the state’s history. Georgia answered the desperate pleas of ranchers, parents of sick children, and the American Red Cross, flying over 150 rescue missions during those three long months of snowstorms—more than anyone else in the state. She was a blizzard pilot hero!