Iris Cummings  Iris C. Cummings (born December 21, 1920), also known by her married name Iris Critchell, is an American aviator and former competition swimmer who represented the United States at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. After an active athletic career in swimming, which included a reign as U.S. national 200-meter breaststroke champion from 1936 to 1939, she was accepted into the University of Southern California's first Civilian Pilot Training Program in 1939. After graduation, she worked as a flight instructor prior to being selected to serve her country during World War II as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). Following the conflict, she returned to California, where she developed and taught a curriculum on civilian flight for veterans returning from the war at the University of Southern California. After racing airplanes competitively during the 1950s, Cummings and her husband, Howard Critchell, helped found the Bates Aeronautics program at Harvey Mudd College in 1962. They ran it together until he retired in 1979, at which point Iris continued alone until the program's end in 1990. A long-time certified FAA Pilot Examiner, she is the recipient of several international aviation awards and is a member of the National Flight Instructors Hall of Fame. In her later years, she has remained active as a lecturer, consultant, and curator of the Aeronautical Library Special Collections at Harvey Mudd. Cummings was born in Los Angeles in 1920 and attended Redondo Union High School. Her father possessed a Doctor of Medicine from Tufts University School of Medicine and also worked as an athletics coach at the start of the 20th century at Columbia University and as the athletic director at Swarthmore College from 1902 through 1908. Her mother was a Greek and Latin teacher. Iris attended the 1932 Summer Olympics as a spectator and began competing in swimming the following year, winning numerous local and regional tournaments. When it was too cold to swim, she remained athletically active through cycling. She was not a member of any club during her first year of competition, but nonetheless placed first in several meets in addition to her participation at the 1933 Southern Pacific Amateur Athletic Union and Pacific Coast championships. Cummings joined the Los Angeles Athletic Club (LAAC) in 1934 and received her first financial support in 1935, helping her attend that year's Far Western Championships. She captured the American national 200-meter breaststroke championship in 1936, which led to her participation in that year's Olympic trials and her selection as a member of the United States delegation to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.