WASP Bee Falk Haydu inducted into Women in Aviation International's "Pioneer Hall of Fame"

Bee Falk, WASP Class 44-7, was assigned to a U-78 training base where she flew as a utility pilot and an engineering test pilot. After the WASP were disbanded, Bee worked ferrying,  flight instructing, flying a comedy air show act, and she was one of the first women aviation executives in New Jersey, owning her own Cessna dealership. Bee never lost her love for aviation, and after her marriage to fellow pilot and airplane enthusiast Joe Haydu, owned many airplanes, including a Stearman and a Link trainer, and flew air races for fun.

Bee is best known for her service to the WASP organization (Order of Fifinella) as its president from 1975 to 1978. During that time, she worked with Col. Bruce Arnold (Gen. Hap Arnold’s son) and Senator Barry Goldwater to bring about militarization of the WASP and to gain them veterans’ benefits.

The WASP had the support of all the women serving in both the House and Senate at the
time. Haydu and several other WASP testified at the various hearings, and their efforts were
rewarded when President Jimmy Carter signed  The G.I. Bill Improvement Act of 1977, granting the WASP full military status for their service.

In 2003 Bee published her memoir—Letters Home 1944-45.  Bee remains a much sought after
spokeswoman for the WASP, proudly wearing her WASP uniform on many occasions.
Haydu has her dress uniform on display in the Smithsonian, and joined President Obama and
other women military aviators in the Oval Office in July 2009 as he signed S.614, a bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal to the WASP. Haydu was inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame & Museum of New Jersey in May 2000.

 ________________

Respectfully reprinted from Women In Aviation, International 
Aviation for Women Magazine
p. 47

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Easter Sunday at Avenger Field, 1944

Holidays are tough to celebrate in wartime and Easter Sunday of 1944 was no different.  Most of the trainees were from parts of the country that were now in full bloom with spring flowers and beautiful trees.  In Sweetwater,  Texas, the snowstorms of February had melted and there was a hint of green peeking through the open landscape of West Texas.

The one constant was the wind, which  still blew as the trainees pushed thru to make up for the days playing in the snow, when planes were grounded.   Graduation was around the corner for class 44-W-3.   Temperatures were beginning to register just about perfect, with highs in the mid '70's.

Easter was coming!


The following article is reprinted from "THE AVENGER" Vol. 1, NO 15 published April 7, 1944: 

"SUNRISE SERVICE ON FLIGHT LINE EASTER MORNING"

    Trainees will observe Easter Sunday with a mass "sunrise service" on the flight line.  The service will begin shortly after 7 o'clock.  Arrangements are being made to broadcast the religious program over station KXOX, Sweetwater.

    A large chorus of WASP trainees will sing a number of religious songs.  Ellen Wimberly is directing musical selections and urges all trainees to participate.  Rehearsals began April 4.  The MRTC orchestra from Camp Barkeley will accompany the chorus.

    Rev. Ernest J. Werfelmann, Lutheran U.S.O. representative at Abilene, will conduct the services.
   
    The sunrise service is the first large-scale religious program of its kind conducted at Avenger Field. Mrs. Helen Shaw, Establishment Officer in charge, hopes for 100 percent participation from trainees.

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.'"
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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!

Woman World War II pilot honored Pinkley served in WASPs, remembered as pioneer in U.S. military aviation

An ABOVE and BEYOND TRIBUTE TO A WASP-- recorded here in a wonderful article by Adam Wallworth.  Link to original article is above.  This act of kindness by Vicki Roberts and the Marion County Heritage Society is worth preserving here in a place where we honor the WASP and their service.  THANK YOU Vicki, for your heart warming tribute to an unsung WASP and thank you, Adam, for your article.


+++++++++++++++++++++++

By Adam Wallworth

Posted: November 12, 2010 at 5:49 a.m.

YELLVILLE (ARKANSAS) — Thirty people gathered Thursday in a Yellville cemetery to honor a pioneer of American military aviation.

Avanell Pinkley was among the first women to fly military aircraft as part of the Women Airforce Service Pilots in World War II. Her accomplishment was finally honored Thursday, more than 30 years after her death.

Pinkley and her fellow pilots, known as WASPs, flew all types of noncombat missions, said Vicki Roberts, chairman of the Marion County Heritage Society.

Pinkley joined the elite group after graduating from Army flight school in 1943 as part of the service’s second class - the “Singing Second,” Roberts said.

The women flew every type of combat aircraft in noncombat roles, such as ferrying planes from factories to military bases and towing drones and aerial targets. That freed up male pilots for combat service.
Pinkley died destitute in a Harrison nursing home in 1977 at age 64.

Roberts said she didn’t know about Pinkley until being contacted by Wings Across America, a group that is collecting information about the women. She said she immediately began researching Pinkley and working to get a marker placed on her tombstone.

“I was just kind of appalled” that her tombstone had no information on her service to her country, Roberts said at the graveside Thursday.

Roberts enlisted the American Legion Lodge 61 to help, and the group placed a small plaque on Pinkley’s tombstone identifying her as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots. The group also took its honor guard to the cemetery to celebrate Pinkley’s service on Veterans Day.

From about 25,000 applicants, Pinkley was one of 1,074 women who made it through the selection and training process to become WASPs. The women also flew some aircraft that their male counterparts thought were unsafe.
The B-26 Martin Marauder, known as the “widow-maker,” was among those that some people thought were too dangerous for women, a fact noted in the act that awarded the women the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award that can be bestowed upon a civilian.

Congress granted the women veteran status in 1977, some 33 years after the service was disbanded. Together, the women flew more than 60 million miles, and 38 of them were killed.

The group was quietly disbanded Dec. 20, 1944. Records detailing their service were classified until the 1980s and have been omitted in many historical accounts of the war, the act states.

At the time, everyone knew about the WASPs, but recognition wasn’t all that important, said Rae Barnes of Hot Springs.

“I loved it,” Barnes said. “I got to fly airplanes.”

Barnes is the only remaining WASP in the state, said Nancy Parrish, executive director of Wings Across America.
Parrish started the organization to chronicle the history of the women who served with her mother. She is spearheading an effort to record video interviews with WASP members and recently published a book of interviews with the women.

Roberts said she will continue researching Pinkley’s life and has already added Pinkley’s story to a growing monument of Marion County veterans who are honored in a permanent display at the American Legion hut in Yellville.

Toward the end of the war, the WASPs hoped they would earn the chance to do something else in aviation, butthat didn’t happen, said Helen Rownd of Louisiana.

Rownd, who served with Pinkley, said that when the group disbanded, the women were sent home and even had to pay their own way. She said they didn’t get the jobs they hoped for but paved the way for future women pilots.
Civil Air Patrol Capt. Margaret Reger said that while thewomen didn’t see combat, their jobs were dangerous.
Reger said the women flew bullet-riddled aircraft to the “boneyard,” where the planes were retired, and delivered brand-new planes. They also towed targets for new pilots to shoot at, she said.

“They were expendable, but they were glad to be expendable because they were flying,” she said.
Rownd said the women enjoyed the experience while it lasted. As far as towing targets, she said, “as long as you heard rat-a-tat-tat, it was all right.

“But when you heard a ping,” she said, “you had to wonder.”
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Reposted from the original article with additional photos from Wings Across America