For Love Of Flight...
When Betty Jo Reed was introduced to flying, it was love at
first sight. She was 6 years old and her father paid $1 for her to
take a ride in a Ford tri-motor airplane at a local fair in
1929.
Once airborne, Ms. Reed was hooked. "I remember feeling free and
happy, and loving the whole experience," she said. "From that point
on, I knew that I wanted to fly."
It was a good time to be infatuated with flying. Flight was
still new and romantic. Airplanes were starting to roll off
production floors at a steady rate and pilots were stretching the
limits of flight and teasing the imaginations of children and
adults on a regular basis.
Some of these pilots even made an impression on a young Betty
Jo.
"Charles Lindbergh was trying to make the first trans-Atlantic
flight, and every time I heard an airplane flying over our house I
would run outside, waving and yelling, 'Hi Lindbergh,'" Ms. Reed
said.
She doesn't do much running these days. And, at 85, her flying
days are also behind her. But while time may have taken her ability
to move fast or sit in the cockpit, one thing it left untouched is
her love affair with flight -- a love affair that drove her to
become one of the first women to fly a military aircraft.
Betty Jo, whose last name then was Streff, was a member of the
Women Airforce Service Pilots, a unique corps of women pilots who
were trained by the Army Air Forces to fly military aircraft during
World War II. The training took place at a small airfield called
Avenger Field in Sweetwater, TX.
"I was part of the seventh class of 1944," Ms. Reed said. "We
were a tight knit group of girls, too."
In all 1,074 women graduated from this training and earned the
WASP title -- a title that carried considerably less weight in
those days then it does now.
"I was assigned to a unit in Mississippi," she said. "Right from
the start, the boys there made it pretty clear we weren't
wanted."
This didn't bother Ms. Reed too much, though. As far as she was
concerned, every day she was able to climb into the cockpit and
take off was a good one.
"Flying was freedom and I loved flying," she said. "I loved my
job and I wouldn't have wanted to do anything else."
She spent her time in Mississippi performing maintenance
flights. Once an airplane was repaired, she would take it up and
make sure the plane worked the way it should.
It was a great time and she was happy.
Then, just as fast as the program was started, the program was
deactivated and the WASPs were told to go home in December of
1944.
"That was so disappointing," Ms. Reed said. "Some of the men
were returning from the war and the Army decided it didn't need us
anymore."
But the service couldn't deny the fact that these women had
performed tremendously. During the war, WASP pilots flew more than
60 million miles of operational flights from aircraft factories to
ports of embarkation and military bases, towing targets for live
anti-aircraft artillery practice, simulating strafing missions and
transporting cargo. Between September of 1942 and December of 1944,
more than 50 percent of the ferrying of high-speed pursuit aircraft
in the continental United States was carried out by WASP pilots.
The women also flew all 77 aircraft in the Army Air Force arsenal,
either in training or while in service.
Few people know these statistics; fewer still how important the
WASPs were to the military at that time. Still, the WASP program
showed the world that women could sit in the cockpit and fly just
as well as their male counterparts -- war or no war. And in a
career in which the door was typically slammed shut on women, a
crack had suddenly appeared. The WASP program had opened the eyes
and hearts of people across the country, and women everywhere began
idolizing WASP pilots and looking to them as heroes.
Ms. Reed doesn't see it that way, though.
"Oh, they call us pioneers and heroes, but I don't feel like
either," she said. "We were just doing what we loved to do and
jumped at the opportunity to do it. We weren't thinking how we
would impact the world, just that we'd be flying some real fun
aircraft. We didn't feel like heroes at all."
History disagrees with her though. History books tell the tale
of Ms. Reed and her WASP sisters, painting them as pioneers, even
legends. Air Force officials, too, recognize their contributions to
the service and even include a section about them in the
Professional Development Guide, a book used by enlisted Airmen to
prepare them for promotion.
But aside from a few words scattered across the pages of history
books and the personal accounts of these women, there was little
recognition. No shrine to honor them, no place where the WASP
pilots were immortalized, no building that housed their memory so
reverently sought to keep their legacy alive.
Then, in 2005, that all changed.
Nancy Parrish, daughter of WASP Deanie Parrish, set out to
create a museum dedicated to her mother and all the other WASPs.
With the help of local residents and city government officials, the
National WASP World War II Museum was officially opened in May of
2005. Fittingly, the museum was housed where it all began -- at
Avenger Field.
Located in
a 1929-style hangar, the museum is full of WASP memorabilia. Old
uniforms, model aircraft, a recreation of the women's living
quarters and training equipment used by the women are all on
display, surrounded by hundreds of photos and memories so real they
almost seem to come alive.
This is fine, though. Keeping memories alive is the main reason
the museum exists.
"The museum seeks to educate and inspire every generation with
the history of the WASP, the first women in history to fly
American's military aircraft, and who forever changed the role of
women in aviation," said Marianne Wood, the museum's director.
So now Ms. Reed and her fellow WASPs have a shrine, a place to
honor them and to keep their spirit, their dedication and their
accomplishments alive forever.
Ms. Reed can't run these days, but if she could, she would run
through the museum, from photo to photo, and reminisce about "the
good ol' days."
Time may have taken her legs, but it has not touched her heart
-- and her heart belongs to flight.
(Aero-News thanks Staff Sgt. Matthew Bates)