Aviator Beulah Elizabeth McCown (April 2, 1912 - July 7, 1984), was born in Charleston to Lawrence and Lula Grover McCown. She grew up on the city’s West Side and on Tyler Mountain in western Kanawha County. She attended the Charleston Business School and Morris Harvey College (now University of Charleston).

At age 18, while working as a stenographer for Gravely Tractor, she started taking flight lessons at Wertz Field in Institute from her future husband, Hubert H. Stark (1897-1963). On December 13, 1933, she became one of West Virginia’s first licensed female pilots. Months later, she earned her commercial pilot’s license. The Starks were married on November 23, 1939.

During the late 1930s, she performed air shows nationally and was a founding member and chair of West Virginia’s original chapter of The Ninety-Nines, a national organization that continues to provide networking, mentoring, and flight scholarship opportunities for women. In these early days of flight, airline options were few and far between, especially in rural mountainous areas with scarce flat landing spots. In 1935, the Starks and her brother founded Mountain State Air Service, which bought, sold, built, and repaired planes; offered commercial air service; and took professional aerial photographs. The company lasted, though, only three years. Hubert Stark served as director/inspector for the West Virginia Board of Aeronautics (1937) until it evolved in 1947 into the state Aeronautics Commission, of which he was executive director.

When the United States entered World War II, Beulah Stark joined the West Virginia Wing of the Civil Air Patrol, teaching adults and high school students to fly. She notably flew both open and closed cockpit airplanes. After her father’s death in 1948, she retired from active flying and took over management of his slaughterhouse at Bullitt and Welch streets in Charleston, while remaining involved in the Pilot Club and the American Business Women’s Association.

Hubert Stark died at home on Tyler Mountain on May 12, 1963. Beulah McCown Stark died in Charleston. Some of her aviation artifacts are on display in the West Virginia State Museum, and the Starks’ papers are in the West Virginia State Archives. She was inducted into the West Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame in 2020-21. Hubert Stark was inducted in 2023.