00:00:02.880 - 00:00:14.920

That'll take longer than any amount of film you've got. Well, we're not going to get into every detail. No, we're not. But it's going to be, I'm going to start you off, and I'm really going to kind of guide you through.

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There was no turnrope for us to land in. It's against the law. I was on the ground. They're filling the hopper.

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head, see this red light, state police. I said, "Shut the hopper," and I opened the throttle, and we paid chicken. And I thought, "I'm not closing the throttle." And at the last minute, the police car went off in the ditch, and I never turned. I just flew on.

00:00:47.080 - 00:01:05.800

I think that's gonna be funny. You do? Okay. There's some other ones. Yeah, and kids, if you have some kind of funny... I'm going to lead off and then I'll ask you the first thing and then we'll kind of go from there.

00:01:06.880 - 00:01:18.580

I'm Deanie Parrish with Wings Across America. Today we're interviewing Ann Noggle. She was a WASP, Class 44-1. We are in her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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Today is the 19th of November, 2001. The videographer is Nancy Parrish. Okay, Ann, if you'll start off by giving us your full name, when and where you were born, and we'll go from there.

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- My full name is Ann Noggle. - Total? - Total. That's it. And I was born in Evanston, Illinois.

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- Okay. Tell me-- [dog barks] No, they didn't bark. They just--it was so blooming hot.

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They just-- - Ann Noggle. - Ann Noggle. That's me name. Born in Evanston, Illinois in 1922.

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Tell me about your mom and dad. I had a very nice mother. Her name was Agnes Jenkins Noggle. I had a father that I didn't care for, whose name was Raymond William Noggle.

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What did your father do? That's a question I can't answer because I'm not sure. He was always working on one big deal after another, and no big deals ever came through. We went on sort of living hand-to-mouth that way.

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Where did you live when you— We lived in an apartment. And downtown? Were you in the city?

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Evanston is a suburb of Chicago. They don't call it that because it's a separate town. But no, we lived in—I lived two blocks from the lake. Tell me about your siblings.

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I have a sister, Mary, who's four years older than I am. We're entirely different. She's more like, I shouldn't say this because she'd hate me for it, she's more like my father, at least in her looks.

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She was never a particularly happy child or adult, really. I hope she never hears this, but nevertheless, it's true. She was older? Older, four years older, yes.

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Were you in competition with her? No, not that I know of. Tell me about your grandparents. On my mother's side, they were dead.

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On my father's side, he had a mother who had remarried, and we called her Nana. I didn't like her. I could feel these things. Sometimes I'd go over, she'd say, "I'll give you a dime to go to the movie," because

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we didn't have any money to spare. And I'd go over, and she'd say bad things about my mother. And I began to realize, because I love my mother so wholeheartedly. I began to realize that she was doing this to me and that it wasn't true.

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I just wouldn't go over for the dime. I never told my mother. How close did she live to you? That's interesting.

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Yes, that question I can answer quite readily. It wasn't until I was a complete adult and older that I began looking back and realizing We lived always in the same apartment building, and his mother did. I think my father was his mother's little boy.

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He was an only child. Let me ask you, Ann, what was a Christmas like in your home when you were growing up? We had a tree, and we decorated it. Do you recall decorating what you put on it?

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We put tinsel on it and lights. I liked to throw the tinsel. My mother said we should put it on piece by piece. My sister put every piece on perfectly.

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I would throw some and she would tell my mother. I would have to take it off and drape it back on. Kelly: Do you recall anything really special that you got at a Christmas? Lowdermilk Horton

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Yes, a chocolate bar. My uncle had Siren Chocolate Company in Chicago. It was a wholesale chocolate company. Every year he would give us a five or ten pound, I think it was five, it was about that

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thick, about this size, a chocolate bar. That's the way he sold it wholesale. That was the high point. One Christmas, what we got was just that, plus it was Christmas Eve and there was nothing

00:06:06.520 - 00:06:17.680

under the tree. My father dug in his pocket and got out a few dollars. Mary and I walked down to the downtown area and bought a Monopoly set. Had a great Christmas.

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All the kids around came over to play Monopoly and eat our chocolate. It was fun, but it was one of those rare fun moments, I think. Christmas dinner what would you do would your grandmother come over? No no no no we had dinner there at the house whatever there was. Do you remember

00:06:38.740 - 00:07:03.920

celebrating any kind of Christmas pageants going to anything like that? No no we did go we did go with my mother we go to the church she was a Methodist then, we'd go to church and I sang, there was a group that just went there, you know, with the Christmas, I knew all the Christmas carols, and so you put on this little white

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outfit and stand in the balcony and we'd sing the Christmas carols when I was little. Your mother being Methodist, did you go to Sunday school? No. She tried to make us, they both tried, both my mother and father said, "You've got

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to go to Sunday school. They'd dress us up and we'd get outside and I'd say, "I'm not going." And so Mary'd say, "Well, we have to go." And I'd say, "I'm not going, that's all." So I said, "They don't go. Why should we go? I didn't like it." And so we never went. They finally gave up trying to make us go. But as a child, you know, I think I was kind of wicked. I found out what it is

00:07:47.560 - 00:08:04.660

to be an atheist. And so when I was a little older than that, I would tell people in front of their parents or anything, I'd say, "Oh, I'm an atheist." It was the most horrifying thing they'd ever heard out of a child. Would they let their children still play with you, though?

00:08:04.960 - 00:08:23.520

Yes, they just thought I knew a word, but I knew the truth. Do you recall when you started school? No, what do you mean, do I recall? I can remember being in kindergarten.

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Did you walk? Walk? To school. Oh, to school?

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Oh, yes. How close was it? It was about seven blocks, I think, something like that. Was kindergarten a part of the public school system?

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Yes. Do you recall your teacher? Remember your teacher in kindergarten? No. Okay. What are your earliest remembrances of school?

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Well, I can remember kindergarten that we'd spread out this paper thing, and then we were supposed to lie down on it and rest. And that always seemed silly because it was a, I don't know, a cement floor. [laughter]

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So we just whispered and talked, you know, we didn't rest. Okay. In the summertime, did your family go on vacations? When I was very little, they did, yeah.

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Where would they go? We went to Wisconsin a couple of years. To a lake or to relatives? No, it was a lake.

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I can't remember the name of the lake, though. It was just up in the woods, you know, a place. I don't recall it too perfectly, but I know we went there. It was just the four of you?

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Yes. In elementary school, do you remember any of your teachers that might have made an impression? I remember Ms. Hester. What did she do?

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And Ms. Todd, who was the principal, because she sang in this high voice. When we sang "The Star-Spangled Banner," it was incredible, her voice. That stayed in my recollection. Miss Hester was pretty and she was nice.

00:10:09.880 - 00:10:23.380

Some of them I don't think were too nice. I always had trouble with mathematics, and they would call on me because I was having trouble. As a grown-up, this happened also in junior high school with music.

00:10:24.100 - 00:10:42.320

The teachers, instead of helping you, just keep asking you. If I were a teacher, I would say to the person, and I've been a teacher of a kind, but anyway, I would say, "Look, let me explain this to you so you understand it, so then you'll know how to do this."

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What they didn't do that— What did Ms. Hester teach, do you recall? I mean, it was, I don't know, second or third grade or something. I can't remember.

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I just remember she was pretty, and she was nice. And some of them were a little crotchety, maybe. Did you have any male teachers in elementary? No.

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Okay, when you went, elementary lasted through sixth grade? Sixth grade, and then seventh and eighth was junior high school. Was that in the same building? No, no, it was a separate high school.

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I mean separate school for junior high. And was it still close enough to walk? No, I took the bus partway and then walked. And sometimes I'd take the streetcar home, I think.

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I had kind of recollections of both those things. In junior high, what were you interested in? Getting out of school. I liked music, but the music teacher would always call on me and ask me what key it was

00:11:44.240 - 00:11:55.320

in. I'd go ask my mother, who studied piano and she couldn't remember. I just crouched down in the chair, hoping she didn't call on me. But, by God, she called on me a lot.

00:11:56.040 - 00:12:07.500

She never once said, "Do you understand how to tell it?" Because I did not. If I had more poise, if I were older, I would have gone up and said, "I do not understand it.

00:12:07.540 - 00:12:19.520

Can you explain it to me?" But I was scared, you know how kids are. I thought I was supposed to know, but when nobody ever told me, and I did not ever study music, how was I to know?

00:12:20.580 - 00:12:33.740

Were you in a little singing? Did you have a little choir at school? No, but we sang. What did you sing for? For the teacher, as far as I know.

00:12:34.080 - 00:12:50.560

It was just a class in music. It was a class in music, yeah. I remember with Miss Hester now, we learned "Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, Dormez-vous, dormez-vous, sonne les matines, sonne les matines, ding-dang-dong, ding-dang-dong."

00:12:50.560 - 00:13:04.940

things do stick if they're interesting. I'm probably messing up the French language, which anybody but the French does. Kelly: We'll get Sister Teresa to check on you. Reid: Oh, no, that's not—

00:13:05.260 - 00:13:16.460

Kelly: Okay. When you finished junior high, then went into high school, was that in a separate building? Did you have to change? Reid: Yes, it was far away.

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There was one high school in Evanston, and there must have been 4,000 students anyway. So you took the bus. What was the biggest adjustment you had to make into high school? I never thought about that.

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The thing that I hated the most about high school was the fact that we were poor in a a wealthy town, and I never had nice clothes. Because I wasn't dressed well in that, I felt—I think there's a lot of snobbery in a place where they're wealthy and they don't pay much attention to somebody who

00:14:00.640 - 00:14:18.520

isn't. That lasted for my first two years, until I was a junior. Then my sister had graduated, but I had gone with her. There was this group, and they called themselves Finale Productions.

00:14:19.940 - 00:14:31.700

It was a group of students who really liked theater. I had, in my sophomore year, taken a course in it. I got to ring the doorbell when somebody would come on, answer the door, and that sort of thing.

00:14:33.920 - 00:14:44.920

We studied it. In my junior year, I joined that group, and we put on these programs, not only in high school but in other places. The guys were really good at it.

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One of them turned out to be my dearest friend the rest of the way through school. His name was Pat Tanner. He wrote "Annie Mame" under the name of Patrick Dennis. We had lots of fun.

00:15:05.680 - 00:15:25.200

We would practice dancing the conga and the rumba. We would practice and practice in the evenings. And then we would go down to Chicago on the weekend to Ye Olde Cellar, where we would win, inevitably, the rumba-conga contest.

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It was a big ego boost to me. Were your mom and dad involved in any school activities that you two girls were in? My mother was when I was in grade school. And that was the end of it, because you see, our father deserted us.

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He just walked out because he couldn't pay the rent. And my mother had never worked in her life. And she got a job in Chicago at Columbia Bookstore. She loved books.

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And it soon was made the manager. There were two sides to it. There were textbooks and other books. It was right on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

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And she ended up managing the bookstore. Kelly: What age were you when your dad left? I thought and thought of that. I think I was in junior high school, so I must have been, what, twelve, thirteen, twelve,

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something like that. And so we moved into a rooming house, a terrible one first. We weren't there very long, as I recall. I mean, it's all sort of a maze then.

00:16:47.820 - 00:17:13.440

And we ended up in a rooming house just practically across the street from the apartment we lived These people, a very nice couple who couldn't afford their big house, were renting rooms. But they were only renting rooms to women graduate students at Northwestern. It was good for me in a way, because with my mother gone, they didn't have the kind

00:17:13.440 - 00:17:27.920

of hours that they have now for people working. She had to take the elevator to Chicago and back. That took a while. They would work nine or ten hours sometimes.

00:17:29.600 - 00:17:43.680

I would not see her, really, except in the evening when she came home. It would be seven or eight o'clock sometimes. I was really on my own. My mother was a wonderful woman.

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She said to me, "I'm sorry it's this way, but I trust you, and I trust you'll do the right thing." I did, because of her. But that left me by myself, and my sister would go with other girls and stuff.

00:18:06.180 - 00:18:24.900

That four years was quite a bit at that age. I ate at the drugstore, which was about a block away. We managed. Then on Sundays, she'd take us both out to a very nice dinner, because she knew at

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least that I hadn't been eating well. But in my senior year of high school, what had happened was, when I was little, I used to see the book called We that my father had bought, you know, of Lindbergh. And I'd look at the pictures of him and I'd think about that.

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And then there was Amelia Earhart, and I was totally taken. Here was a woman. And I went to an airport. I was little, and she came in, in a silver plane, and stepped out on the wings and waved.

00:19:02.320 - 00:19:13.300

I don't know where we were. But she had blonde, curly hair. I took a look at her and I thought, "That's what I'm going to do. If she can do that, I can do that."

00:19:13.300 - 00:19:29.320

I really felt it intensely, and I never told anybody. As I approached my senior year, I was dating this guy that had a car that was older, I mean a little older. He was four years or five years older than I was.

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I decided that I was going to learn how to fly. I didn't say anything to anybody for a long time, and then I decided that now was the time. But it cost, let's see, $3.50 an hour.

00:19:53.060 - 00:20:12.600

I had $5 a week to eat on, so I took $3.50 of it for a flying lesson. I didn't eat all day in school, and I ate one meal in the evening, which was a hamburger and a malted milk. I know my mother knew about it, but she didn't say anything, because it must have been a

00:20:12.600 - 00:20:31.400

terrible stress on her that I was doing that. So I took the 350 for flying lesson. How did you get to the Air Force? My boyfriend said, "The first ride I ever had in an airplane, I rode my bicycle to the

00:20:31.440 - 00:20:49.980

airport and it was a long way." He decided he wanted to learn how to fly too. But that first ride, I remember so well. It couldn't have been a Swift, I don't know what it was, but it was low wing.

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I remember we took off and I said, "I want to go over toward the lake." So we turned and I knew we'd be over near Evanston. I remember looking down and I thought, "I'm going to learn how to fly and spit on you. Isn't that awful?"

00:21:10.280 - 00:21:21.620

But it's true. When I started flying, I forgot all about that. It was magical. I soloed when I was seventeen.

00:21:23.220 - 00:21:30.760

What was that flight like? It was wonderful. I didn't want to come back and land, but I knew that the instructor would get mad at me.

00:21:31.640 - 00:21:56.180

And it happened to be the only time my sister ever came to the airport I soloed. And apparently she cried all the way around the traffic pattern. It made my instructor very nervous. So when you were in high school, your dream was to fly.

00:21:58.690 - 00:22:26.960

Do you recall what other things you enjoyed in high school other than the drama? Nothing that I can recall. My mother said I should take typing and shorthand, so I decided I'd take typing. And then I told her, and it's probably true, that if you're left-handed, you can't

00:22:27.000 - 00:22:45.360

use the shorthand that other people use. So anyway, she really talked me into taking typing, so I took typing. But I knew I wasn't going to use it like that anyway. I'm awfully glad now that I've learned how to touch type.

00:22:46.540 - 00:23:00.460

What kind of student were you in high school? I think I was a B student. I did very well in English and history. Oh, yes, I did like some of the English.

00:23:01.580 - 00:23:17.940

We read some poetry, and I'm crazy about poetry. When I was a kid, I somewhere still had that book. I thought I was going to write, too. That was before I was flying, really set my mind on being a pilot.

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I had this secret notebook, and the name I'd pick for myself was "Cassandra Ray." Isn't that so funny now? I didn't tell anybody, because I thought it was a wonderful name. I would be Cassandra Ray, and I was the poet laureate.

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We didn't even have one then. But then, after I flew, I was just on fire with it, and I really directed myself totally that way. Although, I've always been a big reader, a reader of poetry and novels and that.

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I just loved to read. In high school, were you interested in sports at all? No. No.

00:24:02.400 - 00:24:08.600

Okay. How old were you when your dad left? Well, didn't we decide? Twelve, somewhere around twelve.

00:24:08.620 - 00:24:14.760

Okay. I was relieved. I started saying, "How did that change your life?" Oh, it was wonderful.

00:24:15.640 - 00:24:29.100

When we moved into that rooming house with those girls from Northwestern, they were so nice to me, and they'd tell me lots of things. You know, they'd stop their studying, and they were grown-up women. I mean, they seemed like that to me then.

00:24:30.960 - 00:24:46.980

One of them said, "You should read Khalil Gibran." So I told my mother, and she said, "Yes, you should." So she brought me home the Prophet, and I just thought that was wonderful. That's as near to religion as I ever got, but I thought that book was wonderful.

00:24:47.080 - 00:24:57.240

I still do think it's a great book for kids, great. Kelly: After you two girls were alone with your mother, did you have vacations? Or did she just work? Lowdermilk Honstein

00:24:57.240 - 00:25:16.600

No, she just worked. We didn't have vacations. Kelly: And in high school then, who were your role models? Well, my sister, as far as how she's dressed and how attractive she looked in her clothes,

00:25:17.660 - 00:25:30.040

she was thin and I was plump. And I've always been plump. Too much up here, maybe not enough up here. Tell me about your high school prom.

00:25:31.120 - 00:25:51.300

I never went to high school graduation. I remember I went with Pat and Duke, my boyfriend, and I don't know who else. We went down to the—what was the name of that place?—on Howard Street. It's the border of Evanston and Chicago, and Evanston was a dry, so we went over there.

00:25:52.020 - 00:26:04.520

There was a band that played, and we danced and had a good time. I thought about that graduation, how glad I was. I just put a note on and said, "Send me my diploma." Did your mother know what you were doing?

00:26:06.660 - 00:26:21.240

She understood. What were your goals when they graduated and you got your diploma? What did you dream about doing? Flying.

00:26:21.500 - 00:26:36.380

That's it. I'm a very directed person. And when I get involved with something, my involvement is total. So the summer after you graduated from high school, what did you do?

00:26:38.640 - 00:26:54.340

I worked for a little while in the bookstore downtown, because I like books. And I'd work there like Christmas and that, because you got so many free books, you know, in addition to getting paid. But then I did a lot of little things.

00:26:54.880 - 00:27:07.500

I knew what I wanted to do in my life and I was determined I was going to do it and that was fly. I thought, "I want this opportunity. I want to really see what people do when they work."

00:27:07.500 - 00:27:34.140

I got one job in this place in Chicago, an insurance company I think it was. I was assistant to the mailroom and I went over to the post office with the mail clerk We dragged these big canvas bags of mail back over there, and I'd take them to all the different desks. I remember asking these people, "What about their lives? Was this their life, doing this?"

00:27:34.740 - 00:28:11.320

They'd all talk to me, tell me things, "No, their life never was this. This was for money." Then I got a job. I didn't approve of unions at that time. I think it was an influence of my father's who hated all that. I went to this, there was a factory west of Evanston It was Zenith or one of those companies that made television sets.

