Anne Noggle was born in Evanston, Illinois, in 1922, and died in Albuquerque, New Mexico on August 16, 2005. She set a goal of becoming a pilot after seeing Amelia Earhart at an air show in Chicago. When she was 17, her mother, a bookstore manager, agreed to let her take flying lessons.

At 21, Noggle traveled to Sweetwater, Texas, to train to become one of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). She graduated in the class of 44-W-1. She flew missions in 1943 and 1944. The WASP were disbanded in late 1944. After the war, she became a crop-duster in the Southwest and flew stunts in an aerial circus.

When the Air Force offered commissions to former WASPs after the war, she applied and was a pilot during the Korean War. She retired as a captain in 1959 when she developed emphysema. She later described her aviation career this way: "I flew airplanes for a living for eleven years and 6,000 hours . . . When I was twenty-five, I became a stunt pilot with an air show; when I was twenty-six, I became a crop-duster pilot."

While in the Air Force, Noggle had been stationed in Paris. She visited the Louvre, which ignited an artistic impulse