GLENBURN – The pilot who died last week when her small Cessna airplane crashed on Houston Mountain was remembered Tuesday as a person who could fly everything from jets to tail draggers to floatplanes.

Kathy Hodgkins, 47, a pilot for Continental Airlines and co-owner of KT Aviation in Glenburn with her husband, Tim, also was remembered as someone who treated people with consideration and respect as a matter of habit.

“She was a great woman, a real pioneer as far as aviation was concerned,” said Jonathan Ford of Eddington, a family friend. “She was hard, fair and well-qualified.”

The range of aircraft she flew included commercial jets to Europe and tail draggers, which are aircraft with a small wheel under the tail rather than a nose wheel.

Hodgkins impressed Tim Cox of Boulder, Colo., enough that he decided to come to Maine to get his floatplane training. Of all the requests for training information Cox said he made of aviation firms in Alaska, Canada, Minnesota and Maine, only Hodgkins took the time to reply in a handwritten note.

In the note she not only answered all his questions, she included information on local places to stay and see, he recalled Tuesday.

“Based solely on her response, I drove across country from Colorado to Maine for my training,” Cox said. “I felt that anybody who would take the time to personally write me such a note would undoubtedly do an excellent job with their training.”

When Hodgkins learned that one of Cox’s Colorado friends had died of bone cancer while he was training in Maine, she secured him inexpensive standby airline tickets to return home for the funeral, he said. “I was deeply touched by her actions and generosity,” he said.

Hodgkins had some 30 years’ experience as a pilot. Last Thursday, she had taken off in a single-engine Cessna to pick up passengers at Lobster Lake, according to wardens who investigated. The aircraft’s wreckage was found the next day in a remote area near Brownville.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating what may have caused the crash. An NTSB official could not be reached Tuesday.

Cox was so moved by Hodgkins’ death that he reserved a Cessna 172, the same make and model of plane the pilot died in, for a Sunday flight to Maine to give support to her family.

“She was extraordinary,” said Sharon Silberman-Hummels, a Bangor lawyer. “She was very talented but did not rest on those talents.” Silberman-Hummels met Hodgkins while skating. She said Hodgkins was always willing to try something new and never gave up.

Another pilot who drove to Greenville to join the search but arrived after she was found told family members in a letter that he shared Hodgkins’ passion for skating. He had met her when they both were employed at Bar Harbor Airlines.

The pilot recalled that their paths crossed one day in a Newark, N.J., crew room when he gave her some quick instruction on how to do a lift and soon had her hoisted over his head in a near perfect axle-lift position.

“So there we were in full uniform with the other pilots looking on as if we were nuts and Kathy just laughing,” he wrote. “That is the Kathy I will always remember.”

A celebration of Hodgkins’ life will be held from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 4, at her home at 35 Lucky Landing Road in Glenburn. A funeral and interment will be held in Platteville, Wis.