00:28:12.300 - 00:28:26.180

I pretended like I wanted to stay. I went in and I wanted to work in a factory. They hired me and they said in thirty days I had to join the union. I knew I wasn't going to do that, but I sorted radio tubes.

00:28:26.740 - 00:28:39.060

Then in my break, I'd go over and watch these people working on this line with soldering irons and that. I'd ask them, "Did they like doing that?" "Did they like it?

00:28:41.060 - 00:28:50.000

No." But I just couldn't figure out why. I had to experience it. I did that for thirty days.

00:28:52.380 - 00:29:11.120

Then I worked in the hosiery department of Weebles Department Store one summer. I worked there a number of times, just on and off. They always had me sorting the socks. I was there when Roosevelt declared war.

00:29:12.000 - 00:29:30.700

We had a little radio under the counter. And I remember hearing his speech when he said, "We're going to war." Anyway, I did those things. At the same time, I was working my way in at the airport so I could work at the airport.

00:29:31.560 - 00:29:54.140

So then my next job, I'd work in the morning. I'd have to be there at the crack of dawn, and I'm a night person. But I realized that in flying I had to get up early, so I'd go out there. My job was to check out and check in all of the university students who were getting CPT

00:29:54.280 - 00:30:04.520

training for free. I thought, "Oh, my. Why did they give it to the people who can afford it?" I guess they thought they were smarter than other people.

00:30:05.720 - 00:30:22.080

I would do that in the morning, and that was for pay. When that was over, I would go to this in the afternoon. Even stay-at-savings time units forever. I'd go to Northwest Airport—we called it Mud West, it was just a little airport—and

00:30:22.080 - 00:30:43.340

I worked for flying time. I'd prop the aircraft and gas them and clean up and do things like that, change the oil. That's where I was flying when I thought I probably ought to get a private pilot's license and I was accumulating hours.

00:30:46.080 - 00:31:02.480

I asked the instructors, I said, "I need to go on a dual cross-country." They looked at me and said, "You don't need to go on a dual cross-country. Take the map and just go. We'll sign it off that you went on a dual cross-country."

00:31:02.480 - 00:31:20.140

I thought, "Okay, I will." But I was smart enough, I took the aeronautical chart, I also took a road map. So I flew to Peoria, which is about 125 miles from there. And when I got lost, I'd just go down and read the sign.

00:31:20.280 - 00:31:36.940

Not only read the sign, I could tell the difference between the signs, not just the one that said Illinois, you know, with the route on it, but the one that said how far it was to the next town. So I came back and they said, "See, it was easy, wasn't it?"

00:31:36.940 - 00:31:44.320

I said, "Yeah, it was easy." What kind of airplane? Do you remember? Oh, it was all in Cubs, early.

00:31:45.040 - 00:31:56.060

I don't think there were other trainers then that I can recall. Anyway, it was probably just a Cub. I'm sure it was. That's what I sold it in, too, a 50-horsepower Cub.

00:31:57.080 - 00:32:10.900

What did your mom think about your flying? Oh, I have to tell you this. When I was getting ready to solo, I had to get a student pilot's permit. Since I was underage, my mother had to sign.

00:32:13.080 - 00:32:30.600

Some way or another, she went over to my grandmother's house, my father's mother's, because I remember her being there. I just remember this little scene. I asked her to sign this, because I was going to go back to the airport.

00:32:30.700 - 00:32:48.240

It was on a weekend. When she signed it, my grandmother said to her, "You just signed her death certificate." My poor mother turned white as a sheet, but she did it. Kelly: Were you ever able to take her up?

00:32:49.960 - 00:33:06.760

One time, after the WASP was deactivated, she needed to go to Peoria, where her relatives were. There was some way or another that the train—I don't know why she couldn't some way or another.

00:33:06.820 - 00:33:16.440

I said, "I'll fly you down there." "Okay," she said. We went out, and I showed her that you aim like this. I said, "Look at this map and this map."

00:33:16.440 - 00:33:29.320

This was my second trip to Peoria, by the way. But I didn't go down to look at the road signs this time. And it was a little bit bumpy. But I'd be sitting kind of looking out.

00:33:29.360 - 00:33:37.780

You know, the nose can go like that a little bit. And she'd say, where are you going? This was a side by side. And I said, what do you mean, where am I going?

00:33:37.840 - 00:33:44.920

Well, you just turned that way. I said, you know the nose hunts a little bit. And it hit a little bump in that. Don't worry about it.

00:33:45.280 - 00:33:54.000

Well, she worried about it. But I said, "Are you afraid?" And she said, "I want whatever happens to you happens to me."

00:33:55.160 - 00:34:04.200

I thought, "Well, that's one way to look at flying, isn't it?" So, anyway, we got there. No problem.

00:34:04.940 - 00:34:10.320

So, when you got this job working to help pay for your flying lessons?

00:34:11.320 - 00:34:26.000

I didn't have any lessons. I never had any duel there at all, and I never learned any maneuvers. What I did was, I would go out and I'd see a field of cows, and I'd dive down because it was fun.

00:34:26.860 - 00:34:38.200

And I'd think, "Oh, it's a stampede," and I'd pull up and look back and they were all grazing again. And I thought, "Cows are dumb. Take something more than a cub to scare a cow."

00:34:38.200 - 00:34:51.740

So then there were all the Chicago's a center for trains. So I began diving on trains, and I'd fly alongside the train, all the people would be there. I think they're all looking at me flying, you know.

00:34:53.300 - 00:35:19.820

And I'd dive on the engines, and this one engineer must have had a lot of people do this before, because he said—I'm getting off—he didn't say anything. I dove once and then I came around to go over him again and just as I got right above this steam engine he pulled the lever for the with it you know to make

00:35:19.900 - 00:35:44.140

the whistle go and it blew that cub about 75 feet up in the air and I was so discombobulated and I was deafened by it's really deafening if you're right over the top of it boy I didn't do that anymore and that engineer as I turned to go back he's just laughing you thought it was so funny scared me let me go back

00:35:44.220 - 00:36:10.100

and ask you about when you first started flying how much dual instruction did you have before you so low I had because I couldn't do it a lot each time I think I was nine hours yeah the solo then my boyfriend soloed before I did and I was infuriating. He kept saying, "Just be patient." I thought, "Patient? I don't want to be patient,

00:36:10.200 - 00:36:15.360

I want a solo." Kelly: Did you ever fly together, the two of you? Reid: No. Kelly: No, okay.

00:36:15.850 - 00:36:35.720

Reid: No, because neither one of us had a private license. I went in the WASP, I had a student permit. But I had enough hours to have a private license, but I didn't know a single maneuver of any kind. Do you remember where you were or how you heard about the WASP training program?

00:36:37.690 - 00:36:48.580

McMillan: I received a letter, I think the first thing I knew. I think I received a letter, it could have been from Cochran, and then one from Sheehy, is that her name? Ethel Sheehy?

00:36:51.280 - 00:37:06.780

Because they sent a letter to anybody who knew how to fly. They went into the records, and that's the first I knew of it. When you were flying in those early days, did you know any other girls who were flying? Lowdermilk Honstein Yes.

00:37:07.480 - 00:37:30.660

When I moved over, the fellow that soloed me, he went into the airlines. And Duke was called up to the Air Force. He enlisted and he had his—I don't know what he had. He was an engineer.

00:37:31.320 - 00:37:46.080

Anyway, he volunteered and he went to flight training. He fixed up this old Model T for me so I could get to the airport and gave it to me. And why am I telling you this? Kelly: Was Duke your boyfriend?

00:37:46.170 - 00:37:49.520

Quintana Newton-White: Yeah. Kelly: Yeah, okay. Any other girls? That's what you—

00:37:49.520 - 00:38:05.460

Quintana Newton-White: Oh, yes. over to Pell Walkie Airport. Meanie Miller, Maureen Miller, who was an instructor at Sweetwater, was teaching over in Mud West, this place where I was learning.

00:38:05.590 - 00:38:26.680

She was another one who never flew with me. She was a flight instructor. Dora Doherty was learning to fly over at Sky Harbor Airport, north of Chicago. Lee Cook, who was also a WASP, was learning to fly.

00:38:29.180 - 00:38:40.080

I can't remember that too clearly. I can't even tell you if I met Lee Cook. Yes, I had. Yes, I knew Lee Cook.

00:38:41.220 - 00:38:52.640

It's a long time ago, it's hard to keep things straight. Yes, we were friends. Kelly: After you got the letter from Cochran or whomever with the organization, then what did you have to do?

00:38:52.870 - 00:39:09.040

McMillan: I went up to Glenview Naval—no, not that one. It's up the coast. I went to a Navy base, the closest place. They sent me this letter telling me to go there to take a physical.

00:39:10.120 - 00:39:25.240

Great Lakes Naval Air Station, I think it was. So I went up there and took the physical. Kelly: Was that anything unusual? Were you the only girl taking the physical?

00:39:25.250 - 00:39:36.400

Lowdermilk Honstein: Not that day, yeah. Kelly: And then once you took the physical, what else did you have to do? Lowdermilk Honstein: I had to wait until I was twenty-one. In the meantime, did you have to have an interview?

00:39:37.720 - 00:39:40.280

No. No. Okay. No.

00:39:41.220 - 00:39:54.760

So, did your mom know that you were applying to do this? Mm-hmm. Yeah, she thought it was wonderful. I'm sure underneath she probably was frightened, but she never let on.

00:39:54.900 - 00:40:02.240

She really wanted everything for us. Okay. And this, the war was on. Yes, the war was on.

00:40:02.240 - 00:40:17.640

Was your desire to do this, did it have anything to do with a sense of patriotism to do something for your country? Oh, certainly. Certainly it did.

00:40:19.380 - 00:40:38.460

Yes, I wanted to. Oh, the moment I heard we'd been bombed at Pearl Harbor, Duke was there and my mother And my sister and I were all there and heard that on the radio. And I remember we just sat there and stared into space.

00:40:38.460 - 00:40:54.580

And then we sat and listened to the radio until probably midnight. Just couldn't believe what had happened. Couldn't believe it. Kelly: Then how did you learn that you were going, that you had been accepted and went

00:40:54.580 - 00:41:07.840

to report? I don't remember, I must have received a letter. And then I wanted, when I knew that I was going to go in and that was all settled, I wanted to do something different.

00:41:09.540 - 00:41:28.500

So I went to New York and I knew that I, I think it was six months before I was to be at Sweetwater. I went to New York and I got a job at this—you call it a factory, but it was a floor of a high-rise.

00:41:30.480 - 00:41:50.280

My uncle was vice president of this company that was manufacturing chips to control the radio frequency. I stayed with them a couple of days, and then I got myself a room in this hotel. The room was so small, if you walked in, you had to back out, you could hardly turn around

00:41:50.460 - 00:41:56.060

in it. Okay, if you'll hold it right there, I've got to change film. Yeah. Okay, moving right along.

00:41:56.060 - 00:42:04.720

God, it's bringing these things back. Jesus. Well, you've had an interesting life. It was only yesterday.

00:42:14.120 - 00:42:32.660

Oh, yeah. Anyway, I got a job working in that plant. My cousin, I had three cousins, two boys and a girl. The boys both went into the Coast Guard.

00:42:34.060 - 00:42:54.400

My uncle had this big sailboat, so he maneuvered. He was a big shot. He maneuvered a lot and he got them to be on their own boat during the war, patrolling at the entrance to New York Harbor, so they were safe.

00:42:58.520 - 00:43:14.700

My girl cousin is a few months younger than I am. She took on airs. My aunt was a real social climber. I hate to say these things, it's not just my imagination.

00:43:15.600 - 00:43:24.780

Was this your mom's sister? No, my father's sister. It ran in the family, whatever it is. My uncle was a grand guy.

00:43:25.360 - 00:43:46.920

He was just wonderful, I loved him. Anyway, so she said to me before I was to start work the next day, and she said to me, I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anybody over there that you were related to me." I said, "Okay."

00:43:47.600 - 00:44:15.620

I had met this gal that lived across the hall from them, moneyed and that, lived with her father, wasn't married, and she worked there. We had gone out, my cousin and I had gone out to dinner. This woman across the hall was being very nice and she said, "I'd like you and your

00:44:15.700 - 00:44:35.140

cousin to go to dinner." I said, "Okay." We went to dinner and I thought it was stilted and boring and I wasn't happy at dinner. So the next day I went to work and I got on the elevator at noon to go to lunch.

00:44:36.160 - 00:44:47.640

And this gal who lived across the hall said to me, "Well, where's your cousin?" And I said, "I don't know." And she said, "Well, go to lunch with us." And she was a grand person.

00:44:47.820 - 00:45:08.640

And this gal, another one that worked there, was a designer for, God, some company, but she quit and she was working here for the war effort. And so I went to lunch with them, and I hadn't gotten paid. And so I said, "Do you mind if I have that roll, if you're not going to eat it?"

00:45:08.640 - 00:45:22.240

Well, anyway, I went to lunch with them every day that I worked there. And they were grand. And she'd say, "I take a cab to work every day. Meet me down on this corner and we'll just take the cab over."

00:45:22.240 - 00:45:47.920

So I took a cab to work every day. And my cousin was furious because she was trying to get in with this. And that gal ended up marrying the president of this company, Hazard Reeves his name was. And I know when I went back to New York one time, two things happened.

00:45:47.990 - 00:46:00.140

I had lunch with her. My cousin said, "She won't go to lunch with you." And I said, "Well, I'm just going to call her anyway." So I called her and she said, "I'll meet you at this restaurant."

00:46:00.140 - 00:46:11.640

So I go into this restaurant and it's just packed with people. I thought we're going to have to wait. I couldn't see her. And this man came up to me and said, "Mrs. Reeves is back there, so here's this table,

00:46:11.800 - 00:46:25.240

you know, big table." And I said, "My God, who do you know?" And she said, "We couldn't find a place to eat here, where you could just go in and eat."

00:46:25.240 - 00:46:33.140

She said, "We bought this building." (laughing) I said, "Oh my God, you own the building?" And she said, "Yes."

00:46:33.340 - 00:46:45.020

And we started to laugh. And well, they invited me to dinner. And Hazard is just a nice, decent man. And we sat and talked and talked.

00:46:46.160 - 00:47:01.160

And they lived on number something Park Avenue. And it was just fun for me. This was after the WASP. And just such nice people.

00:47:02.480 - 00:47:11.500

It's interesting how some people are just taken with their money, or they're trying to have money, or know the right people. And other people that are just totally genuine.

00:47:11.860 - 00:47:24.840

We sat on the floor and talked, and we were looking at things. And then we went into dinner and it was their maids, or their whatever's night out. And so I looked down on this plate and I said,

00:47:25.840 - 00:47:36.540

"Oh my God, are we gonna eat that cactus?" (laughing) Well, that broke 'em up. I just had a good time with them and they're real people.

00:47:37.360 - 00:47:50.540

And when I was in the Air Force, I was down at, I was at some air base in Florida. I was going through the School of Applied Tactics. What was it?

00:47:50.820 - 00:48:01.640

Anyway, I was learning to be an intercept controller. And we're in this-- I'm in tactical air command, so we're in this van. And you had to memorize like 50-some steps

00:48:01.740 - 00:48:14.360

to set this thing up, because it was classified, secret, or top secret, or something. And I'm standing in there trying to memorize. Here's a label with all this equipment in here.

00:48:15.300 - 00:48:30.900

It said Reeves Instrument Company on it. They had made this whole thing. Kelly: Wow. When you got a notification to report to Sweetwater, how did you get there?

00:48:32.460 - 00:48:47.220

Lowry: What happened was, I didn't get a notification to come. Jeannie Miller called me in New York and said, "I've got a job down there. Come home and drive down there with me." It was still about three months before I was supposed to go in.

00:48:48.380 - 00:49:00.640

So I quit and went back to Evanston. She lived in Evanston. We got in her car. I had never been west of—

00:49:01.920 - 00:49:22.380

Kelly: Mississippi? No, I'd never been. No, I'd never been west at all. It was the most amazing trip. We had a lot of those stamps you use to get gas. There weren't any cars on the road. There'd be tractors and things between, you know, out in the country. It was just driving like

00:49:22.460 - 00:49:33.040

the whole world was dead. There was nobody out there. Why weren't there any cars? Because people couldn't drive, they had to have gasoline. What did you get?

00:49:33.040 - 00:49:37.080

They got these stamps. Ration. Yeah, ration. The gas was rationed, yeah.

00:49:37.220 - 00:49:48.900

Okay. But it was an interesting drive, because instead of crowded or anything, it was just empty. It was like the whole country was empty. So we drove to Sweetwater.

00:49:49.860 - 00:50:10.740

We got there, and of course I had to have a job. So I went to the base and applied for a job. So I got a job as a mechanics assistant working on BT-13s. And I remember there's one dirty job they never would do.

00:50:10.820 - 00:50:27.260

They always let you do it. You open it up underneath and then you get on your hands and knees and you run your hands. As you go on your knees, you're running your hands down all the wires to the back to make sure that there isn't any fraying or anything, and if there is, it would cut you.

00:50:29.800 - 00:50:45.200

And then you'd change the oil and do all that kind of stuff. And where did you live? I lived in a, it was a house, this woman rented us rooms in her house. I tried to find it one time when I went back there, and I couldn't even remember what

00:50:45.340 - 00:50:50.840

street. And then Mimi was instructing. And she was instructing. And then she got a little apartment.

00:50:51.700 - 00:51:07.340

I was there for a couple of weeks in that apartment. I remember it was so hot, it was so teeny, and there was this bed. We'd open up the bed and we'd lie there and we'd leave the refrigerator open, stick our feet in the refrigerator to keep us cool.

00:51:09.140 - 00:51:21.520

God, it was crazy. What phase was she teaching? A primary. Then she went in, after I left there, she went in to the WASP.

00:51:21.520 - 00:51:32.280

I don't know what class. Let me ask you how you felt seeing all those airplanes and all those other girls flying and you were just waiting. Oh, I could just hardly wait.

00:51:33.080 - 00:51:46.620

But you know what? We had to pre-flight those BT-13s and we'd pre-flight a dozen or two dozen, you know, or three dozen every morning. And I could just get into that cockpit and I knew everything about that airplane.

00:51:47.260 - 00:51:56.580

Were there other girls working at the same time? No, just guys. Kelly: Were the guys all civilians also? Lowry: Yes.

00:51:57.260 - 00:52:07.520

Kelly: Who were your bosses? Lowry: I have no idea. Just the man that I worked with, I did the dirty work. That's the only one I knew.

00:52:08.720 - 00:52:22.180

Kelly: Then tell me about getting notification that you were accepted and going in. What did you do? Lowry: I probably jumped up and down. I have no recollections of the exact notification.

