Michigan woman whose name inspired band to become Greta Van Fleet dies at 95

FRANKENMUTH, Mich. (AP) — Gretna Van Fleet didn't play music with Greta Van Fleet. But maybe she got the next best thing: The Grammy-winning rock band uses her name.

The 95-year-old Michigan woman died Monday at a senior living center in Frankenmuth, according to her obituary, the same community where the band was formed in 2012 when Van Fleet was in her 80s.

“I think they checked out my background to make sure I wasn’t on the Ten Most Wanted list or something, and they went ahead with it,” Van Fleet jokingly told MLive.com in 2019, ahead of the band's appearance on “Saturday Night Live.”

“But later, when I met the boys, I said, ‘That’s OK.' But, no, they did not approach me to begin with," Van Fleet said.

Kyle Hauck, a drummer in the band's early days, has told interviewers that a name was needed in time for a local performance. He said he heard his grandfather talk about helping a friend, Gretna Van Fleet. Something clicked. The band dropped the ‘n’ in Gretna and Greta Van Fleet was born.

The band won a Grammy in 2019 for best rock album, “From The Fires,” and had other nominations that year. Greta Van Fleet's “Starcatcher” was nominated for best album in 2024.

Gretna Van Fleet's obituary describes her, too, as being “musically talented,” playing a variety of instruments including saxophone, violin, tuba and piano.

She said in the 2019 interview that her favorite song by the band was “Flower Power.”

“There’s a couple others that I like, but that’s not really my style," Van Fleet said of the music. "It’s not my era that they’re making popular come back.”

Gretna Van Fleet smiles during an interview at her home in Frankenmuth, Mich, Monday, Jan. 14, 2019. (Kaytie Boomer/Saginaw News via AP)

Photographs of the band Greta Van Fleet with Gretna Van Fleet and her husband sit on a desk at her home in Frankenmuth, Mich, Monday, Jan. 14, 2019. (Kaytie Boomer/Saginaw News via AP)

Gretna VanFleet plays one of her favorite hymns at her home in Frankenmuth, Mich, Monday, Jan. 14, 2019. (Kaytie Boomer/Saginaw News via AP)

Gretna Van Fleet smiles holds a photograph of her with the band Greta Van Fleet at her home in Frankenmuth, Mich, Monday, Jan. 14, 2019. (Kaytie Boomer/Saginaw News via AP)

Gretna Van Fleet smiles during an interview at her home in Frankenmuth, Mich, Monday, Jan. 14, 2019. (Kaytie Boomer/Saginaw News via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — A House committee on Wednesday expressed bipartisan support for ensuring Transportation Security Administration officers get paid during future government shutdowns and are equipped with the latest technology, discussing the agency's future as the Trump administration lobbies to make airport screening a job for private contractors.

Members of the House Committee on Homeland Security held a hearing on ways to modernize the TSA nearly 25 years after it was created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. But the morale of TSA officers who went without pay during three funding lapses since Oct. 1, and whom the administration wants to replace at small U.S. airports, overshadowed the talk about better machines and reliable funding.

“Between the 2025 and 2026 shutdowns, transportation security officers endured a total of 119 days impacted by shutdown conditions," Republican Andrew Garbarino of New York, the committee’s chairman, said in his opening remarks. "That means TSA officers spent roughly 40% of this fiscal year reporting to work without a paycheck while continuing to carry out one of the most important security missions in the federal government.”

Several other committee members noted that Congress has failed to pass any of the pending bills seeking to guarantee continued pay for TSA workers. Rep. Lou Correa, a California Democrat, said if TSA workers don't get paid during shutdowns, neither should lawmakers.

Correa also took aim at President Donald Trump's proposed budget, which in addition to spending $477.3 million to have private companies take over airport screening at about 250 smaller airports would cut more than 4,500 TSA positions to save $529.3 million in compensation and benefits. The TSA this week also authorized contractors in its airport staffing program to acquire and maintain screening equipment, which previously was strictly a government function.

“Technology alone can’t replace the experienced people who make the security checkpoints work as they have for the past 25 years,” Correa said. “It's about pushing an antigovernment privatization ideology.”

About 20 U.S. airports already staff their checkpoints through the Screening Partnership Program. Currently airports choose whether or not to opt in. Under Trump's proposed budget, smaller airports would be required to participate.

The TSA has proposed letting private screeners handle security at airports with scheduled flights of passenger planes with 10-30 seats and ones that accomodate charter flights and private planes without fixed schedules. Examples include Oxnard Airport in California, Ocala International Airport in Florida, Alabama's Tuscaloosa International Airport and Gary-Chicago International Airport in Indiana, according to a spreadsheet maintained by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The witnesses at the hearing included Christopher Sununu, president and CEO of the airline trade group Airlines for America; Dallas Fort Worth International Airport CEO Chris McLaughlin; American Federation of Government Employees President Everett Kelley, whose union represents TSA workers. All three said they thoughts airports should get to decide whether to employ private screeners.

“Ensuring SPP remains an option for airports and does not become a mandatory program is paramount to the U.S. aviation industry,” Sununu said.

Kelley took a strong stand against the plans in Trump's budget.

“I'm totally against the privatization of any airport,” he said. “You don't contract out the CIA, do you?”

After several more Democrats on the committee said they thought that handing off airport security to businesses would leave U.S. airspace more vulnerable, Garbarino interjected to point out that “the very conservative cities of San Francisco, Seattle and Atlanta” all use private screeners at their airports, “so yeah, maybe it's not a Republican thing.”

Garbarino and Rep. Tim Kennedy, a New York Democrat, championed legislation he and three other committee members introduced earlier this month that would double, from $250 million to $500 million, the amount of money the TSA administrator is required to set aside to reimburse airports for capital costs associated with security. The bill also would establish an annual TSA fund of $250 million for airport screening technology.

Revenue for both would come from a $5.60 fee that airline customers pay for each one-way trip they take on U.S. flights. The 9/11 Passenger Security Fee has existed since 2002, but Congress decided in 2013 that a certain amount had to be used each year to reduce the federal deficit. Since then, an estimated $15 billion went to the U.S. Treasury for that purpose, according to the bill's co-sponsors,.

“Americans and Congress expected this fee to directly fund our aviation security system, but that is not the case. Nearly half the fee's revenue goes to something else,” Garbarino said. “Congress must restore the passenger security fee to its original intent, to fund the next generation of screening technology that protects our people in the skies.”

Trump's fiscal 2027 budget proposal would end the practice of diverting passenger fees and fund the TSA partly with the $1.68 billion that was expected to go to deficit-reduction.

FILE -The badge and TSA logo patch are seen on the uniform of a Transportation Security Administration employee at one of the security checkpoints inside Lambert- St. Louis International Airport Oct. 7, 2010, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

FILE - People wait in line at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security checkpoint at LaGuardia Airport in the Queens borough of New York, Nov. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Adam Gray, File)

FILE - Travelers walk with their luggage past TSA agents at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Nov. 13, 2025, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)