Fly Girls Page 13

  By 1977, Helen lived on a farm in Pennsylvania where she raised Appaloosa horses. She also worked as a flight instructor and flew search-and-rescue missions.175 Now she had the chance to rescue her fellow Wasps. Helen had kept her discharge paper and happily turned it over to the women of the WASP Military Committee.

  Would the air force say the Wasps were de facto military? Yes. Porter’s discharge paper was a major support for that position. And members of Congress couldn’t deny that it was identical to the discharge papers so many of them had at home.

  The Armed Forces’ Precision Flying Teams

  The US Navy Blue Angels and the US Air Force Thunderbirds are flight squadrons who demonstrate the military’s aircraft and their pilots’ skills at air shows around the country. The teams’ mission is to make a connection between the military and the American public, and to boost interest and pride in the military. Many military pilots say they decided to become pilots after seeing the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds—much like the pilots of the 1930s and 1940s who were inspired by the daring skill of barnstormers.

  • • •

  In November 1977, thirty-five years after the WASP program had started, Congress passed and President Jimmy Carter signed a bill authorizing the Women Airforce Service Pilots to “have their service recognized as active military service . . . and to receive honorable discharges and full veterans’ benefits.”176

  The Wasps felt like they were finally soaring again.

  Elaine Harmon, age eighty-six, in a T-6 cockpit in August 2006.

  Epilogue

  In March 2010 nearly two hundred former Wasps gathered at the Capitol in Washington, DC. They weren’t there to protest or make demands this time. Now in their late eighties and nineties, they came for themselves and to represent the one hundred surviving Wasps who could not make the trip. They came to represent the nearly eight hundred who were no longer living. On behalf of all 1,102 Women Airforce Service Pilots, these women were at the Capitol to receive the Congressional Gold Medal—the highest honor Congress can award to civilians.

  Women had made great strides in military service and military aviation since the Wasps were sent home in 1944. They became a permanent part of the military with the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act in 1948, meaning there would be no more special bills to militarize women job by job. In 1976 the military academies opened to women, and shortly after, women began training as air force pilots. The navy and army accepted women pilots as well. Ten years later women were flying refueling missions to support combat flights in North Africa. In the early 1990s, Congress ended laws banning women pilots from combat missions. At about the same time, the first woman member of the military to go into space—Major Susan Helms—flew aboard the space shuttle Endeavor.

  Since the days of Amelia Earhart and Jackie Cochran, each achievement by a woman aviator had inspired other women to reach new heights. The Wasps were a strong part of that chain. If they ever doubted their influence, they had only to look at Major Nicole Malachowski. In 2006 she became the first woman pilot to fly as part of the USAF’s precision flying team, the Thunderbirds. Her handle, the nickname she chose, was Fifi—in honor of the WASP and the mascot Fifinella. As she said, “The airplane is the greatest equalizer in the world.”177

  Malachowski was at the Capitol in 2010 to address the Gold Medal recipients and their audience.

  Their motive for wanting to fly airplanes all those years ago wasn’t for fame or glory or recognition. They simply had a passion to take what gifts they had and use them to help defend not only America, but the entire free world, from tyranny. . . . And they let no one get in their way.178

  The former Wasps in attendance, some now using canes or walkers or wheelchairs, agreed. “It’s almost unbelievable,” Betty Wall Strohfus said. “We never thought this day would come. We were all just so grateful to have the opportunity to fly.”179

  Others had expressed the same feelings. According to Kaddy Steele, “[Flying for the AAF] was the high point of our life—bigger than going to college, bigger than getting your first job, bigger than getting married.”180 Another claimed, “I can honestly say that the Wasps prepared me for the rest of my life. Challenges will always be challenges, and I learned that hard work is what helps a person meet those challenges.”181

  Wasp Elaine Harmon knew all about the value of hard work. She’d worked hard to get her pilot’s license and fly as a Wasp, and worked hard again with the WASP Military Committee to gain recognition and benefits for her sister pilots. In late 2009, her thick white hair framing her wide smile, she stood proudly behind President Barack Obama in the Oval Office as he signed the bill awarding the women the Congressional Gold Medal. She then stood proudly at the March ceremony. But she wasn’t finished yet.

  The 1977 bill had given Wasps military status and the benefits administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Finally their families could honor them with a flag-draped casket without breaking any rules. They could be buried with military honors, and many chose to be interred at army national cemeteries around the country.

  Arlington National Cemetery, the most prestigious and well-known burial site for military veterans in the nation, overlooks Washington, DC, from the Virginia side of the Potomac River. Unlike other national military cemeteries, it is administered by the United States Army rather than the Department of Veterans Affairs. After some argument about whether the 1977 law applied to Arlington, several Wasps were buried there, including Dora Dougherty, who had demonstrated the B-29. Still the debate wasn’t over. When Elaine Harmon died in 2015 at the age of ninety-five, her children found a handwritten note in their mother’s fireproof documents box. Written on notepaper imprinted with the WASP silver wings at the top and the Fifinella mascot in one corner, it said, “I would like to be buried in Arlington Cemetery,” and went on to explain where the family would find the required discharge papers.

  Just a month earlier a new secretary of the army had determined that the 1977 law militarizing the WASP applied only to benefits and privileges overseen by the Department of Veterans Affairs. He argued that the army did not have legal authority to grant Harmon’s request and she could not be buried at Arlington. But Harmon, who had raised her four children alone after her husband died when they were young, had taught them to be as determined as she was. She had never taken no for an answer, and her children and grandchildren weren’t going to either.

  The Harmon family organized to fight for the woman they held dear. They started a petition and eventually got over 178,000 signatures. They enlisted two members of Congress to fight on their behalf—both veterans and both women. Representative Martha McSally, the first woman air force fighter pilot to fly in combat, said, “These women were getting a last slap in the face. I said, ‘No way.’ ”182 She and Iraq War veteran Joni Ernst sponsored a bill in the House of Representatives, and Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski did the same in the Senate.

  In 2016, Elaine Harmon and all the Wasps earned one more proud, smiling moment as President Obama signed into law a bill clearing the way for the women to be interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Wasps who were able to travel came from near and far to witness Harmon’s burial. As one said, “I wanted to be here to make sure they didn’t fuss it up.”183 Finally Wasp Elaine Harmon was laid to rest, her work done.

  • • •

  The journey had been a long one. The Wasps had flown sixty million miles in seventy-eight different types of aircraft and then waited seventy-four years for full recognition. Was it worth all the effort to serve as pilots during the war in the first place? Was it worth all the effort to gain recognition after the war? Would the Wasps choose to be part of the Women Airforce Service Pilots again if they had the chance?

  Most agreed at the time, and still agreed seventy years later, that despite the challenges, hard work, danger, discomfort, and discrimination they faced, their time in the air had been the best time of their lives. They lo
ved it. Moreover, flying for the United States of America against the forces of tyranny was an honor and a privilege.

  As Gene Shaffer FitzPatrick put it, “You bet your sweet life, I’d do it again.”184

  Author the Author

  P. O’Connell Pearson is a former history teacher with a master of education degree from George Mason University. She has contributed to and edited history textbooks and published articles in magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post. Always enthusiastic about sharing the stories of history, she earned her MFA in Writing for Young People from Lesley University and now writes both historical fiction and nonfiction. When she is not writing about history, she can often be found talking about history as a volunteer with the National Park Service in Washington, DC. She lives in Fairfax, Virginia.

  Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids

  Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/P-O-Connell-Pearson

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