00:52:23.080 - 00:52:47.480

But you moved out of that little apartment, right? That's just the last two weeks I was not in the WASP. By that time I had taken the bus back to Illinois and got in my own car and drove it down. I just drove out to the base.

00:52:48.900 - 00:53:02.380

And there I was, you know, they were coming from all over. There me with my dirty fingernails. But oh, I'd watch those girls, you know, I'd think, "Oh, God, I'm going to be one soon."

00:53:02.380 - 00:53:19.080

It would have killed me if I couldn't have been, but I thought, "Oh, boy, the next class that comes in is going to be me, you know, and I'll actually get to fly one of those." when you were accepted for training, when you went into training?

00:53:21.660 - 00:53:40.400

I guess it was just making the bed, keeping the closets, you know, keeping the—I didn't have very much stuff anyway, just old clothes. Tell me about your bay mates. They were wonderful.

00:53:41.500 - 00:54:02.580

Murphy was from Minnesota, and she was the one in the dead of winter. She'd go over and throw the window all the way up, and we'd all say, "No!" She slept right next to the window, and she'd say, "I have to have it open." We always had fresh air, but with Murphy.

00:54:04.520 - 00:54:14.940

I'm going to have to think about who my other baymates were. Well, I'm embarrassed. That's okay. Describe your bay for me.

00:54:15.660 - 00:54:26.640

Where did you live? Well, same place all the other women did. You probably had it described to you 500 times, haven't you? Somebody might just be watching you.

00:54:27.460 - 00:54:38.060

Somebody watching me? Yes they are. Right now, too. What was different about where you lived then than where you just came from?

00:54:40.660 - 00:54:45.640

Just came from? You mean like in town? In town. Well, it was regimented.

00:54:46.980 - 00:54:54.000

But you had bay mates. And I was with six women. Okay. I mean, five women plus me.

00:54:54.460 - 00:55:05.980

Never done that before. And you know, our bay changed as the number of WASPs began to wash out. Most of them did, I think, in primary. And some in Basic, but by then that was about it.

00:55:06.580 - 00:55:27.220

And as they washed out, it changed. I can't think of her name that washed out. How did that make you feel when she washed out? Well, it sure made me sad for her.

00:55:31.100 - 00:55:45.140

What they did was, they had to move out while we were on the flight line. You just never saw them to say goodbye. They disappeared and the bed would have the thing up there and that would be that. It was spooky.

00:55:47.420 - 00:56:01.240

Tell me about some of your ground school courses and which ones did you like or not like? I did not really like any of them. I did not give a fig about ground school. I just wanted to fly.

00:56:01.940 - 00:56:17.900

I hated the one that I thought, "Am I going to flunk out because I can't learn code?" I could hear code in the radiator. Everything sounded like code to me. I think, "D-d-d-d, get a haircut, but what letter is that?"

00:56:17.900 - 00:56:30.400

You know, and I, "Oh, God." Well, I passed it, but I think we all went a little crazy over that. Do you remember when you soloed and which aircraft did you fly? McMillan: The PT-19.

00:56:31.740 - 00:56:49.820

Yeah. I can remember when I started in that I'd have my parachute on and that I'd get up on the wing and in my mind I saw myself as, "Now there I go, I'm doing it. There I go."

00:56:49.820 - 00:57:07.580

You know, the pilot that I loved so well. Amelia Earhart, don't get old, right? Anyway, stay young, keep thinking. I think I'm Amelia Earhart, I'd be standing there and I'd pose, wishing I had a picture

00:57:07.660 - 00:57:20.440

of me standing like that, looking like one of the Eagles or something, and then I'd get in and get down to work. Had you not also heard of Jacqueline Cochran? Litz: No.

00:57:20.690 - 00:57:27.780

Kelly: Had not? Litz: Uh-uh. Kelly: Were you aware that she was the one that had started that program? Litz: Yes, yes, I knew her as that.

00:57:27.940 - 00:57:36.220

And I knew she was a pilot. I mean, after I got going on it, I thought, "Who is she?" I knew she was a pilot. She was never famous.

00:57:38.120 - 00:57:55.680

Only ones I knew that were in the newspaper or something like that. I never heard of Cochran, no. You were going to recall your solo in your Fairchild. [Laughter.]

00:57:56.800 - 00:58:06.880

You know, I don't think it made very much of an impression on me. Did you already know some of those instructors? I knew Meanie Miller. Yeah.

00:58:06.960 - 00:58:22.160

Yeah. No, I didn't know the instructors, except for her. Of course, I never had her as an instructor. I had this one fellow, and he wasn't a very good pilot, and they washed him out of the

00:58:22.160 - 00:58:36.640

program. Then I got a Czech pilot, Smitty his name was. He was wonderful, good pilot. It was an easy plane to fly.

00:58:38.740 - 00:58:58.520

By the time we soloed, I didn't think it was no big deal. I liked it, but when you got to the AT-6, now that was something. Kelly: How was that so different? Lowry: Power and equipment.

00:59:00.960 - 00:59:17.440

But you were really ready to move on with each one. It was interesting that we were. I already had my sights on bigger aircraft. The PT-19 was an okay aircraft, and I liked it.

00:59:20.180 - 00:59:36.340

I liked the open cockpit. Did anything unusual happen when you were in primary, either to you or— Yes, Marie Mountain. If you interviewed her, well, then you know that she went out over the engine.

00:59:37.520 - 00:59:56.780

Boy, did she have bruises. The parachute, we all used the same parachute. The first one walked out with it, and we just left it in the plane for the next guy. The parachutes were never fitted to us, because you weren't really meant to fly out of that

00:59:56.820 - 01:00:10.920

airplane. It was loose, and she just got some terrible black and blue things. And then the other thing that happened, she was my bay mate, I don't know why I forgot that.

01:00:12.180 - 01:00:34.200

Good Lord, Ann. Anyway, it just reminded me because she probably told you this, that she hung her, we persuaded her to hang, she kept the ripcord, and so we hung it from the light switch, and do you know what, did she tell you this?

01:00:35.700 - 01:00:58.660

We all got a demerit the next inspection for having an unauthorized something in our room. We were just, "How could they do that?" I thought it was stupid. Kelly: While you were in training, did you have any time off, say weekends?

01:00:59.570 - 01:01:25.440

What did you do? Well, one thing I did on Saturdays, we took a college refresher course in physics. And of course, I didn't do well in algebra in high school, never took geometry even. So I went in on Saturdays and studied with the instructor of that subject so I could

01:01:25.520 - 01:01:36.860

pass it. Did you, when you finished primary training, did you have days off between primary and basic? No, not that I can recall.

01:01:38.180 - 01:01:57.660

Then you went on into basic training? Uh-huh. Okay. Were you more aware of the mechanics and maybe being a little bit skeptical of going up in

01:01:57.680 - 01:02:13.160

those airplanes since you knew about the mechanical workings of them, rather than a girl who had never been in one before? Lee: No, I don't think so. Kelly: You just trusted the mechanics?

01:02:13.420 - 01:02:26.860

I never thought of the mechanics. Yes, I trusted the fact the aircraft was in working order. Kelly: In basic training, what did you learn? Reed: What did you learn?

01:02:28.720 - 01:02:37.260

I learned how to fly the BT-13. Kelly: I'm not being interviewed. Reed: Aren't you lucky? I learned to fly the BT-13.

01:02:37.420 - 01:02:54.600

The cockpit was much more complicated, but I knew that cockpit like the palm of my hand. That was thrilling. I liked the OBT. I still like it.

01:02:54.680 - 01:03:03.360

I like the way the engine goes, "Drum, drum." It gallops as you're taxiing, you remember? Did you enjoy instruments? No.

01:03:05.380 - 01:03:17.220

I'm basically, I realized later, I'm basically a seat of the pants pilot. How about the food? Terrible. Just awful.

01:03:17.820 - 01:03:33.180

Slop. How many grits and the whole rest of it you can just toss it out any old time. It was, well you know how it is, a cafeteria, you slop it on there and you eat because you're hungry.

01:03:33.740 - 01:03:55.620

When you were in training, did Ms. Cochran ever come to visit? Did you ever get to meet her personally? Well, she sat at the table with us one lunch. Someone asked her, "Didn't she miss her husband a lot, being away so much?"

01:03:55.760 - 01:04:12.380

She said, "No, she didn't. The absent makes the hot girl fonder." And I thought, "I can hardly believe that if you care about somebody." But then, you know, she could have said, "Well, duty comes first," or something.

01:04:12.500 - 01:04:30.880

That would have been, to me, a better... But I'm awfully opinionated, and I can't help it. It's not that I'm always right, but I can't help being opinionated. I just think certain things, and as you get older, you become more opinionated, I think.

01:04:32.640 - 01:04:57.380

When you finished basic training and went into advanced, tell me about a cross-country that you might have taken. We took a cross-country in the '86. I think we flew to—what's that town on the border of Colorado and California?

01:04:58.580 - 01:05:09.640

Has an air base there. I can't remember its name. Anyway, whatever air base it was, we flew to that air base. Then we took another leg and went to El Paso and then back to Sweetwater.

01:05:11.420 - 01:05:27.560

I could tell you a story. Did you by any chance, oh God, turn that off a second, would you? I remember that. I'll tell a naughty story about it. Sure. Well, Carol Wood and I like to drink.

01:05:29.960 - 01:05:42.580

Could I stop you and ask you where you got the drink? Was it allowed on the base? Of course not. We weren't drinking on the, I never drank on the base. Okay. No, when you go into town, you go to instructors' houses,

01:05:43.300 - 01:05:53.840

or you go to Ma Coleman and you get a bottle. Didn't you ever go to Ma Coleman's? She was a local bootlegger. She had this, hasn't anybody told you about Ma Coleman?

01:05:54.680 - 01:06:05.460

Oh, for God's sake. Anyway, she sat in this big overstuffed chair and she filled every inch of it. And she sat like this, and you go to the door

01:06:05.520 - 01:06:20.580

and you knock, "Come in." And you open the door and she's sitting there. And she's looking at you. And the first time I thought, what if it isn't her?

01:06:20.720 - 01:06:35.340

What if I'm at the wrong place or something? Because she didn't get up and ask me what I wanted or anything. And then she said, well, what would you like? And I said, whiskey?

01:06:36.900 - 01:06:50.160

And she lifted up this big fat hip and pulled out a pint of whiskey, oh, rot gut whiskey, and handed it to me. It was hot. I don't know how many others she had under there.

01:06:50.840 - 01:07:03.060

Anyway, I was startled. I didn't, you know, I'd never been in a dry county before. Well, anyway, that was Ma Coleman. Everybody in town knew her, everybody.

01:07:03.980 - 01:07:19.680

"What was wrong with your class?" Some of them probably knew. We visited Ma Komen fairly often. We'd been out partying.

01:07:20.820 - 01:07:27.960

We would go to instructors' houses. You weren't supposed to date them, but they couldn't find you if you went to an instructor's house. So we went to parties.

01:07:28.840 - 01:07:45.860

We went back to the base this one evening. We were really—it was a Saturday night, and we were really, really—we were inebriated. We wanted to stay up a while and monkey around. These girls across the way had apparently also been drinking.

01:07:46.020 - 01:08:08.920

They were 44, too. They were making a hell of a lot of noise. So Carol and I decided that we knew somebody was going to come and tell us to go to bed in that. So we went over there and the room is dark. We knocked, nobody answers, so we

01:08:09.000 - 01:08:36.320

opened the door, walked in, we said, "Now, all right, keep it down, keep it down or we're going to get caught." And with that, this girl who was drunk picked up a chair and threw it and it hit Carol right across the mouth. I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it. We were in the door, she turned and she went, "Her too front teeth."

01:08:36.320 - 01:08:52.320

Oh God. And we started to laugh, we were still drunk, you know. We started to laugh though, and then the next day of course, I mean on the Monday, she had to skip things and go into town.

01:08:54.340 - 01:09:14.420

But at that point in time, they didn't have false things, temporaries. So she was left with her two front teeth missing for quite a while. This other girl, by the way, resigned over it, the one that threw the chair. I guess she was a mess, I don't know.

01:09:14.660 - 01:09:27.920

Anyway, oh, I know what we did that made them mad. I've forgotten it. We took the hose from the end of the building, turned it on, because they wouldn't shut up, and squirted it in their quarters.

01:09:28.900 - 01:09:48.780

And they were really angry. That's when they threw the chair. So anyway, so poor Carol, we got invited to a dance down at Goodfellow Field. And we all got on this bus and went down there to this dance.

01:09:48.880 - 01:10:09.180

And Carol would be dancing with this guy, and she's pretty, you know. And then she'd say, "Isn't it nice?" And she said, these cadets would go, "Huuuh!" Pretty soon nobody would ask her to dance because her teeth were messing.

01:10:10.300 - 01:10:33.500

It was really funny. But the other thing was, on this cross-country, coming back, there were some storms. The weather was bad. On the trip from Blythe, California—that's where it was—to El Paso, Carol got lost,

01:10:35.980 - 01:10:51.660

and she was running out of gas. She was east of Tucson and west of El Paso. This weather was bad, as I recall. Something was wrong.

01:10:52.320 - 01:11:11.060

She decided she better land. Up in these mountains, she saw this little field. She thought, "Can I get in there in a T-6?" She went ahead and landed, and she said she got it stopped right at the other fence.

01:11:12.340 - 01:11:23.060

So it was intact. And then, here are the people come out of the house, you know, and they had sheep or they had something, and then they were growing things. I don't know it all.

01:11:23.070 - 01:11:40.780

I don't remember too clearly. Anyway, so they took her in, and they had a phone. So she called, they told her to call the base at Tucson, I think. Anyway she called, and they said they'd come up the next day to get her.

01:11:41.680 - 01:12:02.260

And the rancher or whatever he was told them how to get there. So here she is, she's got nothing on but her GI coveralls. Anyway so they finally arrived, and they were—this is interesting. They would rather that plane would have been wrecked or landed gear up or something happened

01:12:02.340 - 01:12:21.840

to it so they wouldn't have to take it back. But because it was intact, they had to go back and get a big, long truck bed thing and haul it out of there, which cost the government apparently a lot of money. Well, in the meantime, they took her back to Tucson, and then she got a ride some way

01:12:21.920 - 01:12:34.880

or another and got home. When she got home, because this all took so much time, it was graduation. That was our last flight that we had to make before we graduated. Her parents were there.

01:12:37.820 - 01:13:02.020

She came in, by this time, dirty old coveralls with these two very badly done false teeth in the front. Carolyn Pierpont Wood family, multi-millionaires, and they lived in Janesville, Wisconsin in this huge house because I went to visit her there. Anyway,

01:13:02.780 - 01:13:23.720

so here they came in all their glory, you know, and here is their daughter. She smiled at them and they saw these teeth which they spent a lot of money on and these GI coveralls and looking like she did and like, I mean, she said, "Oh, they were horrified because they got there wanted to know where she was and they

01:13:23.820 - 01:13:45.580

said well we're flying her back in she's been up on a hillside in Arizona do you know if she had to go before the board no no no of course not no she graduated yeah sure I mean she didn't do anything wrong something happened I don't know I can't remember what it was now whether it was the weather that made it

01:13:45.460 - 01:14:07.520

impossible or what. It was really funny. She left not too long after we got stationed at Eagle Pass and got married and left. I wonder how many of the gals did that and didn't ever really spend a heck of a lot of

01:14:07.740 - 01:14:18.360

time after they graduated working. There were some, I know. With this database, eventually they'll find it. Yeah, yeah.

01:14:18.520 - 01:14:26.660

That would be interesting to know. Before you graduated, did they give you a choice of your assignments after? No. Okay.

01:14:27.240 - 01:14:43.160

In the meantime, had you gotten new uniforms? Oh, I forgot to tell you the one bad thing I did there. I was in a T-6 and I saw these cows. I had this weakness.

01:14:44.420 - 01:14:52.000

I thought, "Oh, the landing gear. I don't have any landing gear hanging down. I can fly lower. I'll buzz the cows."

01:14:52.000 - 01:15:11.880

Stupid. It was stupid because somebody got my number. I met this board and they said that I would probably be washed out. I tried to say to them, "Well, at this point in time, it's not a good idea to wash me out.

01:15:12.420 - 01:15:31.860

Because first of all, I'm very sorry and I won't do it again." I said, "Secondly, you're wasting all the money and time and effort to train me completely. We just have a couple of more rides and we're done." Well, that didn't seem to mean anything to that major urban and the crew there.

01:15:32.800 - 01:15:51.360

So I went back to the barracks. I had to go back the next day to find out. That day, they caught like eight of them buzzing on a cross-country. It was either wash everybody out or nobody, so they didn't wash any of us out.

01:15:52.380 - 01:15:59.920

It was just lucky for me that they caught those other ones. Maybe there were only six. There was a whole bunch of them, though. They were on a cross-country and they'd been buzzing.

01:16:01.840 - 01:16:15.360

So they didn't wash me out. I don't know if any of them would admit that that happened, but it did. Saved me, so I graduated. Kelly: What was your favorite airplane during training?

01:16:15.550 - 01:16:29.780

Lowry: T-6, of course. Nobody would say any other plane, would they? Unless they were an early class, then they might say the UC-78. They would have to have a certain degree of insanity and death wish.

01:16:32.000 - 01:16:42.440

You know, earlier on when they trained them, two or three of them were killed on that highline wire at the end of the field. Not a safe airplane. Jesus.

01:16:43.300 - 01:17:00.320

And that thing would burn in about thirty seconds if it crashed. For your graduation, did any celebrities come? Cochran, she's a celebrity. And a general, yes, a general was the speaker.

01:17:01.680 - 01:17:24.220

And then a second general came, because his daughter, it was in the other flight, I can't remember who it was, but it's in our blue book. His daughter was graduating, and he was a general in the Army, so he came. What did your orders tell you to do after you graduated?

01:17:25.530 - 01:17:43.860

To work hard. Where did they say? My first orders, I didn't even put it down here because it lasted about eight days, assigning me to a field where they were training bombardier cadets to fly the AT-11, I think it was.

01:17:45.100 - 01:17:57.060

I hated it. I don't like multi-engine. I'm not interested in it, is what I mean. We got there, and they kind of stared at all these women.

01:18:00.080 - 01:18:17.140

We went through this training. You climb up on this real high platform, and there's a Norden bomb site. Then they have a bug thing that runs across the floor. This is all in a big hanger that runs across the floor, which is your target.

01:18:17.840 - 01:18:33.940

But it's also not only—you don't just head for it, because there's drift. The mechanism in the Norden bomb site, you have to do these corrections. When you get to the point where it's right under here, this stamp goes down and stamps on it if you hit the target.

