Ackerman, Caroline

Caroline Iverson Ackerman was born in 1918 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Jacob Engval and Ella Dorothea (Schmidt) Iverson. Ackerman had one sister, Dorothy (Iverson) Edwards. Ackerman graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1939 with a B.A. degree in journalism and education. While working as a feature writer at the Milwaukee Journal, Ackerman began taking free flying lessons at the University of Wisconsin, sponsored by the U.S. government. She passed all her courses and received her pilot's license in the fall of 1940. Ackerman taught flying, navigation, meteorology, etc., while continuing her own education, taking advanced lessons in open cockpit and acrobatic flying. In 1941, she and one of her students made a much-heralded flight to Alaska: a first in a small, 65-horsepower, two-seater airplane.

In the spring of 1942, Life magazine recruited Ackerman to be an aviation researcher, eventually promoting her to aviation editor at the age of 26. In 1947, Ackerman was released from her job after the soldiers returned from the war. She was hired by Shell Oil Company, founding the company's first program in public relations for women, highlighting family automobile touring. Ackerman worked under the pseudonym "Carol Lane, Women's Travel Director," traveling frequently to speak to women's groups, writing a weekly syndicated travel column, and appearing on radio and TV shows as a "travel expert." In 1949 Caroline Iverson married Leslie (Les) Ackerman, quit Shell, and moved to Warwick, Rhode Island, where she stayed home to raise three children: Karin (Field), Terrell, and Jon. The family eventually settled in South Natick, Massachusetts, where Ackerman received her M.S. in journalism at Boston University in 1969 and was hired as a journalism professor at Northeastern University in 1971. Ackerman left Northeastern in 1978, becoming editor of the New England Lutheran. She retired from that position in 1992. In 2004, Ackerman moved to an assisted living facility in Montana.