It's All About a Bear Named Bishop and the WASP!

Bishop the Bear was created to honor and celebrate the WASP of WWII and to captivate kids' imaginations, encouraging them to soar!

As many of you know, I've been sharing the WASP WWII history for almost 20 years, through songs, videos, an afghan, trading cards, interactive displays, kiosks, the first WASP app, an illustrated WASP history book, and interactive web pages.   Anything outside the box that will captivate, engage and educate kids is what excites and propels me.  

Enter Bishop, my next ‘big idea’ to challenge young kids to follow their dreams, work hard, persist, and keep on learning.    Through Bishop, we can reach the next generation--raising awareness and sharing the inspirational WASP history in a completely new way. 

You don’t have to be a WASP to Fly HIGH in what you do.  HOW do you do it?  Will YOU SHARE what you’ve learned so that a child can be inspired to do something they might never have done? 

My prayer is that Bishop will show us all how exciting and fulfilling it is to dream big and someday, FLY—in whatever we choose to do!     Join us!  Change the future by honoring the past and share your own inspiration, honor, courage, and love.

I'd like to invite you to read all about it on our new KICKSTARTER page.

HERE IS THE LINK! Then, please, join us, and let me know what you think!

God bless you all!

Nancy Parrish

#mustardseedfaith #wasp-wwii

WASP Program at Fort Hood

WASP program part of OTC observance Posted On: Tuesday, Apr. 26 2011 02:36 PM

U.S. Army/Larry Furnace
Brig. Gen. Don MacWillie, Operational Test Command’s leader, presents Deanie Parrish, left, and her daughter, Nancy Parrish, with commander’s coins for their presentation on the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots program Thursday during Women’s History Month. Deanie was a WASP, and Nancy has spent the past 15 years developing a website and virtual museum to tell the story of the first female military pilots of America.

Kileen Daily Herald

Texas Gov. Ann Richards once said that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only she did it backward and in high heels.

That sentiment certainly resonates with Nancy Parrish, whose mother, Deanie Parrish, was a member of the Women's Air Force Service Pilots. These female aviators flew noncombat missions within the United States during World War II, freeing male pilots to fight the war. And they did it without the benefits their male counterparts enjoyed.

Nancy, a former Public Broadcasting Service producer/director, was the guest speaker at the Operational Test Command Women's History Month observance Thursday, bringing her mother along as a special guest. Hosted by Operational Test Command's Aviation Test Directorate, the WASP program was the brainchild of Ronni Parsons, a test directorate operational research systems analyst.

"It was a very different time in America before World War II," Nancy said. "American women weren't expected to be leaders; they were expected to be mothers, housewives, maybe secretaries.

"If they went to college, they didn't take classes in avionics, politics or debate. They took typing and stenography."

But Dec. 7, 1941, (the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor) changed everything, Nancy said.

"Our innocence was shattered, and for the first time in our country's history, women were invited to help in the fight," she said. "And the campaign in North Africa cost us a lot of pilots."

All the services started recruiting women, Nancy said, and it wasn't long before America's foremost female aviator, Jacqueline Cochran, had the idea that women could be trained to fly weather, ferrying, target-towing, flight training and cargo transport missions. Cochran was able to convince Gen. Hap Arnold, the Army Air Corps commander, that her idea would work, and the program got under way at the Houston airport in 1942.

Twenty-five thousand women applied, but only 1,830 were accepted into the program. They came from all walks of life, Parrish said, and they did it because they wanted to serve their country and they loved flying. By the time the last class graduated in 1944, she said, WASP had flown more than 60 million miles.

"These women went through the same flight training as the men," she said. "They flew dilapidated planes; they flew every kind of aircraft, and they flew every kind of mission except combat. Initially, they had to provide their own uniforms.

"When the WASP disbanded, these women had to pay their way back home," Nancy said. "Thirty-eight of them were killed, but because they had no benefits, the women had to take up collections to get their bodies back home to their families."