01:18:34.800 - 01:18:44.660

It was fun, but I wasn't very good at it. None of us were. It would take a lot of training. It was interesting to know how that bombsight worked.

01:18:45.480 - 01:19:03.140

Then we went up on two rides with the cadets, the bomber cadets, so they could practice dropping these dummy bombs filled with flour or something. I don't know what it was. Anyway, I hated it.

01:19:03.490 - 01:19:18.160

What was the purpose of sending you there? To fly the planes. I think that my assignments, that assignment was probably a payback for my—although other people who didn't do anything bad were sent there.

01:19:19.300 - 01:19:33.000

Did some of the girls stay there? I can't remember. Because on the bulletin board one day was this note saying, "Any of you who want a transfer," which gave me a clue that they didn't particularly want us there, "Any

01:19:33.080 - 01:19:44.900

of you who would like a transfer, sign up here and you can go to Eagle Pass and tow targets." Mine was the first name on there, and Carol Wood was the second name. And—

01:19:45.580 - 01:19:57.000

Kelly: At that first base, where did you live for those few days? I have no idea. I don't remember it that clearly at all. How did you get down to Eagle Pass?

01:19:57.060 - 01:20:08.420

We drove. When you got to Eagle Pass, to whom did you report? Where did you live? We lived in the psychiatric ward.

01:20:10.620 - 01:20:24.960

That's what it was. There were no doorknobs on the inside. How did they choose to put you in the psychiatric ward? Because the nurses' area was full and they had to put us someplace.

01:20:26.260 - 01:20:38.920

Were there already wasps there when you got there? Yes, not very many though. It just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger until that commander, Colonel Bundy, loved the wasp.

01:20:40.620 - 01:20:52.680

So he said, "Oh, there's my dove." They're not a real numerous bird. It's a white-winged dove. See the white on its wing?

01:20:53.900 - 01:21:10.640

Well, that's not so interesting, is it? Kelly: He said he'd take a field full of water. He said that the cadets were doing—I mean, they were lieutenants—doing so much better. Weren't you there?

01:21:11.540 - 01:21:21.820

No. Well, anyway, he said they were doing so much better because women were towing, because we kept our altitude and speed even. And he said suddenly the targets were getting hit and all that.

01:21:22.660 - 01:21:37.420

The men didn't pay any attention, didn't want to do it. Kelly: Describe for me what one of your missions would be like. Rowland: Well, you'd have a tow target operator in the back seat. Kelly: First of all, what kind of airplane?

01:21:37.420 - 01:21:45.980

Rowland: AT-6. There would be a tow target operator in the back seat. You can drop the seat and it turns around and faces backwards. I didn't know they did, but they do.

01:21:47.700 - 01:22:01.740

There's also a little trap door there. In with him is this target. It's not a sleeve target, it's just a target. The weight is on the bottom.

01:22:02.120 - 01:22:19.300

It's all metal, great big round weight on the bottom, and then this metal rod and a smaller weight up here. It would hold steady like this. It was made of chicken wire, because the point was they needed to know which aircraft were

01:22:19.360 - 01:22:36.540

hitting the target. Each of the students had a color assigned to them. One got red-tipped bullets. It wasn't chicken wire, but it had holes like that, so when the bullet hit it, it would

01:22:36.560 - 01:22:48.240

leave a mark on the target. And then they go back and see how many hits that person got and how they were doing. Kelly: Where were these students? Were they in another—

01:22:48.240 - 01:22:56.300

Reid: They were in AT-6s. Kelly: Were they flying it themselves? Or was there— Reid: Yeah.

01:22:56.300 - 01:23:12.840

They were second lieutenants. And they were flying AT-6s, and they had a.30 caliber machine gun. And the targets varied in distance back from the plane. If the cable got broken, they'd just bring it up and splice it.

01:23:15.540 - 01:23:38.100

Sometimes it was closer to the aircraft and the planes came in closer to you when they pursued curve like this. And so you take off—well, anyway, they're in the back seat with the target. When you take off and when you get to altitude, you close your hatch, because it creates a

01:23:38.180 - 01:23:55.700

terrible thing. You'd need goggles with it open, because when they open that trapdoor thing down there. They let out the target and they have an electronic or electric—I don't know what drives it, I imagine electricity.

01:23:55.920 - 01:24:04.200

Anyway, there's a winch inside of there to let the cable out. Okay, let's hold it there. She's got to change it. I was about to run out of my belly. Change the film.

01:24:05.760 - 01:24:12.040

No, I didn't. I was never going to. And this is very unique. We haven't heard this before. Oh, good. Yep.

01:24:13.020 - 01:24:20.920

Yes, darling. Come here. You can come up here for a minute. You can come up here for one minute. What are you looking at?

01:24:20.940 - 01:24:28.520

It's just people, dog. You're looking at those lights, huh? Look pretty. Look pretty. [Whistling]

01:24:29.460 - 01:24:40.660

Oh! That was a good one. No, she wants to kiss me. You get kissed. I'm sorry, you were locked up there for a while, weren't you?

01:24:42.400 - 01:24:50.660

I've got to have another one. Where the hell's that big fat beam? Didn't you ever sing that? I didn't sing that one. It's not in my book either.

01:24:51.060 - 01:24:57.880

I have a book of the song. But that was the only--there weren't any--it didn't go on after that. Kelly: Oh, it was just that far. Okay.

01:24:58.600 - 01:25:06.900

On the road to— Beall: Abilene. Where the hell's that big, fat beam? [Laughter.]

01:25:06.900 - 01:25:12.300

Kelly: Oh, my. Yeah. I'm the problem. Beall: Yeah.

01:25:13.040 - 01:25:23.760

Kelly: Okay. The crew chief then would let out the target, take it from there. Beall: Oh, yes. So you go up to altitude and tell them to let the target out.

01:25:24.660 - 01:25:43.080

He dropped the target out of that little door. Of course, I never saw it, but anyway. Then it would unwind all the way. Then you would call your flight and tell them you're starting down the range.

01:25:43.980 - 01:25:57.720

So you'd be going this way, and they'd come this way, but they were off to one side. and they make this curve like they were coming at your airplane, but behind it. So they come along this way and they fly a curve.

01:25:58.140 - 01:26:09.000

And you couldn't hear-- this is something to do with the way sound works. You could not hear the machine guns unless they got within 45 degrees of your heading.

01:26:10.160 - 01:26:18.900

And we heard them quite often. And that's when you heard voices all over the air, women's voices saying, get off my tail. honey real loud.

01:26:21.120 - 01:26:37.700

I thought, "That's an obscenity if I ever heard one." "Get off my tail!" When you would do one of these missions, how many aircraft would you— I think that there were six.

01:26:38.740 - 01:26:51.820

So then, after all of them had fired, you'd make a turnaround and start back, and they'd make a turnaround and start back. You'd do that until they run out of ammunition. Usually, would that be one hour?

01:26:52.540 - 01:27:07.820

Oh, no. It would be less than that. I don't think those guns carried that much. I don't know. But it wasn't a long period of time, maybe 45 minutes.

01:27:08.300 - 01:27:21.400

I'm just making a wild guess. Then would you land or would you stay up there? Then what you do is, then you circle back and there's this big... We're all flying now out of the auxiliary field.

01:27:21.410 - 01:27:39.580

You don't fly, do these things off the main base. And there's just miles of scrub stuff along the border there. So, that target is used up now. So you fly back over the auxiliary field and away from the auxiliary field,

01:27:39.620 - 01:27:54.980

There's a place with a big white circle where you drop the target. The tow target operator has these rings. They're made of iron. The target itself has a thing like this.

01:27:57.600 - 01:28:21.800

It's holding the thing. When this ring comes down, it hits this, closes it, and pushes the target on off. It's going at a big rate of speed, because of the speed of the aircraft. You drop the target, go back to the base, he winds in the cable, and you go back to

01:28:21.860 - 01:28:35.840

the base and land. Then you usually get a mission off, and then you fly another mission. It's hot as hell there in the summertime, that field. They bring this big tank of water out, and it would sit there in the sun until you couldn't

01:28:35.840 - 01:28:53.600

drink it, and they'd bring lunch out. It was not a cool place anywhere. In the middle of the day, there'd be about that much shade next to this tar paper building. Kelly: And usually, you'd fly how many of these missions in one day?

01:28:53.600 - 01:29:05.080

Miller: I can't remember. I can't remember. For the life of me, I can't. Maybe I think you'd fly half a day, and then the other—but then why would they have

01:29:05.080 - 01:29:19.400

food brought out. You got me. I'm not sure. I think you're probably out there most of the day. I'm not positive of that, though. Kelly: Did you do other types of missions? Morgan: That was it.

01:29:19.590 - 01:29:28.760

Kelly: Were some of the girls doing other things on the base? Morgan: No. We were all towing targets. Kelly: That was the mission of that base? Morgan: That's what we did.

01:29:31.760 - 01:29:44.280

Kelly: Okay. We got to fly the P-40s when the class would leave. Did you get some instruction on that? On what?

01:29:44.280 - 01:29:56.760

Did you go to school to fly the P-40s? No. You took the tech orders to your quarters, read them, went out to the plane, had a blindfold cockpit check, and then you took off.

01:29:57.720 - 01:30:16.940

It was a terrifically hard plane to taxi in, because sitting in the cockpit, you had the teeniest way-off bit of—you could see the ground. The only way you knew you were lined up with the runway is when you couldn't see it on either side, until you got the tail up.

01:30:17.020 - 01:30:26.240

It was a tail-dragger. What were these officers using those for? To transition. I don't know.

01:30:26.600 - 01:30:45.020

Kelly: Not any kind of tow target flying? Reed: No, no, no. I used to—it has a great big mirror like this up above up here, so you can see enemy aircraft on the tail.

01:30:45.480 - 01:30:56.800

It's a very romantic aircraft, because it was early on in the war, and the Flying Tigers flew it. I used to turn the mirror down to watch myself flying it. I know.

01:30:57.360 - 01:31:21.780

Kelly: While you were there, what did you do for entertainment or social life? McMillan: We all went over to Piedras Negras every night and drank and ate. Kelly: Did you meet anybody that you were interested in while you were there? McMillan: I had a couple of dates with a major—what the hell was his name?

01:31:23.060 - 01:31:32.040

I can't remember his name. I had a couple of dates with him, but he was way beyond me. He just wanted to go to bed. So that was the end of that.

01:31:32.520 - 01:31:51.860

I was sitting on the bench out there. They had a bench so that the teeny little bit of shade, like this much of you, would be in the shade if you sat back against the building. And this plane came back, this T-6 came back, and the mechanic went out to see why he came

01:31:51.960 - 01:32:01.540

back. And you could hear very clearly there, and he was saying something, I couldn't understand what he said. But I heard him say, "See?"

01:32:01.540 - 01:32:19.780

And the next thing I knew, right over our heads, the building sort of exploded. And what he was telling him, what he was trying to say was that his guns were jammed, and he pulled the trigger. And when I dove to the ground, the Major Baker—that was his name, I can't remember his first

01:32:19.780 - 01:32:44.940

name. He was already prone and I was right next to him, all of us, flat on the ground. There was a hole like this, you know, because the whole, I guess the bullets cluster, these clustered anyway, in the top of this, about, I guess if you were maybe seven feet over our heads, something like that, because the plane's sitting like this. So then he got

01:32:44.940 - 01:33:00.680

up and he started out to that plane and oh my God, I never heard such a chewing out in my life. Meantime this guy is sitting there going, "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh." Ooh, ooh.

01:33:00.960 - 01:33:13.160

Kelly: While you were there on the weekends, were you able to take an airplane and go other places? Lowdermilk Honstein No, we didn't there. But we just went over to Piedras Negras and we played over there.

01:33:13.900 - 01:33:23.400

It was sort of fun. Kelly: Right. While you were at that air base, did you get temporary orders then to go to Orlando? Ritzell: Yes.

01:33:23.570 - 01:33:38.180

Kelly: Okay, tell me about that school. Ritzell: It was hot, and then it was hotter. And you'd be sitting there and the only thing you were aware of was the sweat running down into your shoes, down the back of your leg.

01:33:38.530 - 01:33:53.860

Kelly: How many of you went? I think just two of us on that particular trip. We had to sleep. I don't understand the regulations during the war, but this woman sat across from us

01:33:54.020 - 01:34:08.080

when we had birth. She had the lower birth and we two had to get in the upper birth, which was no easy feat because she had a ticket. She went to Florida for the winter or the season or the whatever.

01:34:10.920 - 01:34:28.960

She was upset that we had seats there across from us, there was two of us, upset. Kelly: Do you know the purpose of that school in Orlando that you went to? McMillan: I think it was a transition to become officers, is what we were told, I believe, as I recall.

01:34:29.440 - 01:34:43.920

male pilots also going to that school? McMillan: Not—oh, God, I don't know. Kelly: Where did you live while you were in school? McMillan: Oh, we lived in a barracks right next to that lake.

01:34:44.940 - 01:35:01.960

I remember we got there and I ran in, put on my bathing suit, ran out on this dock, and dove in. Then I found out there were all these snakes in the lake. Not until I got out, though. But the water was hot anyway. And it was just hot. All you

01:35:02.120 - 01:35:17.280

remembered really was just you were so damn hot. There was no air conditioning. Didn't you go there? No. Well, anyway. Did you also go to the high-altitude chamber while you were there? We went to one someplace. Would that have been where it was?

01:35:17.360 - 01:35:29.240

I don't know. I guess so. Because I remember going to one, but I don't remember where I was. Do you remember how long that course lasted? No, I don't.

01:35:29.730 - 01:35:41.260

And then you went back to your base. Just a matter of weeks, a couple of weeks maybe, three, two or three, three weeks. I do remember, I shouldn't tell this on there. Oh, go ahead.

01:35:41.740 - 01:35:53.500

Well, all right, I don't care, I guess. I had never used Tampax and everybody was going swimming. They said, "Come on, Nog." I said, "No, I can't."

01:35:53.700 - 01:36:07.900

They said, "Oh, come on. Get some Tampax." I bought this box, and I'm in this, you know, where you change your clothes room at Daytona Beach, reading this thing about how you insert it.

01:36:09.360 - 01:36:25.440

It took me probably a half an hour, sweat pouring off of me. I think, "Oh no, that's not going to go." Finally got it in so I could go swimming. But I'll never forget it, that agony of learning to use.

01:36:25.440 - 01:36:39.820

I didn't get the angle, you know. And I just worked and worked and sweated and finally, God, I was... But they convinced me because I did go swimming. Yes, didn't we?

01:36:40.180 - 01:36:58.720

Yes. And then when you finished that school, you came back to Eagle Pass. When you got back to Eagle Pass, you just continued with those missions. Is that right?

01:36:58.790 - 01:37:13.400

Yes, yes I did. Anything else interesting happened? Well, no, I can't think of anything there except that flight in the P-40. That was fun.

01:37:14.600 - 01:37:47.600

Stop it, stop it. And then on the bulletin board, they posted this notice that they were doing, as an experiment, They wanted women who wanted to go to Randolph Field and go through a course at Central Instructor School Basic, which was a course they took in order to teach basic flight training in

01:37:47.680 - 01:38:11.940

BT-13s. So I looked at it and I thought, "Well, the war is being won." I knew I wanted to be an instructor when I finished, when the WASP program ended. So reluctantly, because I didn't want to fly BTs particularly, but I figured it was

01:38:11.980 - 01:38:20.560

the thing to do. It was one of my moments of recognition when I did the right thing. So I went to Randolph Field. I signed up for it and got accepted.

01:38:21.380 - 01:38:42.480

So there was—excuse me a minute, can you turn that? And 12 of us, 12 WASPs, went through this program. And it's the exact, stop it, it's the exact program that they use for the men. There were men in our class, is what I'm trying to say.

01:38:44.100 - 01:39:16.700

And we stayed an extra week or two weeks or something because we'd never had acrobatics, very few acrobatics. And it was fun. And we learned formation flying. I love formation flying. And it was easy for me to do, and I was good at it. But the instructors, since that's all they taught and that were playful, and we'd get into, when they were teaching

01:39:16.840 - 01:39:32.000

us, they'd fly it first. And they would get in so tight, they'd tap each other's wing, And boy, my eyes were coming right out of my head. And of course, we were flying backseat, because that's where we would fly. And it was really strange having to go tap, tap.

01:39:32.480 - 01:39:40.660

I mean, I'm thinking, "God, this isn't such a good idea, is it?" But you get used to it, kind of. But they didn't want us to do that. They were just showing off.

01:39:41.640 - 01:40:06.140

And so we practiced formation flying. Then the extra week, ten days, or whatever it was that we were there, was all acrobatics. The basic thing you do first, you do inverted gliding turns, 90-degree flying turns, back and forth, going down.

01:40:06.960 - 01:40:31.680

That BT is heavy on its back. We had the seats all the way down, and gripping the bar here to hold it. It was very heavy, but we got pretty strong doing it, I guess. And then we would do, oh, Shandales and slow rolls and everything.

01:40:33.220 - 01:40:44.280

And we practiced and we practiced and we practiced. Kelly: Who were your instructors? Lowry: They were the instructors for the school. Kelly: Were they civilians or Air Force?

01:40:44.280 - 01:41:05.000

They were military, yeah. How long did that school last? I don't remember. Probably a month or maybe for us five weeks or six weeks, five weeks maybe. I don't—you'll have to ask somebody else who went there. Did you talk to Murphy?

01:41:05.820 - 01:41:08.900

No. Catherine Murphy? No. Oh, I hope you're going to.

01:41:11.100 - 01:41:21.000

She's the one that went over to Russia then later. When you finished that training, did you have a choice of assignments then? No. Where did they send you?

01:41:21.020 - 01:41:37.120

They sent me to Waco, because it was a basic training school. When you got to Waco, then, where did you live? I lived in a room. There were a couple other WASPs there that I think did something like they checked out

01:41:37.180 - 01:41:52.120

planes after they worked on them or something like that. There were two or three others, but I never was with them, because I was always over there at that other place. I remember for a while I had an upper bunk.

01:41:52.540 - 01:42:07.960

That's all I can tell you. I hit my head a number of times up there. Then I was on a dock in Waco. This doctor had a daughter who was crazy about flying, so he invited us all out to his house

01:42:07.960 - 01:42:35.280

on a weekend. I ran out on this dock and it had a board missing and my leg slipped down like that and I thought I was going to die. I did something to the ligaments in my leg so I couldn't fly. It's funny the things you remember. I had crutches, a crutch. I couldn't get into that upper berth, so I got the lower one. I do remember that the

01:42:35.280 - 01:42:47.900

WACs there did not like us. It was an active, I mean you could feel it. It's the only time I've ever, I mean the nurses were kind of neutral, they didn't care, but these WAC officers didn't like us.

