This eFLYER was developed in HTML for viewing with Microsoft Internet Explorer while connected to the Internet: View Online.
To ensure delivery to your inbox, please add eFLYER@barnstormers.com to your address book or list of approved senders. |
|
ISSUE
109 - March 2010
Over 8,000 Total Ads Listed
1,000+ NEW Ads Per Week
|
Satisfaction |
By David Rose,
Contributing Editor
San Diego, California |
They were once more than 1,100. Now fewer
than 300 are scattered across the nation, most of them younger
than their years; articulate and witty, proud of their contribution
and quick to remember the adventure. Gracious to a fault, grateful
to the nation, as inspiring as ever, they accepted their honor.
The Congressional Gold Medal was awarded to them one and all. |
|
But the satisfaction in their hearts?
They reserve that for each other. |
At the time, the medals could wait, and
the recognition, and the benefits, and the pay. They had a
job to do and, no less patriotic than any man, were determined
to get it done. The nation was at war and they were needed.
There were trucks to be driven and tanks to build and planes
to fly. The Army would take women with pilot licenses into
the ‘Women’s Airforce Service Pilots’. They
would be WASPs.
Twenty five thousand applied, more than 1,800 were accepted for training and
over 1,100 served. Flying every plane the Army had, they ferried them, tested
them, towed banners with them and eventually flew over 60,000,000 (that’s
million) miles in them |
But
the satisfaction in their hearts they reserved for each other.
The Services never provided it. Not then, and not for decades.
They were civilians. They paid their own way to training, they
paid to live ‘on base’, they paid for their own
medical needs; and when it was over, they paid their own way
home and were left with no VA or other military veterans benefits.
Thirty eight WASP’s also paid with their lives. The ladies would take up
a collection to send the remains home in the box the Army did supply. No gold
star in the window for their families, no flag for their coffin, no satisfaction.
|
|
But they, most of all, were grateful for the opportunity
to have served; they were grateful that there would forever
live within them an appreciation for what they, and all the
WASPs had been able to accomplish, to contribute.
Then, in
1972, the worst. The government proudly announced that women “For
the first time” would be allowed to train as pilots
in the military.
It was a WASP’s nest!
This was too
much. The old frustrations welled in their hearts and would
not be ignored. Petitioning congress, the women were going
to be heard. Now politicians rose to the occasion. Bills
were introduced; speeches were made; letters were written;
and finally only thirty seven years later, on Wednesday March
the 10th, 2010, The Congressional Gold Medal.
Thirty seven years, and still it took the efforts of Lt.
Col. Nicole Malachowski, the first female pilot to fly with
the Air Force's "Thunderbirds", to get the bill
written and passed in congress.
Col. Malachowski was the
guest speakers at the ceremony stating that "Today is
the day when the WASPs will make history once again, if you
spend any time at all talking to these wonderful women, you'll
notice how humble and gracious and selfless they all are.
Their motives 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.
|
|
|
Visit www.barnstormers.com -
post an ad to be viewed by over 700,000 visitors per month.
Over 14 years bringing more online buyers and sellers together than any
other aviation marketplace. |
Copyright © 2010
All rights reserved.
|
UNSUBSCRIBE INSTRUCTIONS: If you no longer wish to receive this eFLYER, unsubscribe here or mail a written request to the attention of: eFLYER Editor BARNSTORMERS, INC. 312 West Fourth Street, Carson City, NV 89703. NOTE: If you registered for one or more hangar accounts on barnstormers.com, you must opt out of all of them so the eFLYER mailings will be fully discontinued. |
|