WASP military records were sealed, stamped "classified" and filed in government archives for 33 years, and it wasn't until 1977 that Congress voted to give WASP veteran status.

"They were the best-kept secret of World War II," Nancy said. "They weren't even invited to the bill signing and received no official thank you from then-President Carter."

Finally, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tx. and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., sponsored bipartisan legislation in 2009 to grant Congressional gold medals to WASP. At the ceremony in 2010, Deanie Parrish was among the 175 WASPs who received the honon (and accepted the award on behalf of all the WASP).

"For me it was both an honor and a privilege," Deanie said. "I have always believed that with God, all things are possible."

Presenting commander's coins to both women, Brig. Gen. Don MacWillie, Operational Test Command's commanding general, said he was at a loss for words. "I can't imagine what kind of human being it takes who looked at all the challenges and said, 'I'm going to overcome that.'"
______________

More information about WASP is available at www.wingsacrossamerica.us .
More on Deanie Parrish
More on Nancy Parrish
"WASP In Their Own Words, an Illustrated History," by Nancy Parrish

WASP BECOMES AN EAGLE!

Waco woman to be recognized for WWII service...

By Regina Dennis
Tribune-Herald staff writer

Monday April 4, 2011

A Waco woman who has worked to spread the history of civilian* female pilots who served during World War II will be inducted into a prestigious group of aviation pioneers this June.

Deanie Parrish will be one of 14 aviators inducted as Eagles by the Gathering of Eagles program at Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala.

Parrish was among the 1,102 female pilots trained as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, to fly U.S.-based training missions during World War II.

Duane A. Laverty / Waco Tribune-Herald

Waco resident Deanie Parish will be inducted as an Eagle by the Air Command and Staff College for her contributions as a WWII Woman Airforce Service Pilot.

The 30th annual event, to be held May 31 through June 5, recognizes veteran aviation pioneers and connects them with Air Force officers who are graduating from the college’s yearlong leadership training program.

Past honorees include astronaut Neil Armstrong and President George H.W. Bush. Parrish is the 18th woman and fourth WASP to be inducted as an Eagle.

“It’s become an interaction between the seasoned and future military leadership so we, the future leaders, can learn from their lessons learned and some of the different events and historical moments that they went through,” said Air Force Maj. Kristi Beckman, who will graduate from the program this May.

Beckman traveled to Waco on Thursday to meet Parrish, whom Beckman selected as her personal Eagle for the awards ceremony.

Beckman has produced a video documentary of Parrish’s accomplishments and will interview her for a Q&A session with the college’s 508 graduating officers during the Gathering of Eagles celebration.

Parrish spent more than four hours Friday signing her name to 400 copies of a lithograph painting that portrays this year’s 14 Eagles. The lithographs will be sold to raise money for the nonprofit Gathering of Eagles.

Parrish said she was surprised to be selected for the award, noting that other honorees this year include a Tuskegee Airman, the current NASA administrator, a former CIA director and a Tactical Air Party Controller who had 80 percent of his body burned by a bomb in Afghanistan but chose to continue to serve.

“When you see what all this group has accomplished, I don’t know how they chose little old me,” Parrish said with a smile.

But Beckman said Parrish’s determination to learn to fly and serve her country paved the way for other women to do the same.

“If it wasn’t for women like her, the WASP, I don’t even know what the Air Force would look like for women, and I don’t know if we’d even have these opportunities,” said Beckman, who has been in the Air Force for 14 years. “To read about her story is just inspiring, because she didn’t care what anyone told her.”

Learning to fly
Parrish was working as a teller at a bank in her hometown of Avon Park, Fla., when the Army Air Force started an aviation school in town to train new male pilots in advance of the impending Word War II.

“There were all these good-looking flight instructors coming in every week to cash their checks,” Parrish said, laughing. “And then I started to see the cadets, and I thought, ‘They’re my peers, they’re the same age I am, and they’re learning to fly airplanes. . . . Why can’t I learn to fly?’ ”

Convinced she should be a given a chance to fly, Parrish persuaded one of the instructors to train her to fly in his private plane.