01:42:48.400 - 01:43:03.240

Do you know why? No, probably because we got a lot of attention from the guys over in the club. That's the only time I ever really saw them for any length of time. So when I got there, they didn't want me.

01:43:04.880 - 01:43:23.100

Some of the others went to bases where they really were happy to see them. They didn't want me. They didn't want me to instruct in that, but they had to because they got orders. The first thing they did, I spent a couple of days at an auxiliary field with all these

01:43:23.100 - 01:43:38.960

names on lists of things. Plugged into my BT was an extension of a mic and a speaker. I graded stages. I graded and I graded and I graded.

01:43:39.520 - 01:43:48.400

I thought I'd never want to see another. I just stood there on the ground grading these things all day. Kelly: Explain what that means. I don't know.

01:43:49.380 - 01:44:11.360

In an auxiliary field, each student had to shoot so many landings. They call it grading stages, because they did that to us at Sweetwater, too, I'm sure. The pilot would call out his name as he shot the landing. If he made a decent landing, you know, you graded it that way.

01:44:11.440 - 01:44:27.800

If he didn't, you graded it four or whatever. All I did was grade those stages for these BT-13 pilots. It was a tedious, awful thing. I thought, "I can't stand this.

01:44:27.860 - 01:44:37.480

I should go someplace and complain." But I didn't know where to go. I thought, "I'd just shut up anyway." Then they were told that I had to fly with the cadets.

01:44:38.680 - 01:45:05.120

They decided that they didn't like to teach them formation flying, so I began doing nothing but teach formation flying, which is exciting when they're trying to learn. There were always these smart-ass cadets. One in particular, he'd just fly so tight on me.

01:45:07.200 - 01:45:19.140

I knew he wasn't that good, he couldn't hold it very long. So I decided to teach him a lesson. So I just began tightening the turn, tightening and tightening, and the other guys on the outside, he can open the throttle a little.

01:45:19.920 - 01:45:28.960

I saw that BT stall. I'd never seen one from another airplane. It just went, "Vrooom!" And he disappeared.

01:45:29.860 - 01:45:43.460

And I gave him a fail grade for that day, and boy, did that straighten him up. He got back out where he belonged. But I had on this flying suit that I had, I don't know what, wool? Or it had something in it.

01:45:43.880 - 01:45:57.560

And from doing this all the time, I had a raw neck. I had to put a scarf on every day. Because your head's constantly going like that. And I'd fly with one of them and have two on the wings.

01:45:57.740 - 01:46:09.780

And I did that and did that and did that. And that was it. Then they deactivated us. I was sure glad to get out of there in formation flying.

01:46:10.170 - 01:46:21.800

Kelly: How did you hear about that the WASPs were going to be deactivated? Davidson: I don't remember. Somebody must have told me. Kelly: Do you know how you felt?

01:46:23.390 - 01:46:37.660

Davidson: I felt like I was glad to get out of Waco, but other than that, I thought, "The war isn't over. What are they doing?" Kelly: What was your understanding of why they were being deactivated?

01:46:38.130 - 01:46:48.260

Lowry: Because they had so many pilots that had come back that had no duties. I thought, "Why don't they deactivate them? We have a duty." But that isn't the way it worked out.

01:46:48.570 - 01:47:12.940

Kelly: When you left Waco, did they do anything special to honor the WASP? Lowry: I know there's a picture of those of us stationed there. There must have been six, because I have a picture of five of us in front of this T-6. Kelly: Where did you go when you left Waco then?

01:47:13.300 - 01:47:25.240

Davis: Home. Kelly: What were your plans? Davis: I went straight out to the airport to get my instructor's rating. And oh, Esther Nofky.

01:47:26.100 - 01:47:32.060

Did you know her? Well, she still lives in Chicago. I saw an article about her. Somebody sent it to me.

01:47:32.060 - 01:47:44.140

It was in the Tribune a couple of three or four years ago. Gosh, she looked old. I hadn't seen her since she was a kid. And Esther had her instructor's rating, so she said, "I'll give you instruction to get

01:47:44.180 - 01:47:56.920

..." She's good. And so I flew with her some because I didn't know the ropes and what they required and that. So I thought I was ready to get my instructor's rating,

01:47:57.060 - 01:48:11.620

and I called out to the CAA. And the inspector came out, and he said-- the first thing he said to me-- I'm standing there full of every maneuver and whatever I'm going to do.

01:48:12.240 - 01:48:27.980

And he said, I want you to talk me through a lazy eight. And I said, well-- and he said, without your hands. And I'm going, "Um, you know, you press the..." And he said, "Next time," he said, "you know how to do that."

01:48:27.980 - 01:48:37.200

And I said, "Without my hands?" And he said, "All of the maneuvers without your hands." I practiced, I practiced, it's the stupidest thing that I'd ever heard of.

01:48:38.300 - 01:48:50.460

I never did it again after I got my instructor's rating. You always do that, but it was just one of those things they like to do to humble you, I guess. So I talked myself through every maneuver I could possibly think of.

01:48:51.220 - 01:49:00.380

He came back out and he said, "Let's get in the airplane." And I said, "Aren't you going to ask me how to..." He said, "No, I know you know it now." I thought I'd killed him.

01:49:01.700 - 01:49:11.460

So I got it. It was no problem in flying, you know. So even though you had instructed in instruments, they still made you get a... - Oh yeah. - They didn't give you one at that point.

01:49:11.460 - 01:49:17.500

I didn't instruct in instruments. I instructed in BTs. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Yeah.

01:49:18.040 - 01:49:23.800

Okay. No. So... No, you had to take the test for instructor's ratings.

01:49:23.880 - 01:49:33.500

Probably a good idea. I've seen guys get out of the Air Force. Jesus, they flew bombers and they damn near killed themselves. They never flown a light plane.

01:49:33.580 - 01:49:43.240

It's totally different, you know. It's a different feel entirely. I mean, you really had to feel the controls. And I could tell a story about that, too.

01:49:43.320 - 01:49:51.900

But anyway. Kelly: When you got your instructor's rating, then what did you do? Mildred: I taught flying. Does that seem logical?

01:49:51.920 - 01:50:07.040

Kelly: At that same airport? Mildred: No, no, at Ravenswood Airport. It was a little airport west of Chicago. I knew I needed to learn, I needed to wet my feet in this instructing business, so I

01:50:07.100 - 01:50:23.100

went over there and they needed an instructor. I instructed there for I don't know how long, six months maybe. Their airplanes were in terrible condition. There had been no new planes made.

01:50:24.380 - 01:50:38.900

One of the two that owned it had an A&E license, but he didn't want to have to go work out. Things like a student came out and went to step in the airplane, and the floorboard was so rotted he went right through to the ground. I couldn't help but laugh.

01:50:38.920 - 01:50:54.460

He looked so silly. These are things that aren't good. I did learn. I learned a lot.

01:50:54.620 - 01:51:04.100

Kelly: When did you decide to join the Air Force? At what stage? Reid: Oh, that's way ahead. Kelly: Oh, okay.

01:51:04.500 - 01:51:15.440

Well, let's take it one step at a time. Reid: Yes, quite a ways forward of there. I want to tell you something that happened there because it's interesting. This other pilot came and I tried to tell him about the airplanes and he wouldn't pay

01:51:15.580 - 01:51:28.480

any attention to me, I was just a woman, until he took off in this plane, immediately had a forced landing on an onion field across the way. And he came back over looking like a great cloud, you know, and said, "Tell me about the rest of the airplanes."

01:51:29.360 - 01:51:51.800

See, it was a kind of a victory for a woman in a way, you know, because I gave him some good advice about that airplane. needed to be fixed. Anyway, it wasn't until about two weeks later on a Sunday that this old woman came out. She looked pretty shabby, and she wanted to take a ride. He took her

01:51:51.840 - 01:52:15.580

up for a ride. They got up about 1,500 feet, and she just opened the door. She was side by side. He opened the door, and he got a hold of her coat, but he couldn't hang on. ended up with the coat and she and she committed suicide. We got down, let's tell you about one of these fellows, his name was Maury Fishman. We got into the

01:52:15.640 - 01:52:32.580

building and and to call the police and he said, "I want to tell you two something. Don't ever take anybody for a ride again if they don't pay in advance." Can you believe that? Isn't that the most incredible reaction?

01:52:34.410 - 01:52:46.560

Did you ever know her problem? No, no, nobody knew. She was a nobody, I guess. Terrible, terrible thing, but he was really shaken from it.

01:52:51.200 - 01:53:04.060

From there, I heard that there was a man over at Pell Walkie who was looking for a woman instructor. So I hopped in my car and went straight over there. He was from Davenport, Iowa.

01:53:04.920 - 01:53:15.820

His name was Fuzzy Carlton. He had Carlton Flying Service. He was a gambler and he was something else. He was a character.

01:53:17.180 - 01:53:30.140

We talked for five minutes, and he hired me. I got about three times as much money. I think I got $75 a week or something like that, which was a huge amount of money then, to me anyway.

01:53:32.080 - 01:53:54.980

I went to Iowa, and I taught out there for—golly, I guess it was about a year, but when I tried to fit every place in, I couldn't. Out there, after I taught there for a while, I had an offer. There was an air show going to form, and they wanted somebody to fly a glider.

01:53:57.620 - 01:54:08.580

They said, "Why don't you get a glider? If you get a glider, you can join the air show and just do some little acrobatics in it and that." I thought about it, and I thought that sounded like fun.

01:54:10.660 - 01:54:39.820

I went up to Minnesota and I bought a LK-10A. I've forgotten who manufactured it. This glider surplus, and it was a sailplane, had beautiful long wingspan and fabric. The mechanic from our field, it was called Cram Field in Davenport, Iowa, the mechanic

01:54:39.820 - 01:54:58.240

flew me up there in a PT-17, I think it was, and it towed me back. I got in this thing. I'd never been in one before. I just held the controls in neutral, and I took off.

01:54:58.320 - 01:55:12.220

I looked down, and he couldn't get off, because I was pulling his tail up, I guess. I dove down, and he took off, because I had no idea how to do this. We flew back to Cram Field. It was an easy thing to fly, there was nothing to it.

01:55:13.960 - 01:55:32.480

Then I discovered that it took two other people to help me to fly it. I made a deal. He had his private license and the office girl had her private license. I said, "We can take turns flying it, because I need one of you to tow the plane and one

01:55:32.540 - 01:55:46.460

somebody to run the wing." We started flying it. I guess I had about four or five hours in it, and I'd been up doing loops and things, just feeling it out.

01:55:48.830 - 01:56:01.920

I had a parachute on, and I came in and landed. It was late, late afternoon. It was time for her, the office girl, to go up and just climb up and make a few turns and come in and land.

01:56:02.880 - 01:56:13.520

I threw the parachute out on the ground. He towed her up. She was up there. I saw her starting to do like—I thought, "My God, is she going to do a loop?"

01:56:13.520 - 01:56:27.800

She started in a little dive, and the wing came off right at the fuselage. It was terrible. I was just devastated. I felt guilty.

01:56:27.960 - 01:56:52.040

I had taken the parachute out. The FAA, then the CAA came out, and it had dry rot in the wing. It had been inspected and licensed, just re-licensed by a mechanic. But the inspection plates were so far apart that they showed me a piece of the wing.

01:56:53.080 - 01:57:04.920

If you took a pencil and just dotted like that, that's all you could see from the outside. Totally dry rotted inside. So, I just had to get out of there.

01:57:06.920 - 01:57:16.660

I couldn't stand to be around there. I felt guilty. Kelly: Did you stop flying for a while? Davidson: No.

01:57:19.280 - 01:57:28.360

Yes, I did. My mother told me I got home. I had this picture in my mind, and I could not get over it. She said that I didn't speak for two weeks.

01:57:29.170 - 01:57:41.640

I didn't go outside. All I could see was that airplane coming up. You can't imagine what that's like. And then to get there, thinking maybe there was a haystack or something, it was terrible.

01:57:43.640 - 01:57:54.680

So then after a couple of weeks, I got in my car and I drove down to—I wanted to get out of there. I drove down to—where did I go? I tried to get a job at Amarillo, and they didn't have any.

01:57:54.800 - 01:58:12.340

But there was a little farmer-rancher east of there, had a little airport. All his friends wanted to learn how to fly, so he hired me. I would fly him around so he could look at his fields, and we would land here and land there.

01:58:12.340 - 01:58:32.000

He was really neat. And then, I don't know, I wasn't there a terribly long time. I met some—how did I meet him? This guy came down from Beaver, Oklahoma, which is a town that has one paved road leading

01:58:32.060 - 01:58:41.980

into it in the Oklahoma Panhandle. He said, "I'm looking for an instructor." I said, "Well, you just found one. You want me to come up there?"

01:58:41.980 - 01:58:52.220

He said, "Yes." I went up there, and I had a room in this house. This man wanted to learn how to fly. It turns out, "Oh, there's my blue bird.

01:58:52.240 - 01:59:14.960

He's eating the corn. He wanted to learn to fly. The point was that this guy never even—what is that that you do? You drill wheat.

01:59:15.710 - 01:59:29.540

I don't know it. I guess you pound it into the ground some way to grow it. They raised winter wheat, so it was fall. He was so crazy about airplanes, his father told him he had to get busy.

01:59:30.400 - 01:59:49.940

He hadn't even planted his wheat yet. He was out there in a snowstorm drilling wheat with the headlights on his tractor. These people were wealthy, but his father just cut him off because he said, "You're going to stay out there and you're going to do that."

01:59:49.940 - 02:00:07.620

What it ended up with is he couldn't pay me. This was after I'd been there like maybe two months. When I got there, they invited me to this dance in somebody's living room and the guys didn't even take their hats off.

02:00:08.120 - 02:00:28.720

And they're stomping around. And I thought, "My God, this is a strange place." Anyway, this airport is just sitting out there with this little shack on it, and I had to run the tractor with this log behind it to redo the runways after it would get bad.

02:00:29.920 - 02:00:46.160

I liked driving the tractor. I thought, "Look at me, I'm on a tractor, a great big tractor." He said, "I'm sorry I can't pay you. I only pay you part of what I owe you."

02:00:46.160 - 02:00:57.500

So I thought, "Well, what am I going to do?" Because I had to pay for my room. So I said to this man, "I'll give you free flying lessons and trade for the room."

02:00:57.500 - 02:01:11.880

Then I went to the restaurant where I ate, and this is a small town, they had boardwalks and all that kind of stuff. I said, "Your daughter wants to learn how to fly, I'll trade flying lessons for food."

02:01:14.340 - 02:01:32.880

I didn't have any money. Then I said to him, to the guy that owned the—I can't remember his name—I said, "I want to go home for Christmas and I don't have any money." And he said, "Oh, well, take the BT-13.

02:01:33.240 - 02:01:44.460

Fill it up and go take it." Take it. Because he loved the BT-13. I got out my computer, tried to figure if I was going to make it on a tank of gas.

02:01:44.560 - 02:01:56.920

What is it, 120 gallons? That costs a lot of money to fill it up, I thought. I figured if I had a strong enough tailwind, I could make it to Chicago from Beaver. I filled it up.

02:01:56.970 - 02:02:14.460

I mean, it was just slopping out of the wings. I sat in the office and I watched the weather reports until I saw—it was getting real close to Christmas, until I saw this strong wind out of the west. I got in, climbed up.

02:02:15.080 - 02:02:35.840

It was afternoon by then, mid to late afternoon. It was getting dark when I got to Kansas City. I looked at those gauges and I thought, "Oh, God, Ann." I had it leaned out so that the engine was up to the red line, because I had the gas

02:02:35.900 - 02:02:45.480

leaned out so much. I was flying pretty high. So I kept flying, and finally I ran out of gas in one tank, and I looked at the other tank, and it was pitch black.

02:02:46.500 - 02:02:55.900

And I'm looking for Pell Walkie Airport, and I'm praying, even though I don't believe in anything. I'm praying. And I thought, "What will I do if it quits?"

02:02:55.900 - 02:03:07.560

And I thought, "The parachute's current. I can't land it in the pitch black. I'll jump out." I'm ashamed of this story.

02:03:08.520 - 02:03:29.560

Anyway, I made it to Pell Walkie and I had an old boyfriend there who said that he would buy me a tank of gas. When it got up to 120 gallons, he was a pilot, on the meter of the truck he said, "Oh, shit, you're something else."

02:03:29.560 - 02:03:40.360

I was embarrassed because I didn't have any gas left. Kelly: But you made it in. Did you spend that Christmas with your mom? And was your sister there also?

02:03:41.560 - 02:03:49.340

It was a memorable Christmas. Reid: Oh, yes. Once I got over the fright. Kelly: Right.

02:03:49.720 - 02:04:04.100

And then how did you get back? Reid: Oh, he filled it up and then I had some money to get gas. Was the airport near where you lived when you landed? Oh, at Pell Walkie?

02:04:04.180 - 02:04:12.360

Uh-huh. No, it was about seven miles, maybe eight. Was he there to pick you up and take you home? Uh-huh.

02:04:12.840 - 02:04:25.500

He came out when I called. I didn't tell anybody in advance. I thought if I have to jump out, I don't want them looking for me at Pell Walkie and sending out a--oh, God.

02:04:26.200 - 02:04:35.140

It was the stupidest thing I ever did, and I've done some stupid things. Kelly: Right. But then you went back to the airport and did you keep working there for a while? Litzinger: Yeah.

02:04:35.280 - 02:04:51.880

Well, then he said they were going to repossess the aircraft, and that I should take one and go find a job. And of course, I still didn't have—but I hardly had any money. And so I took the plane and I flew out to Albuquerque, and I looked for a job here and

02:04:51.880 - 02:05:02.460

there wasn't any. I called up Santa Fe, nothing. bad over the telephone, try to get a job anyway. I decided I didn't have any money to spend the night, I better get back.

02:05:04.520 - 02:05:20.780

The tailwind that I had flown out here on had switched and was a headwind. No it was still a tailwind, I mean the tailwind was still blowing, but boy was it a strong wind. So I got out east of here.

02:05:21.740 - 02:05:35.720

I'd forgotten what town it was on Old 66. I realized I wasn't going to make it. It was still daylight. I had no lights on the plane either.

02:05:35.800 - 02:05:45.660

It was a cub. So I tried to land on 66 so I could pull off the side. Every time I tried, a car showed up. I couldn't land there.

02:05:45.800 - 02:06:05.460

I knew there was a junction just beyond this town where the road went south. I landed right there and taxied back to 66th. This farmer gave me some rope and I tied it to the fence. Then he gave me a ride up to this motel.

