By Angela Satterlee
Lesley Poberezny has spent her entire life surrounded by aviation. As the daughter of Young Eagles founder Tom Poberezny and granddaughter of EAA founder Paul Poberezny, flying has always been part of her story. In 1992, she became part of EAA history when she took the first official Young Eagles flight.
Her family’s aviation legacy stretches back generations. Paul Poberezny founded the Experimental Aircraft Association in 1953, growing it into one of the world’s largest aviation organizations and creating what would become EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. His son, Tom, carried that legacy forward as EAA president, helping expand EAA, which included the introduction of the light-sport aircraft category, and creating the Young Eagles program to inspire the next generation of aviators.
Today, that program has provided more than 2.5 million free flights to young people around the world.
“[Aviation] was in my blood already due to my grandfather and my dad,” Lesley said. “And just growing up around AirVenture, but also growing up around air shows in general.”
Her father also flew with the Eagles Aerobatic Team for 25 years, making air shows a way of life for the family.
“Growing up as a kid, I remember packing up on a Thursday night and leaving for another air show on Friday morning and then returning on Sunday night and then doing it all again the next weekend. Show after show after show.”
Lesley’s first airplane ride came long before her historic Young Eagles flight. At just 3 days old, she flew with her family to Nashville, Tennessee, beginning a lifetime around airplanes.
Then, on July 31, 1992, she became the first official Young Eagle. Flying aboard her father’s Piper Twin Comanche alongside her cousin Audra and another young passenger, Kenny, the group soared over AirVenture, launching what would become one of EAA’s most influential youth programs.
“It just meant a lot to be with family and make new friends that have now turned into family,” she said.
Looking back more than three decades later, Lesley is proud by how far the program has come.
“It’s just amazing how the program is still going … and that we’re still helping those youth to get that aviation bug so in the future they are our pilots,” she said.
“Young Eagles is a big deal … because anybody can do it. Just get those kids up there and let them see their world in a different perspective and hopefully they get that [aviation] bug.”
Although she never became a pilot herself, Lesley built her own career in aviation through marketing and continues to spend every AirVenture on the grounds, celebrating the community her family helped build.
“We are a family organization,” she said.
This year’s AirVenture is especially meaningful. Saturday marks four years since Tom Poberezny’s passing, and Lesley said seeing people continue to honor both her father and grandfather reminds her that their impact lives on.
“For me personally, it’s returning and seeing friends that I haven’t seen in a year. And it’s like time has not stopped,” she said. “Even though we live in separate states, just coming together and sitting around the campfires at night and talking, we can catch up like nothing’s passed.
“It’s great to see that my grandfather and my dad are still, even though they have passed, that aviation’s still alive,” she said.
As millions of young people continue to climb into an airplane for their first Young Eagles flight, Lesley sees the same mission her father envisioned in 1992 continuing to soar.
“It’s great to see it still going strong and growing with just leaps and bounds of people arriving,” she said.