their marriage. Business career Finch obtained her high-school equivalency diploma in the early 1970s, and enrolled in accounting courses at Southwest Texas State University. She worked as a bookkeeper in New Jersey, Texas, South Dakota, Montana, and Illinois. Some of Finch's jobs were at nursing facilities, and she enjoyed working with seniors. She liked management, and one of her duties was to recruit 15 new residents a month for a nursing home in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Finch networked with key townspeople to reach the goal. She decided to enter the nursing-home field in 1978, financing her first facility the following year with a loan from her grandparents (who refinanced their home with a proviso that if Finch failed, her family would repay the mortgage but she would lose her inheritance). An uncle, a pharmacist for whom she had provided bookkeeping services, helped finance her second nursing home. Finch acquired five more nursing homes over the next two years, with a total of 750 residents. In 1982, at age 31, she employed 600 workers and founded the Care Centers Management Corporation to build retirement communities. By 1997 Finch owned retirement property, four nursing homes (with a total of 500 residents), and a construction firm which manufactured prefabricated buildings. At that time, her businesses employed 500 people and earned $14 million annually. Flying career As a teenager, Finch thought it would be fun to fly the gull-winged World War II Corsair fighter plane. A single working mother, she used money budgeted for lunches to pay for flying lessons; by 1972, at age 21, she flew solo in a Grumman trainer aircraft. As Finch began looking for nursing homes to purchase, she decided to fly to the locations. She obtained her pilot's license in 1979; about a year later, she purchased a Piper Arrow which she flew across Texas to manage her nursing homes. Finch also flew her Beechcraft airplane to conduct business. During the mid-1980s she acquired a North American T-6 Texan, a World War II trainer which she restored to participate in air shows and races (including the Reno Air Races). Finch joined the Confederate Air Force (now the Commemorative Air Force) early in her flying career, where she landed the Republic P-47D Thunderbolt without power 100 times. At the time, it was unusual for an aviatrix to fly the P-47. She was a major fundraiser for the restoration and marketing