02:06:06.860 - 02:06:22.520

I told him I could not pay for a room, but if they would trust me, I would like to stay the night. And they did, and I paid them when I got a job. Oh, yes, so—

02:06:22.520 - 02:06:35.140

I mean the hotel. No, I landed on the highway. The next morning, he not only drove me back to my plane, but he filled up a five-gallon can with gas, so I'd have lots of gas to get home.

02:06:35.550 - 02:06:50.340

A sweet thing to do. And then he stopped the traffic for me, so I could take off. So I went home for the winter. I think I couldn't get a job.

02:06:50.800 - 02:06:59.620

I went back to Evanston. Kelly: What year are we talking about? Reid: I haven't the foggiest notion. Kelly: As long as you keep it kind of chronological.

02:06:59.620 - 02:07:16.220

Reid: Yeah, it's going to be chronological. So I went back there, and I saw this thing in the paper. I wanted a job not downtown, if I could help it, for the winter. I saw this ad in the paper for somebody who was good at mathematics for this job.

02:07:17.200 - 02:07:28.720

I called him up and said I was. It was in Evanston. It was A.C. Nelson and Company.

02:07:31.120 - 02:07:41.200

I sat at this machine. You didn't need to know mathematics. I sat at this machine like they have in a library, only this was a tape that was in there.

02:07:43.880 - 02:07:58.680

Each minute from whatever time the station went on the air until it went off, it had a little blip, each station. So if they turned to a certain channel on TV, it showed it, and it showed how long they were on it and so forth.

02:07:59.300 - 02:08:12.800

So we'd run these tapes, and there were two other girls and myself. I don't know what was the matter with them. They weren't very smart, I guess, because I could run it in no time. I get through doing that, and I was bored.

02:08:13.300 - 02:08:39.580

I'd walk over and see what somebody else was doing, because I thought it was interesting. I learned all the jobs there just because I was bored. The next thing that happened was they said, "We need somebody to go to New York, to Long Island, because these machines are jamming and we need somebody to go with the man who

02:08:39.620 - 02:08:46.260

knows all about it." I don't know what he was. Anyway, he was an engineer of some kind. So I went with him and I just played the tapes.

02:08:46.580 - 02:09:02.460

That's all I had to do, was do that for him. I went to stay with my uncle, the rich one. My aunt and all the rest of them were gone. I had a lovely time.

02:09:02.460 - 02:09:24.420

He had a Japanese houseboy, and his was the top floor, so there was a place outside and everything, very posh. I stayed with him on weekends, and I just had a wonderful time in New York. That time, I had some money.

02:09:27.420 - 02:09:48.360

Then I went back to Chicago, to Evanston, and I said, "I'm going to quit. I'm going to go back down to Texas and fly." They said to me, "The last one that was here that quit, and we begged him not to, is now a milkman because he couldn't get a job. I said, "Well, that's not going to happen

02:09:48.420 - 02:10:21.140

to me," so I quit. I went back down there and I worked. I don't know, I went to Littlefield And that's where I learned to crop dust. I was there to teach flying, but I saw these dusters. And so I said to this man, "Can I dust too?"

02:10:21.400 - 02:10:35.500

He wasn't the owner of the aircraft or manager of the field. He was a mechanic there. He had two men dusting for him. I said, "I could dust.

02:10:35.900 - 02:10:41.020

I'd be good at it. Why don't you let me dust?" He said, "No, I'm a Mormon. Never hire a woman."

02:10:42.220 - 02:11:01.040

I said, "Well, that's stupid, but anyway." He was a nice enough guy. One day he said to me, we were sitting out in front of the hangar, and he said to me—I was teaching flying there. He said to me, "You're a good pilot, aren't you?"

02:11:01.160 - 02:11:24.600

He said, "Yeah, I think I am. I've got quite a few hours." I said, "You got a commercial license?" "No." He said, "That's why I can't crop dust." He said, "I don't make much money because these guys get it all, flying my planes." I said, "Why don't you get your commercial license?" He said, "I can't pass the test because I can't take instruction." I said,

02:11:24.600 - 02:11:42.100

"What do you mean by that?" He said, "Well, a lot of people have tried," he said, "but I just can't take instruction." So a few days later, I said to him, "If I can get you where you can get your commercial license, will you hire me to fly the crop dusters?"

02:11:42.140 - 02:11:54.800

He said, "Oh, sure." "Okay," I said. So I started on the ground teaching him. Then I got a pad and I'd write down what he was doing wrong to talk to him on the ground.

02:11:55.160 - 02:12:09.020

But also, I said to him, "I'm not going to say a word to you in this airplane. I'll shake the stick and you got it. Then I'll shake the stick and I got it, and we'll go through the maneuvers." We did that for, I don't know, ten days.

02:12:10.180 - 02:12:21.320

I said, "You're ready." He went over and he came back and he snap rode over the field. I thought, "I'm going to be a crop duster pilot." I was.

02:12:22.900 - 02:12:37.120

He had these red and white stripe dusters, and he had this ad, "Watch for the stripe dusters," and all that. He was a good pilot. I guess we'd been dusting together about maybe ten days.

02:12:40.180 - 02:12:59.440

We're down near the end of a field, and you know you fly, a lot of the farmers don't think you're dusting right, unless we called it, God, I can't think of it, topping the cotton. Because if they don't see cotton leaves, they think you weren't low enough, and they're

02:12:59.660 - 02:13:06.600

stupid. I said, "If you go up in the air, you could see it's heavy here and light out toward the wings. You don't want us that low."

02:13:06.600 - 02:13:18.500

and they thought it was just because we were afraid. So, so, anyway, we're going across this field and we're right on, we're right on the cotton.

02:13:19.020 - 02:13:28.040

And I saw something fly by, and I turned like that and it was his propeller with a piece of the crankshaft. And I looked ahead, you know, and there was a fence coming up

02:13:28.080 - 02:13:41.520

and I thought, uh-oh, he's gonna get it. And smartest thing I ever saw. He didn't wait until it stalled out. He just dove down, hit the gear on the ground,

02:13:41.980 - 02:13:54.960

and went over the fence and pancaked right in. Didn't hurt the plane at all. I thought, that's a smart guy. And anyway, so I flew with him that season.

02:13:55.120 - 02:14:05.580

And I really loved doing it. And you do it early in the morning, just at dawn, so that by the time the students come out, you're through. It worked out fine for me.

02:14:11.060 - 02:14:22.200

Have I been to Clovis yet? I went to Clovis, New Mexico then. I never stayed anyplace but for maybe a season or something. I was like an aerial tramp.

02:14:22.960 - 02:14:38.660

I just went from place to place. I had no more than I could fit in my car. I went to Clovis to teach. There I had a funny experience.

02:14:38.720 - 02:14:57.820

They were all on the GI Bill. This one fellow that was kind of the ringleader of the group, the man that owned the field said to him—I was sitting in the office—"You haven't taken any dual instruction, and I can't tell you when, and you've got nothing left but dual on the GI Bill."

02:14:57.820 - 02:15:12.000

He said, "So, you're going to go fly with Ann." he looks over at me, "I'm going to fly with her," and he said, "Either you're going to fly with her or you're going to get off of this field." So he was a drudge.

02:15:12.640 - 02:15:24.660

We got out and got in the plane, and he went up, and he's doing this, and he's being, "Stop it!" He's being really smarty. So we had kind of some lessons and came back down.

02:15:25.440 - 02:15:45.320

The next time he came out, he looked at me and he said, "I want to fly over to Amarillo and get some liquor." Of course, that was against the rules. I thought, "How am I ever going to get around this guy?" I said, "Okay, we'll go." It's only about 50 miles over there, I think, 60 maybe.

02:15:47.000 - 02:16:10.240

"Oh, no, it's not time." We started for Amarillo. We landed, and he bought six packs of beer and a bunch of stuff, put it in the baggage compartment, and he drunk one beer.

02:16:12.200 - 02:16:32.040

I didn't say anything. We got in the plane, and I said, "I guess I better fly back, since you've had a drink." So I took off, and there was a headwind, and I climbed only to about 300 feet, something like that, to keep below maybe 200.

02:16:34.220 - 02:16:50.240

I realized my opportunity when he said to me, "What's the matter? Scared to fly any lower?" I said, "No, I'm not." We went down, and I started topping every crop that came along, going over fences like

02:16:50.320 - 02:17:00.300

that. Then I looked ahead. There's a wire across the field, and there's a fence. I looked at it, and I knew I could make it through there, because we'd done that sort

02:17:00.300 - 02:17:15.000

of thing. Just as I went over the fence and under the wire, he screamed and put his head like this, because he thought we were going to crash. When we came out the other side, he was white, white, white as anything.

02:17:15.520 - 02:17:27.100

He was frightened out of his mind, this big guy. And he said, "Oh, I don't feel good." And I went, "Phew," like this and landed in this turn row. And I said, "You feel better?"

02:17:27.120 - 02:17:41.440

And he got out and threw up. And I knew I had him. I never told anybody he threw up, and I know he was very pleased that I didn't do that. We got back there and all his friends are out there at the airport, these other GIs,

02:17:41.600 - 02:17:55.260

and he said, "I want you to know this is the goddamnedest woman pilot I ever flew with. She's terrific." And then I went in, they invited me to go to the VFW and have a drink with them. And I never had more trouble there.

02:17:57.000 - 02:18:17.780

Those things happen because you're a woman. They never do quite believe it until you show that you're better than they are. Then lots of those things happened. I went to Hobbs, and it's an old Air Force base.

02:18:18.060 - 02:18:32.400

They had big, long paved runways. They'd been flying B-17s, B-24s out of there. Maybe even—I don't know at all. Anyway, the towers there and the whole thing, nice field.

02:18:34.260 - 02:18:51.980

They were doing a lot of crop dusting, too. I started out just instructing there, and then went to the crop dusting along with it. I had this student, he was an oil field worker. Hobbs is all oil, and it's a miserable place.

02:18:54.420 - 02:19:19.820

Like West Texas, not much around there except oil wells and stinky smells. This oil field worker came out after work, and we went up and it was time for him to learn stalls and spins. I had this theory that if you're not afraid, they can't be afraid or they won't act afraid

02:19:20.180 - 02:19:36.580

anyway. I had this way. I'd do a spin and I'd sing that phrase from that old Black Magic that goes, "Down and down we go round and round we go in a spin loving that spin that I'm in under

02:19:36.680 - 02:20:02.180

that old black magic called love and so it's fun because then I wanted to know you know but not with this one anyway he was a little nervous and I said look if you don't feel good ever you just tell me we won't do it we'll stop right there. But you know how men are." Then I said, "Okay, I want you to do a spin. If

02:20:02.180 - 02:20:25.960

you get stuck, I'll help you with it, okay? All right." We do this spin, and I said, "Okay, now pull out." As he pulled out, he opened the window and I'm in the back seat now and Aaron, Aaronica, whatever they call that, anyway, and he leaned his head out and threw up and it hit me straight in the face.

02:20:31.220 - 02:20:42.580

That's the nearest I ever came to throwing up. I did this and wiped my eyes and I kept saying, "Don't think, don't think, just get this airplane on the ground. Don't think, don't think."

02:20:42.580 - 02:20:54.820

I got it on the ground and in the men's room were these showers, you know, they've been a military base. I just went in and cranked those things full on with my flying suit on. Oh, God, it was horrible.

02:20:55.820 - 02:21:02.140

Kelly: Did you ever fly with him again? Litz: Yes. He didn't come out for about a month, though. He was so embarrassed.

02:21:07.080 - 02:21:17.220

But he learned. Oh, God. happen. Kelly: Then you left there and went someplace else.

02:21:17.350 - 02:21:38.880

Lowry: No, I didn't. I was there for a while, because I started crop dusting then. This guy that owned the crop dusting business there, Virgil Olmsted—think of my remembering his name—had at one time been the light plane acrobatic champion of the world.

02:21:40.020 - 02:21:58.980

He had his struts, he was an A&E mechanic too, and he had the struts, had supports inside them some way. Instead of a carburetor, he had—what do you call it? You know, so you can fly upside down, it keeps on—I've forgotten the name of it.

02:21:59.340 - 02:22:11.680

Anyway, he didn't have a carburetor. It squirts the gas into the cylinders. Fuel injection. And so he could do acrobatics on it.

02:22:12.160 - 02:22:27.460

I saw him come down like this, go under the wires, and circle back under again. And I thought my heart would stop. Think of that. To do a loop without losing altitude?

02:22:29.860 - 02:22:36.820

Well anyway, he did it. And I was dumbfounded. Dumbfounded. Just, well, anyway.

02:22:37.040 - 02:23:01.020

Kelly: Didn't teach you how to do it, though. I didn't want to learn how to do that. I don't have a death wish. I really don't. It may sound like it, but I don't. I had a couple of things happen to me there. We would go wherever the bugs were. They'd call up and there'd be some little town over maybe 30, 40, 50 miles away.

02:23:01.700 - 02:23:28.620

All the duster planes would converge on it from different places. Whoever had the dust business there would provide the dust, and we'd all crop dust. There were times when we'd fly to these places, and we'd taxi into town and park the plane and tie it down, and go into town and find a room to spend the night.

02:23:31.100 - 02:23:49.220

There was no airports in this area, this one place, and we all stood in line at this gas station with the engines running. This gas station attendant out on the highway was just wild-eyed, because we were all filling up and of course the engines are going, "Drrr," and they don't like that kind of gas.

02:23:50.760 - 02:23:56.360

Anyway— Were there any other girls doing it? No, never saw one. I'm sure there are some, but I never saw one.

02:23:59.020 - 02:24:20.160

Then we went down south of El Paso, along the border. It's very strange. You come out of these hills and there's a basin there, and there's cotton. But the fields are oddly shaped, and there's a lot of trees and things there.

02:24:23.380 - 02:24:40.360

We were dusting this one field, and the high line—you know those tower-y kind of high line things that are made of metal that go cross-country. It was one of those when it's slanting across that field. The field was longer than it was wide, and there was sort of an embankment over here,

02:24:40.400 - 02:25:00.600

so it was an odd thing. I was flying under the wires back and forth. What you do is, if there's wires or anything, you look there, you look at the wire, and When it's right here, you push the stick forward because you balloon some and you go

02:25:00.760 - 02:25:18.400

over it. There was a tree in the center of this field, just a pretty tree, but it wasn't pretty to me because I had to come in over the wires instead of going under. I looked out, and now they're slanting like this.

02:25:18.540 - 02:25:33.740

I looked out and when I saw the wire here, I forgot that the wires were slanting like that. I shoved the nose right down through the highline wires. I tripped on the lower wire and broke the top wire.

02:25:33.820 - 02:25:48.660

It was just the biggest sheet of blue flame you ever saw in your life. I thought, "I'm dead." But I wasn't. I went into the field and I got the stick back some before I hit.

02:25:49.560 - 02:26:02.420

But I never wore the shoulder straps, none of us did, because you're in and out of the plane. I dented the instrument panel with my head. Oh, I looked a mess.

02:26:05.880 - 02:26:33.340

I got a cut across my knee from the gas tank there. Kelly: Did it tear the plane up? No, it just did in one wingtip. And then, of course, the gear was disfigured some, and the carburetor was bent off of it.

02:26:35.660 - 02:26:52.580

I don't know how they got the plane out of the field and back to the airport, but they did, somebody did. I went around this town, this little, well, the farmer came out. I got out of the, I was trying to get out of the plane because, you know, I was afraid

02:26:52.660 - 02:27:09.440

it was on fire, because that dust, DDT and sulfur just, and so my legs were going, and I thought, I can't get out, I can't get out. Well, of course, the seatbelt was closed. So I crawled out and got up and ran, because I thought that was fire, I mean smoke, but

02:27:09.460 - 02:27:20.520

it was dust. I ran away, and then I stood there and I felt funny, and I put my hand up to my head, which was way out here. Then I sat down, and then I didn't feel good, and I lay down.

02:27:22.520 - 02:27:44.300

It may have knocked me out for a minute or something, because I was sort of dazed. Then a plane flew over, and I waved at him because they wanted to see if I was okay. I lay down there in the cotton, it was so nice just to lie there, and look at that blue sky up through that cotton,

02:27:45.220 - 02:27:57.240

and I thought, "Oh God, I hope I'm going to be all right." And about then I heard this motor. It was a Sunday morning and the farmer was there, and he'd gotten out of his truck and he was down around the plain,

02:27:57.320 - 02:28:08.200

hunting through the foliage, trying to find me. And I never even said anything. I just stood there, kind of, you know, how you feel when you knocked yourself out.

02:28:08.940 - 02:28:21.000

And then all of a sudden he looked up and he looked directly at me and he said, "My God, you're a woman." And I said, "Yes."

02:28:22.280 - 02:28:37.880

(laughing) Stuck me in his truck and took me into this town. And there was a doctor there was a Mexican chiropractor, osteopath or something.

02:28:38.940 - 02:28:48.820

And he said he-- and his office was out back of his house, and I'll never forget-- and I couldn't sit up because I felt like I was gonna pass out. So, I'm lying there looking up the nostrils

02:28:48.820 - 02:29:02.740

of this man I've never seen before, the farmer. And finally, this guy comes out and we go into his office. He's got a toothpick sticking out of his mouth. And I looked around his office and, you know,

02:29:02.860 - 02:29:13.840

just didn't see any particular mechanisms. So he said, "You lie down on that table." I didn't, he felt around, he said, "Well, if you have a concussion, you'll be all right."

02:29:15.740 - 02:29:28.680

He said, "But if you fractured your skull," and I said, "Well, which is it?" Oh, he said, "I don't know, I don't have an x-ray machine." (laughing)

02:29:29.820 - 02:29:42.140

He had these pills and he went over to the table and he cut them into pieces and he said, "Here, you take a piece of this." So many hours or something. Those were the pills I had.

02:29:43.180 - 02:29:55.500

The farmer drove me on down to this motel where I was staying, and the other crop dusters were staying. I got up there in my room and I went to bed. They had rooms downstairs, I was upstairs.

02:29:58.380 - 02:30:18.680

After a while, I thought, "Gee, here I am all by myself." I got up and I went downstairs and I went into this room and lay on this bed. I knew they'd be in there playing poker. They said, "How you doing?"

02:30:18.680 - 02:30:36.580

I said, "Oh, my head hurts and I got a concussion." One of them said, "I remember my first concussion." They all had had a concussion, one, two, three, something like that. They said, "We're going to fix you up.

02:30:36.640 - 02:30:55.260

We're going to help. You're going to have the cure this evening." That evening, we got in this so-called car with some flat boards, and the headlights were BT or AT6 switches to turn the headlights on.

