General Jacqueline van Ovost is Commander of the U.S. Air Force Transportation Command. She became America’s first female four-star general a few years ago, before receiving her new command on International Women’s Day in 2021, March 8.
The Van Ovost family hails from Zuid Holland, where they went by Van Hovorst. When the general was a 17-year-old girl, she flew by herself in her dad’s Cessna to Cape Canaveral to watch, from the air, Sally Ride become the first astronaut to go into space. In the cockpit, she wore a t-shirt that read “Ride, Sally, Ride.”
She still owns that shirt.
