Jerry B. Roberts, 88, loved to fly airplane

When Jerry Bennett Roberts visited her children in college, she flew a single-engine Cessna to get there.

Son Stephen was in Kentucky; son Brian was in Virginia; daughter Gwen was at State College, Pa.

It was easy, Gwen Staffiera said, for a woman who had taken part in four transcontinental races, flying solo for days in her single-engine Cessnas.

On Wednesday, Jan. 7, Mrs. Roberts, 88, of Haddon Heights, who retired in the late 1970s as corporate secretary for her family's lumber firms in Barrington, died of bronchitis at Cooper University Hospital in Camden.

"My father gave her flying lessons as a Christmas gift," and she began flying in 1964, the year she turned 38, Staffiera said.

"She would get us off to school in the morning. Then she thought she could go anywhere" in her Cessna if she could be home in time for the children.

She flew first from the Flying W airport in Medford and later from Philadelphia International Airport, in the less-hurried days "when pilots could go up to the control tower," her daughter said.

"She would take cookies to the guys because she knew their voices so well, and they knew hers."

Born in Camden, Mrs. Roberts graduated from Haddonfield Memorial High School and earned an associate's degree at the former Green Mountain Junior College in Poultney, Vt., in 1946.

After college, she worked for a bank before joining the Volney G. Bennett Lumber Co. in Camden, founded by a relative. It was later acquired by her husband, Harold, and renamed the Mr. Roberts Lumber Centers in Barrington.

Mrs. Roberts flew in the Women's Air Derby, nicknamed the Powder Puff Derby, an annual transcontinental airplane race, from and to a different city each year.

She flew from the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles to Savannah, Ga., in 1968; from Monterey, Calif., to Bristol in 1970; from Calgary, Alberta, to Baton Rouge, La., in 1971; and from San Carlos, Calif., to Toms River, N.J., in 1972.

"It was all visual flight, no instruments," a race that could last for a week, she said.

"They would paint signs on the tops of large buildings" along their paths across the country "to assist pilots with navigation," she said.

Mrs. Roberts was an officer in the Ninety-Nines, which describes itself as an international organization of women pilots, founded by 99 of them in 1929.

At one time, she was national chairman of its air marking committee, "the women who climbed onto the roofs and painted them themselves."

At First United Methodist Church in Haddon Heights, she was chairwoman of the administrative board and chairwoman of the pastor-parish relations committee, and was a trustee for the Southern New Jersey Conference of the United Methodist Church.

For the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Mrs. Roberts was a member of the national board of management and New Jersey state vice chairman. As a member of a DAR committee, she went to Paris in 1983 for the bicentennial of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War.

"She was a delightful lady, a lady through and through," said Carole Hare, who knew her when they were DAR officers.

Besides her daughter and sons, Mrs. Roberts is survived by seven grandchildren. Her husband, Harold, died in 2011.

A visitation was set from 2 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 17, at Kain-Murphy Funeral Services, 15 West End Ave., Haddonfield, before a 3 p.m. memorial service there.

Donations may be sent to Tamassee DAR School, 1925 Bumgardner Dr., Tamassee, S.C. 29686, or www.tdarschool.org.

Condolences may be offered to the family at http://kainmurphy.com.