02:30:55.400 - 02:31:09.600

We sat on these boards and rode over to—it was right on the Mexican border—went across the bridge. They said, "Now you just drink as much as you can drink, and you'll feel better right away."

02:31:10.200 - 02:31:30.100

That was their cure. So I bought a pair of dark glasses and then the guy from the airport up there, what did I say his name was? Anyway, the man that had the flying service called and he said, "What's wrong with

02:31:30.140 - 02:31:39.020

the airplane?" And I said, "Aren't you going to ask me if I'm all right?" And he said, "Are you all right?" And I said, "Yes."

02:31:39.020 - 02:31:56.640

"Well, what's wrong with the plane?" So he sent a truck down with all the parts. So the guy from the field, the truck driver and myself sat out—this wasn't a real airport—sat out there, pounded out with rocks, we pounded out the cowling.

02:31:57.640 - 02:32:12.300

And then we—oh, God. A new carburetor, and I didn't know a damn thing about how you regulate a carburetor. I had to land about every hour to get gas. And then the wingtip, we didn't know what to do about the wingtip.

02:32:12.420 - 02:32:24.700

So finally I said, "Did you bring some fabric and some dope?" "Yes." So we found a two-by-four, two pieces. We cut it into two pieces and put it so we had a square wingtip on one wing.

02:32:25.160 - 02:32:44.180

Because if I had left the fabric off, all the fabric would have come off the wing. So it was really an odd-looking airplane and new gear. I got in and I flew it back up there. It was about a three-hour flight, I think, something like that.

02:32:45.980 - 02:33:01.040

I landed once at a gas station for gas, because I needed gas all the time. At this other airport, where I landed on the way down, this guy came out and he looked at me and he said, "You've been crop dusting, right?" "Yes."

02:33:02.320 - 02:33:23.880

Oh, it was funny. I got there back to Hobbs and the man that owned it, Virgil, was outside with an airplane. I thought, "Now he's going to say something." I was really all belligerent as hell as I taxied in.

02:33:24.740 - 02:33:34.360

He turned around and he had the biggest black eye and swollen head you ever saw. I thought, "There! You did it too, didn't you?" He never said a word about my accident.

02:33:35.900 - 02:34:01.100

Kelly: Then from Hobbs, where did you go? Reid: From Hobbs, I went to Santa Fe. I got a job teaching for Charlie Boyd up there, Boyd Aeroservice, at the old municipal airport. And it's a different way of teaching flying at 7,000 feet as it is at sea level.

02:34:02.560 - 02:34:25.220

Boy, we had people come in, there was a boneyard of aircraft that stalled out, you know, coming in high thinking that they could just float, and there is no float. So, you know, you teach them differently than you do anyplace else. Who would you mostly teach, the young people?

02:34:25.600 - 02:34:40.480

Yeah, GI, a lot of GI. I forgot one thing up there. Oh, but I can't fit it in. It was in Santa Fe, but was I there twice teaching?

02:34:41.360 - 02:35:04.320

Well anyway, these two guys that were parachutists in World War II, what did they call them? or paratroops in World War II, came to me and said, "We'd like you to fly with our air show." I have the program here, it was called Hells Angels Air and Ground Show.

02:35:04.560 - 02:35:14.300

I said, "Yes, I'd love to. What do I do?" Well, boy, what we didn't do. Kelly: What kind of airplane were you flying?

02:35:14.320 - 02:35:31.120

a cub and they had a BT. But what we did, well one of the things, I did crazy flying and all I did was make every mistake a student makes. It was so easy, people were gasping.

02:35:32.700 - 02:35:48.280

What I did when I was in Iowa, I mean this is what we did for fun, Fuzzy Carlton didn't care. We test flew all the aircraft first thing in the morning. The whole field was this luscious grass, thick, heavy grass.

02:35:49.220 - 02:36:05.960

And I take that little Leronka Champion, I just barely get takeoff speed, lay the wing on the ground and make a 360 and never leave the ground with that wing. Isn't that amazing? And he never said anything.

02:36:08.220 - 02:36:23.000

We flew crazy like that every morning when we got in those planes, just anything. Well anyway, I'm really good at things like that, things you're not supposed to do. I've always been good at. Kelly: So you did these air shows?

02:36:23.180 - 02:36:38.020

McIntire: We only did three air shows before we went broke, because people just come in around where they're supposed to go. "No, darling." People would get in anyway, and there didn't seem to be anybody trying to stop them, except

02:36:38.100 - 02:36:46.540

the one here in Albuquerque. There was an airport just right out on Carlisle. Of course, it's been gone for a thousand years. This is a long time ago.

02:36:49.060 - 02:37:16.880

One of the things we did—oh, the ground show part was, it was a girl who rode a motorcycle through a flaming thing, and she'd ride it up in the air off a truck thing, over the top and back down, a little blonde, you know. And she wasn't the wife, but the girlfriend of one of the guys. And this one thing, they said, "What we're going to do," and the

02:37:17.040 - 02:37:33.600

first place we were going to try it out was Albuquerque, "We're going to do a car-to-plane transfer. We're going to use a convertible, and you drop a little rope ladder and pick up somebody and I said, "They'd have to be going awfully fast, because the weight of the person."

02:37:33.600 - 02:37:38.160

"Oh, don't worry about it. It'll be all right." I thought, "Oh, well." They advertised it.

02:37:40.040 - 02:37:54.720

I started across this field and the first time I tried it, it didn't break the windshield, but it didn't work in time. I went back around again and they went back down to the end of the field. This time he grabbed the ladder.

02:37:54.980 - 02:38:08.020

This is one of these two crazies. He grabbed the ladder and he got on it. I had full throttle and I could not get him up. I said, I'm yelling at him, "Get up here."

02:38:08.020 - 02:38:30.640

I could see the fence at the end of the field and I said, "You're going to die." Meanwhile he's coming just so slow up that ladder and that poor little cub just was in agony. know, 5,000 feet here, it just didn't, and it was just, he just, he just got in the cockpit

02:38:30.860 - 02:38:37.600

when we came to the fence. And I said, "I'm never, ever going to do that again. I don't want to kill you. I'm just never going to do that.

02:38:38.780 - 02:38:52.200

Never." Well, I think he was a little, yeah, thinking a little bit that maybe that was true because we were dragging on the ground until he got in. And oh, that was a terrible experience.

02:38:52.300 - 02:39:06.360

God, I'm getting nervous from all of my wild writings. Jesus. Well, anyway, I'm too old for this now. - When you finished there, where did you move on to?

02:39:08.720 - 02:39:17.680

- I was sitting out in front of the hangar and thinking, I'm never gonna see the world. I'm never gonna see a damn thing except New Mexico and West Texas

02:39:17.680 - 02:39:27.300

if I don't do something. And I remembered I had that reserve commission as a first lieutenant. And so— How had you gotten that?

02:39:28.260 - 02:39:32.860

They offered it to all of us. Didn't they offer it to you? Sure they did. Yeah, but I didn't accept it.

02:39:32.880 - 02:39:35.040

Well, I did. Okay. Yeah. Good.

02:39:35.760 - 02:39:51.600

So, just for chance, because you didn't have to do anything. So I thought, "Aha, I'll just take up that reserve commission and I'll get to go to any place I want. There will be all sorts of places I'll go."

02:39:51.720 - 02:40:09.200

Wrong. Anyway, I applied for active duty and I got it. The first place they sent me was Alexandria, Louisiana, the armpit hole of the world, where They looked at me and said, "We can't use you here."

02:40:09.200 - 02:40:24.860

Because they sent me to—let's see, there's Air Defense Command and then there's Tactical Air Command I was in. Since I'd never done anything but fly airplanes, they had to give me something relating to that.

02:40:25.760 - 02:40:36.640

on to headquarters, Tactical Air Command at— Kelly: Langley? Was it Langley? Rowland: Oh, no, no, no, no.

02:40:36.640 - 02:40:42.720

It was on Fort Bragg. It was that field—what is the name of the field? Did I write it down there? I think I finally remembered it.

02:40:43.620 - 02:41:05.580

Anyway, I went to the headquarters there. They wanted me to give away my AFSC, which is your service specialty, of whatever it was, a controller or something, to be in personnel. I said, "No, I'm not going to do that.

02:41:05.640 - 02:41:19.320

I don't want to be in personnel." So as punishment, they sent me—I was wearing the bar on the wrong side of my hat even. I didn't know. They sent me on temporary duty.

02:41:19.680 - 02:41:41.520

They made me the flight scheduling officer. All I did was just schedule people to fly the jets. Of course, I got numerous rides in F-80s and that. They said, "There's a major who was the commander of the WAF squadron down in South Carolina,"

02:41:41.520 - 02:41:54.540

whatever base that was in South Carolina, in the Air Force Base. "She's sick, so we're going to send you down there on temporary duty just to take care of the WAF squadron." I thought, "A WAF squadron?

02:41:55.120 - 02:42:10.060

What do I do?" I couldn't do anything except say yes. I went down there and I'm in my car sitting out in front of this huge building that these women are housed in.

02:42:11.480 - 02:42:30.960

I thought, "Oh, God, now what do I do?" I finally thought I better get in there, so I walked in and this sergeant called the ready—what do they call that room? Called them to attention, and I didn't know how you got them out of attention.

02:42:31.740 - 02:42:43.380

So I saw this sign that said "Commanding Officer" and I went in there and I slammed the door and I sat there and I thought, "Oh, Christ, now what do I do?" Well, of course, I could hear the murmurings out there. I thought he thought I was crazy.

02:42:47.080 - 02:42:57.840

After a while, there was this little knock on the door. I said, "Come in." It was the sergeant. She said, "Ma'am, did we do something wrong or something?"

02:42:57.840 - 02:43:11.860

I said, "Sergeant, sit down. I have something to tell you." When I told her, her eyes got big as saucers. She said, "Oh, oh, well, we can't let the girls know that."

02:43:11.860 - 02:43:37.020

said, "You got that right, we can't." So she said, "I'll tell you what, I'll give you a clue about everything, what to do." And so she told me what to say to get them so they wouldn't be at attention. And we went out, and then I had to have a meeting of all the WAPF. It was the biggest squadron I ever saw. There must have been 150 women

02:43:37.620 - 02:43:45.500

It was just horrible. I was leaning against the wall because my knees were shaking when I had to give this talk. I didn't know what to say.

02:43:47.660 - 02:43:58.700

Then one of them said, "Oh, we're having a GI party." I should have known. I said, "Oh, that's nice." She looked at me and the sergeant saying, "They've got to clean their rooms."

02:43:58.700 - 02:44:06.140

I said, "Oh, that's nice. Yes, nice." Well, anyway, I made it through that. I did get my first pneumonia down.

02:44:06.180 - 02:44:34.060

No, my second pneumonia there. My first one was at that other base. It's so long ago, and too many things have happened since then. I made it through that, and then they sent me to—Tindall, is it, in Florida?—to Intercept

02:44:34.060 - 02:44:57.140

controller school. We were directing fighters to intercept other aircraft, and they're going so damn fast. You're sitting there, you've got a sergeant reading off the altitude and whatever, and you're sitting there looking in the radar scope, and you're trying to direct your aircraft

02:44:57.220 - 02:45:10.000

to intercept this other one. You have to talk so damn fast, because they're going like 400 miles an hour. And you know that we get out of class and we were all so totally done in. I was the only woman in the class.

02:45:10.900 - 02:45:26.600

We just go over to the bar and sit there and get drunk. And everybody was just a total wreck from it. And then they sent me, because I was in tactical air command, they sent me, I said, "They're never going to let me be at the front line anywhere.

02:45:28.100 - 02:45:50.680

You're in tactical air command, you've got to go to this other school." went to the forward air controller school, where everything is measured in yards. You think that doesn't go across there faster than your eye can move? I don't know how anybody can do forward air controlling, but they can spot bombs,

02:45:50.900 - 02:46:10.120

spot trenches, spot anything they want like that. That's where I saw Reeves Instrument Company on that thing. We sat out on the sand in this van with this little whizzy going around. Then the pilot would fly over in his jet, and we'd pick him up and he'd run an intercept

02:46:10.260 - 02:46:35.740

with another plane or run this supposed—you'd have this map on there that this trace thing would follow his course, because you'd lock onto the plane. Then you tell him when to let the bombs go, to hit a certain trench or a certain something. We were all totally exhausted from it.

02:46:35.900 - 02:46:52.420

It's a very tense thing to do. I knew I wasn't going to do it, but I had to get through the school before I could go back. I get back up there and they said, "Oh, are you being transferred to Air Defense Command?"

02:46:52.420 - 02:47:04.520

I said, "Yes," thinking, "Oh, there's some nice bases, you know." Great Falls, Montana. Kelly: In the meantime, have you gotten a promotion? Lowry: No, no, I didn't get it until later.

02:47:05.580 - 02:47:14.840

I was stationed once over here at Kirtland. When was that? After I went through that school—later, I got over there. I began to maneuver.

02:47:15.060 - 02:47:31.500

I got to Great Falls, and I thought, "I don't like this. It's too cold and miserable up here." So I thought, "Well, I could be useful." See this thing, normally to run one of these WAF squadrons, what you were called a WAF

02:47:31.580 - 02:47:47.840

advisor, it wasn't a full-time job. And there was a shortage of women officers. So I thought, "I'm going to go to personnel and see if I can't get transferred out of here to some place like Kirtland or Oklahoma City or someplace."

02:47:47.840 - 02:48:04.340

And so this colonel, he was a full bird, and he was grouchy, and he was old, and he was mean. And I didn't know that. I went in and saluted, you know, and he asked me what I wanted.

02:48:04.500 - 02:48:18.980

First he told me to stand on that pad there in front of his desk, so I did. And then he said, "At ease," or something like that. I'd never been talked to like that before, but anyway. So he asked me what I wanted and I got out the fact I wanted to be transferred and he

02:48:19.080 - 02:48:26.400

just burst out at me. "Lieutenant, you're not going to get out." I am so smart. KG, that's it, KG.

02:48:26.920 - 02:48:40.520

I just put my thinking cap on. "Lieutenant, the only way you're going to get out of here is to die or retire. Dismissed." "Yes, sir."

02:48:40.520 - 02:48:52.000

And I left. I may have been dismissed, but I hadn't given up the idea. I went on and I worked in a control center up there. I had a crew of like twenty-seven men.

02:48:53.020 - 02:49:09.100

We had the whole border of Montana and North Dakota, and two fighter squadrons that I scrambled for when we got unidentified. Then there was a radar site along the border, then they'd take control of them. You just give them a vector and an altitude.

02:49:09.540 - 02:49:26.680

Well, of course, I didn't know that they—it was only about fifty miles to the border of Canada, something like that, I don't remember exactly. But in a jet, it's about two minutes, and I thought, "Well, they can go out there and take a look at the airplane, come back and just land."

02:49:26.680 - 02:49:40.360

Wrong. They burn so much fuel at sea level, that's the first thing that caught hell about. How did I know an F-86 burns all their fuel in twenty minutes or something at sea level? Anyway, I found that out.

02:49:41.140 - 02:49:52.500

This pilot sounded funny, and then I got called up. They should tell you that, though. I never flew jets. Kelly: How did you get back at this time?

02:49:52.700 - 02:50:15.060

McMillan: Anyway, I work in the control center, shifts. I don't know a soul on the base, because there's no other people on shifts like that. It was a SAC field, Strategic Air Command. I kept thinking about—I knew there was this shortage, so I asked for ordinary leave.

02:50:16.280 - 02:50:34.840

I drove down to Headquarters Air Defense Command in Colorado Springs to see whoever was in charge of personnel. It was a lieutenant colonel. I got up in his office and I thought, "Oh, here it goes again."

02:50:34.840 - 02:50:40.780

I told my story and he listened. He said, "That's true. We are very short." I said, "Well, I have this experience.

02:50:40.960 - 02:50:57.040

I had this big squadron down there in South Carolina." "Yes," he said, "that's a good idea." He called up the Lieutenant Colonel who was head of WAF for Air Defense Command, and she agreed with him.

02:50:57.980 - 02:51:03.080

They said, "Now, you go back there." They said, "He's a holy tear." I told them what happened. They laughed.

02:51:03.980 - 02:51:19.500

They said, "He's known all over the Air Force. God, did you go to the wrong person?" I said, "Yes, sir, I sure did." He said, "You just go back up there, mind your own business, and just don't say a word

02:51:19.700 - 02:51:34.860

to anybody that you were here." I drove back up, went back to my job, and I thought, "I never bought an overcoat because I never wanted to go anyplace where I had to have it. I bought a raincoat."

02:51:35.120 - 02:51:53.340

Here I am with my raincoat, and I'm thinking it's beginning to get cold. I'm thinking, "It's been like a month." I'm thinking, "Jesus, am I going to have to order a raincoat?" I didn't know where to order a raincoat.

02:51:54.780 - 02:52:08.500

So finally, I called up headquarters. You sit on this dais, and you can call any place in the world. We used to talk to them in Japan, every place at night. Just talk to the other controllers, just for the hell of it.

02:52:09.840 - 02:52:31.100

I called headquarters, Central Air Defense Command. I got the WAF officer there, and I said, "Where is the nearest place I can get a raincoat?" And she said, I mean a winter coat, and she said, "Well, you can get one when you get to your base."

02:52:31.100 - 02:52:40.480

I said, "Get to what base?" And she said, "You've been transferred, haven't they told you?" I said, "No." And she said, "Well, I don't understand that.

02:52:41.140 - 02:53:04.540

We sent the orders." And so I found out then that he had called everyone but God trying to stop it, and he and he knew I'd done something and he was, well his captain that worked in his office called me and said, "Ann, how did you do that?" And I said, "Do what?" And he said, "You

02:53:04.640 - 02:53:24.200

know what?" I said, "I don't know what you're talking about." And he said, "You know you've been transferred." And I said, "Transferred? Oh, wonderful! Where am I transferred to?" And he said, "You know damn well you set this up." And I said, "I didn't do anything of the kind, he said, "You can say that all day, I know better and so does the colonel

02:53:24.240 - 02:53:42.320

and he can't stop it and he's been trying for almost a week." And I said, "Poor bastard, can't stop it? Well whoopee." And so that night, oh I got to tell you this, that night they called me, I was on night

02:53:42.460 - 02:53:56.220

duty and they called and said, "We'll send somebody to relieve you if you'd like to go to the going away party for the officers club for officers who were leaving the base. I said, "Sure, I'd love to come." So they sent somebody over and I got over there.

02:53:57.120 - 02:54:08.560

Everybody's drinking and carrying on for people who were transferred. And there was this colonel and I just walked right up to him. I don't know where I got the guts. And I said, "Oh, colonel, I had a drink.

