Robina Asti, Who Made History on the Ground and in the Air, Dies at 99

Robina Asti, a World War II veteran and mutual-fund executive who inspired a generation of transgender people in the 2010s with her successful fight for her husband’s Social Security benefits, and who just last year became the world’s oldest active flight instructor, died on March 12 in San Diego. She was 99.

Her death, at the home of her daughter Coca Astey, was confirmed by Ms. Astey.

Ms. Asti transitioned in the 1970s and had been living quietly as a woman for nearly 40 years when she applied for survivor benefits from the Social Security Administration in 2012, a few months after her husband died. It took a year for the agency to deny her application, on the grounds that she was not legally a woman at the time of her marriage.