Parrish later learned about a civilian flight training program to prepare women for at-home flight missions while male pilots were sent to fight overseas. She paid her own way to travel by train to Avenger Air Field in Sweetwater in 1944 to enter the program.

After completing the seven-month training, Parrish was assigned as a test pilot at Greenville Air Force Base in Mississippi to fly newly repaired planes before they could be used by male instructors and cadets for training flights.
Parrish’s next assignment was at Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Fla., where she trained to fly the B-26 “Martin Marauder” planes. She flew the twin-engine bombers as a tow-target pilot, pulling a white banner behind her that gunner pilots shot live ammunition rounds at for target practice.

Parrish stayed at Tyndall until the WASPs were disbanded. She married Lt. Bill Parrish, who served in her unit at the base.

“It was a job that needed to be done, and it was for my country and that’s what I did it for,” Parrish said. “And when it was over, it was over, and I went on with my life.”

Parrish has spent the past 15 years working with her daughter, Nancy, a former producer for KWBU, to chronicle the WASPs’ history. The duo have put together a documentary of interviews with 115 WASPs, created a traveling and permanent WASP exhibit, and helped found a WASP museum in Sweetwater.

“I think the need is not just for the history,” Nancy Parrish said. “I think people are hungry these days for pillars, for role models, for people they can look up to who have the best-lived lives, people who seemed to go above and beyond.”

The WASP were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010, the highest honor for civilians, for their service. Deanie Parrish accepted the award on behalf of the fewer than 300 remaining WASPs at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., last spring.

rdennis@wacotrib.com
757-5755

MORE ABOUT DEANIE PARRISH
CSPAN VIDEO GOLD MEDAL CEREMONY
WINGS ACROSS AMERICA
WASP ON THE WEB
LINK TO ALBUM
photos of Major Beckman, WASP Deanie Parrish, Regina Dennis and the WACO experience



* WASP were considered civilians until 1977, when they were awarded their honorable discharges and veteran status, by act of Congress.


Thank you to the Waco Tribune Herald, for publishing the original article.  This has been most respectfully posted and linked online so that our many, many visitors around the world can read it.   Thank you, Regina, for doing such a great job!

WASP IN THEIR OWN WORDS-- BOOK SIGNING IN WACO ON VETERAN'S DAY!

 

If you're near Waco, Texas on Veteran's Day, stop by and say 'hi!'

Here is the BACK of the invitation!

A Tough Thing to Do

It has been a long week.  We've lost 4 WASP and 1 Flight instructor -- that I know of.  Their stories have now been added to  the WASP Final Flight page and to Facebook.

I've realized that it may be a tough thing to do-- to decide whether or not to 'like' a post for a WASP who has made her final flight.  I would hesitate, and I'm the one posting them.    I know some of you may be hesitating as well.

It is hard to post them.  This week, it seems that posting these sad messages has been all I've had time to do.

But I have discovered the joy of sharing these lives with you and I hope their stories have meant more than just something sad.  I hope they have lifted you as well.   What a joy these ladies are to know -- and, even nearer the end of their lives, we can still learn so much from each of them.

So, please consider posting  "thumbs up"  when you read a post, sad tho it may be.    To me, it is your way of saying "yes" to the life she was blessed to live and the difference she has made -- and, if it has touched you, say that too, so that more will be uplifted. 

I'm sorry there are so many.  There will be more.  Tom Brokaw called the WASP 'emblematic' of the Greatest Generation, and they are all leaving us much too soon. 

Have we learned the lessons they have tried to teach us?   There are so, so many, and the examples and stories come alive for me -- they spell honor, integrity, service, commitment, patriotism, faith... and on and on...

There are less than 300 WASP -- all over 85.  To me, they are all larger than life.

Pray for the WASP and their families. 
Pray for those in harms way serving today. 

God, please continue to bless America.

Respectfully posted by nancy parrish
FACEBOOK
WASP FINAL FLIGHT