02:54:08.700 - 02:54:14.380

Did you hear the news?" And he went, "Arrgh!" Like that. And turned around and walked away.

02:54:15.240 - 02:54:43.960

I felt so good. Isn't that a wonderful thing? Well, then, I'll tell you, I got to Oklahoma City and there was a big squadron of women there. I was on duty going—we made all these trips to all the radar sites in that area to make sure they were doing—this was a training. We were checking up on all these

02:54:43.960 - 02:55:01.700

radar sites to make sure everybody was trained well. We had to fly all over that area, which we did in a smaller plane. I guess I was there about six or eight months. I'm trying to think of how I got to Kirtland.

02:55:01.800 - 02:55:13.480

I think what happened was that the WAF officer quit over there or was sent someplace, and they needed somebody right away. Who did they have to come to take my place? I don't know.

02:55:14.700 - 02:55:29.320

Anyway, the next thing I know, I'm back at Kirtland. My mother and sister and brother-in-law, everybody living in Santa Fe, so that was fine. I really liked my boss there. God, he was neat.

02:55:29.720 - 02:55:45.380

We really got along. I remember one time I had a Tampax, and I had an inside pocket in my Ike jacket. I had looked at him, and he was busy. I pulled it out of the drawer and just as I put it in, he looked up and said, "Oh,

02:55:45.580 - 02:56:01.100

in heat, hey?" He was really neat, though. I was there and I thought, "I'm going to be here for the rest of the time I'm in the Air Force, and I want to see the world."

02:56:01.580 - 02:56:21.040

I got orders to go to Germany to an aircraft control and warning squadron. My house goods were all shipped, and they canceled my orders because a woman couldn't go to an aircraft control and warning squadron, because they wouldn't have any facilities for her.

02:56:25.200 - 02:56:41.380

I was really sad. I just turned around and went back to my quarters. I picked up the phone and I called headquarters personnel for the United States Air Force in Washington.

02:56:43.180 - 02:56:57.440

I got this nice man on the phone. I don't forget what his rank was, but I told him my story. I said, "Listen, I've got this limited resource specialty and they won't let me go overseas because I'm a woman.

02:56:58.160 - 02:57:12.520

Can you do anything for me? My household goods are at the port to be shipped." He said, "You'll see what I can do. I'll call you back."

02:57:13.760 - 02:57:35.440

He didn't call me back, and he didn't call me back, and finally he called me back. He said, "How would you like to go to Paris as a protocol officer?" I said, "I'd go as a latrine officer if you just sent me." They waived the fact that I had this AFSC that was limited resource.

02:57:36.560 - 02:57:46.280

See that's what they can do in higher headquarters. It always pays. You can almost do what you want to do if you have a little guts. Go to the top.

02:57:46.920 - 02:58:06.040

They're reasonable people at the top. Unreasonable down low, totally unreasonable. So I went to Paris as a protocol officer. I learned that our Congress, that all those people are talking out of both sides of their

02:58:06.220 - 02:58:18.780

mouth at the same time. I was totally disillusioned with the way our government is run and the people who run it. Just totally disillusioned. I never known anything like it.

02:58:19.550 - 02:58:34.860

I never saw such pitter-pattering around as the Congress, especially congressmen, not so much senators. I told them that I did not go to bed with people over there, and that I did not this and that, and that I would not pimp for them.

02:58:39.440 - 02:58:58.980

We would go to lunch. I would go with this major who was my boss. We would go to lunch with these French people, and they would start bargaining over, "Okay, If we could get military rates in the summertime, we would keep so many of their floors open

02:58:59.080 - 02:59:13.440

in the wintertime at these better hotels. This is all for VIPs. Then he had this major I knew was getting a kickback from sending people to certain places and that.

02:59:15.460 - 02:59:33.140

There was just all this stuff. People come over, this congressman came over with his wife and his dog on military, and "Stop it." He always wants to EAT early, and he knows how to say it too.

02:59:40.280 - 02:59:48.460

What was I starting to tell you? Kelly: Congressman and his wife. Oh yes, and his dog. They came into the office and they said, "Here's our dog.

02:59:48.760 - 03:00:08.780

We need it someplace until we come back on a certain date and pick it up." He eats a certain kind of dog food if you'd send somebody out to the base there, because we're in downtown Paris. Then he said, "Now here's our itinerary.

03:00:08.880 - 03:00:28.520

Will you look and see what the nearest cemeteries are to our itinerary? I'm over here to inspect cemeteries." I thought every dead GI would turn over in their grave. I was just—all of that stuff, it was just blatant.

03:00:29.660 - 03:00:45.540

Somebody would come in and they'd complain that these staff cars were for business. They'd say they complained because the driver didn't know Paris, and they wanted a driver who could speak French and who knew all about the monuments and the places to see. It just went on like that.

03:00:45.560 - 03:00:59.000

It was a sea of that kind of stuff. I didn't like it. I didn't like it a damn bit. My first duty, you couldn't wear your uniform there.

03:00:59.060 - 03:01:13.720

The French don't like people in their uniforms. It offends them. So I'm wearing a black sheath dress and pearls, and my first duty was to go into the officers club, which is on the same floor, in the building that we had in downtown Paris,

03:01:14.500 - 03:01:24.340

and go in there and drink with these five generals from NATO. I said, "You want me to go in there now? It's duty hours." "Yes," he said, "that's what your duty is.

03:01:24.460 - 03:01:32.260

Go in there and be nice." So I went in there, and I was nice. I drank a bunch of drinks. And you know what?

03:01:32.560 - 03:01:50.120

When my duty hours were over with, I said, "I've enjoyed your company very much. Thank you so much for the drinks and all, and now I have to go home." And I guess I wasn't supposed to have done that, but I did it. And it was just, you know, it was a—this noise is probably annoying on that tape.

03:01:51.040 - 03:02:01.660

It was a lot of things like that. I thought of all the people who were really working hard and here, you know, "Stop it, please, Tolstoy. Are you going to go in the other room?

03:02:03.780 - 03:02:11.720

Never marry a dog. They whine when they're hungry. Probably the men do too. Stop it.

03:02:13.440 - 03:02:22.060

So anyway, I got sick over there. I didn't feel good. I think I told you something about that. I couldn't get my breath.

03:02:22.060 - 03:02:38.140

I kept feeling like I couldn't breathe. And I didn't feel like eating or anything. I was just stopping on the sidewalk. I kept complaining to the doctors, and they said, "There's nothing wrong with you."

03:02:38.260 - 03:02:53.020

I knew there was, and finally I caught this cold. I got really sick, and I was gone over a week. I didn't have a phone, because it takes about a year to get one. It took about a week before they even sent a car out to see what I was doing.

03:02:58.700 - 03:03:14.900

When I got so sick, a friend of mine called a doctor from the American Hospital who came over. He was the handsomest man I ever saw. My fever broke when he walked in.

03:03:15.060 - 03:03:31.420

He was so gorgeous. I said, "I'm sick." He said, "I can tell you're sick." He said, "I think you need to talk to somebody about that.

03:03:31.560 - 03:03:44.760

They don't sound good." I said, "Well, I've tried to talk to them, and nothing happens. They say I have an allergy." He said, "Well, whatever it is, I think you ought to get this attended to."

03:03:44.760 - 03:04:03.440

So he gave me some antibiotics or something, and I felt better. I immediately applied for leave. I got leave and I wasn't over this thing yet, but I was better. I got leave and I got on a military plane and I got home.

03:04:05.940 - 03:04:27.160

When I was walking up in New York, because you had to walk up open stairs into a constellation, to fly to New Mexico. By the time I got in that plane, and I'm shaking so from the cold, I thought it was cold in there and everybody was taking off their coats, and I thought, "I've got pneumonia

03:04:29.060 - 03:04:37.040

again." So I had to get home that time with that pneumonia. I asked, "Oh, they want you to get off the plane while they refuel." I said, "I just want to sleep.

03:04:37.480 - 03:04:46.700

Could I just stay on? I come from Europe." She said, "Yes." I got home and I turned myself in at the hospital at Kirtland.

03:04:54.340 - 03:05:12.960

After the pneumonia subsided some, they began talking to me. They drew this picture of lungs and these little bubble things in them. Then they went like that and said, "I think maybe they'll need to do that." I said, "To my lungs?"

03:05:12.960 - 03:05:30.980

They said, "Yes, I think so." They air-vacced me to Fitzsimmons. Then they decided, after all these tests, to wait and see if it stabilized. They said, "We're going to send you back to duty."

03:05:30.980 - 03:05:55.340

They said, "Where do you want to go until you're ordered overseas, and then we'll a decision about the surgery or you're going to be disability retired anyway. So that's when they told me that it was a terrible thing they'd done. He showed me the papers where they kept saying, "Lungs clear, lungs clear," where they

03:05:55.360 - 03:06:17.580

were getting worse and worse and worse. And so I went back to duty and I got ordered to England in about six months, I guess it was. I went back up there and the disability retired me and said the lungs had stabilized. They thought I might not need the surgery. It was within about a year and a half or two

03:06:17.680 - 03:06:44.400

years that it got worse again. I had to have a surgery. I had it on one lung one year and the other one the next year. It was a service-connected disability because of their failure to do This pulmonary doctor at Fitzsimmons said, "It's gross negligence. It's really criminal what they did to you."

03:06:44.400 - 03:06:56.100

He said, "You're going to be service-connected." Kelly: Then you decided to stay? Lowdermilk Honstein: Yes. My family lived in Santa Fe.

03:06:56.920 - 03:07:18.500

I came back down and I just went straight over to the university. I got out in December of '59 and started at the university in January of '60. What was your major? Art history.

03:07:20.300 - 03:07:31.700

When did your love of photography start? It wasn't photography at first. While I was in Paris, I didn't know people. I spent every weekend in museums.

03:07:32.020 - 03:07:46.720

Then I realized I loved the paintings, but I just didn't understand how they got to the paintings in a way. I kept looking and looking and looking. Then I decided I wanted to see their other work.

03:07:46.720 - 03:08:12.600

I wanted to see their sketches and the other work that they did before they got to the painting. I began going to all of these shows in galleries, not at the museum, and looking at their drawings. I got so interested, I went over and bought some paints and a canvas, and I tried to paint.

03:08:13.460 - 03:08:21.340

Of course, I couldn't. I thought, "Well." Then I realized that I didn't like to draw. I never had liked to draw.

03:08:21.360 - 03:08:37.080

I don't like any of that." I thought, "Well, I can't be an artist, so I'll be an art historian, because I love painting." I went to the university, enrolled, and started through as an art historian, but had to take

03:08:37.120 - 03:08:58.420

as a minor these art courses. I said, "I'm going to change and major in both art and art history." It was my last year as an undergraduate that this man came who started the program—Van Deren Koch was his name—started the program of photography as an art form.

03:09:00.540 - 03:09:17.720

My advisor had said, "Take a course in photography so that you can get decent slides of pictures and that." I said, "Okay." The first print that came up in the tray, I thought, "I know what I'm going to be.

03:09:17.780 - 03:09:33.120

I can do this, I can make art." I was so happy. My undergraduate degree is art and art history, and my graduate degree is in art and photography. Kelly: Then did you start a business?

03:09:33.580 - 03:09:45.380

Reid: No. No, you don't start a business in fine arts. You make images, and then if people want to see them, they go to the museum. Or if people want to sell them, I have a gallery in Santa Fe that sells my work.

03:09:46.220 - 03:10:03.740

But I'm not popular like I was real popular for quite a while. Every grant I applied for, I'm not bragging, I'm telling you the truth, I got the first time. I got my first National Endowment for the Arts grant just about the time I graduated.

03:10:04.740 - 03:10:21.780

But I worked hard. I mean, I devoted my time to the program. We'll wait before you start. Until you think you're really good. You don't just wing it and try.

03:10:22.420 - 03:10:39.820

You think, "This is good work. I think I can get a grant." And I waited. I waited until I had the material. It was lucky. Now you've finished and gotten your Master's.

03:10:39.820 - 03:10:43.600

Oh, have I? No, that's what I'm asking you. Have I yet? No.

03:10:44.040 - 03:10:52.560

Oh, yes, well, where was I? You ran. The first print came up? Yes, and so I wanted to continue and get my master's degree.

03:10:53.100 - 03:11:05.780

I'm going to school on the GI Bill. Oh. Yes, but then for the master's program, I got a grant of some kind from them, and I taught as a graduate student.

03:11:07.320 - 03:11:23.280

And you taught art? I taught photography. Then as time went on, after I graduated, I continued to teach over there for a while. I taught graduate students then.

03:11:23.280 - 03:11:35.180

I used to bring them over here and put them around the pool table, because I was getting more interested in work that was getting close to being really good than I was in beginning students. It's a hassle.

03:11:35.660 - 03:11:52.480

lot of students and they don't know anything and it's a long time before they really begin to get a grip on it. Kelly: Have you had any outstanding students then who have gone on to achieve that you know of?

03:11:52.480 - 03:12:02.020

Reed: No, not spectacular students, no. Good students. This school was renowned for its photography program at that time. It is no longer.

03:12:03.340 - 03:12:21.800

But you know, that's often true I think of colleges, that a bunch of people that are really good are there and the program's excellent and then they leave and somebody else comes in. And it just takes some bad instructing or listless or not very accomplished to bring

03:12:21.840 - 03:12:37.640

it down. And it was renowned at that time and so we got a lot of good students. Tell me, what was the first picture that was accepted in a museum for show? Do you recall?

03:12:39.540 - 03:12:54.980

In a museum, sometimes it's at a university or it's at a gallery or something. The first one that was on display, that you were really proud of. I just wonder what the subject was. I can't remember which picture it was.

03:12:55.260 - 03:13:13.940

I had a picture, what was it, that every time I entered a photo contest, I won with it. I really wore it out, because they'd pay, I don't know, $150 or something. But I can't remember which picture it was. It was early on.

03:13:16.040 - 03:13:32.700

What do you feel is the biggest honor that you've had with your photography, with your talent? The one that you're most proud of? I guess it would be the Guggenheim, although it was nice to get an honorary doctorate,

03:13:33.760 - 03:13:55.980

but I still valued the—because it was just sort of a—I don't know, it was a general honor and it was nice, and I was pleased. The Guggenheim, yeah, that was lovely. You want to describe to us again what you were doing when you found out about that?

03:13:58.200 - 03:14:17.200

I was just mucking around in the house and the phone rang and I answered it and this man said he was from the Guggenheim Foundation and that he was pleased to tell me that I been awarded a Guggenheim grant. I war-hooped, and I laughed, and I jumped up and down in the kitchen.

03:14:18.720 - 03:14:35.360

He was a very dignified man, and he was tickled. I guess he never had quite that reaction from an adult. I couldn't help it. I like people who are honest in their behavior, too.

03:14:35.620 - 03:14:52.340

You feel good about something, you should let it show. This sophistication that prevents people from enjoying things so fully is just a waste of time. Have you done any volunteer work as far as children to get them interested in art?

03:14:52.500 - 03:15:01.240

Would that help? No. No, I don't seem to relate to children at all. They're just these funny little creatures that later are going to get tall, you hope.

03:15:04.780 - 03:15:30.660

I can't help it. I just don't know how to deal with them. What gives you pleasure now? What gives me pleasure now? Poetry, probably is what I do an awful lot of, reading poetry. I have a friend who comes over once a week and we read it out loud and that's nice too.

03:15:31.020 - 03:16:00.200

I love poetry, always loved it. I've written more poems that weren't any good, or were kind of good, but not good enough. I think almost every lover of poetry probably has tried to write it, but now I really appreciate the good when I find it. I've always carried a lot of books with me when I was crop dusting and instructing.

03:16:01.420 - 03:16:12.520

I just had what I could take in my car. I always had a number of books. I always had Shakespeare with me and a bunch of other books and poetry and that, because I love to read.

03:16:14.440 - 03:16:33.460

I would never let any of the other people there at the airport know that, though. It's funny how that was a whole other side of my life, and it was private. Have you had any of your poetry published? Yes, two of them, but they were in books that I'd done.

03:16:34.080 - 03:16:43.980

They couldn't help themselves. Tell us about the books that you had done. Oh, you know about the books I've done. I know that maybe somebody else doesn't.

03:16:45.040 - 03:16:56.240

Well, the first thing I did— Why did you do them? Why I did them? Well, the first one, the University of New Mexico Press asked if I'd like to do a book

03:16:56.280 - 03:17:09.800

of my photographs. I was pleased to say yes. I don't think there's more than two or three fillers in the book. I think all of them are ones that are okay.

03:17:11.420 - 03:17:32.080

They're not the greatest pictures I've ever taken, but they're good. I think the book was worthwhile. The second book, I wanted to do something a tribute to the WASP. I thought to myself, "I wonder if we look exceptional," because I felt like we had

03:17:32.160 - 03:17:46.520

done something quite exceptional. I wrote a letter and distributed it. I'd forgotten where it was, what reunion. I asked people, "Were you one of them that I photographed?"

03:17:49.040 - 03:18:14.580

I said that I wanted to take all of our pictures because of this. I thought we'd done something amazing. I drove to Sweetwater with a helper. I rented a room like a salesman would and set up two cameras so that I had one for a

03:18:14.280 - 03:18:36.320

little closer up so they wouldn't all be boring full length or boring up close. They were like three quarters or they were full length, or two thirds full length for a little variety. I photographed probably 250, 300 wasps.

03:18:36.940 - 03:18:52.320

I chose from them because when you do a book, the photographers have to have some interest in them, or the publisher doesn't want to put them out. So I picked the ones I thought showed the most life, the most light in their eyes, whatever attracted me.

03:18:55.540 - 03:19:07.080

Then I got Dora Doherty to write. Do you know Dora? Dora and I, I told you I knew her from before the war. I stayed at her home when her family was still all together.

03:19:09.080 - 03:19:20.240

We've been friends a long time, and I asked her if she would write The History of the Wasp, because I knew if I wrote it, I'd probably leave something out and everybody come down on me. They never questioned Dora.

03:19:21.060 - 03:19:33.120

Dora said yes, she would. She wrote that. Then I wrote—didn't I write a little, I think, personal thing in there about me being a wasp or something?

03:19:33.760 - 03:19:49.920

It's funny. I haven't looked at it in a long time. I wrote that myself, and then I used old pictures and the pictures that I took. Ones that I thought a general public would like.

03:19:50.020 - 03:20:01.160

I didn't put anybody in just because they were a friend. I tried not to anyway. I tried to pick pictures that were a little out of the ordinary, showed a little more of the spirit.

03:20:06.680 - 03:20:27.480

University of New Mexico wasn't doing that so much by that time. I went to Texas A&M University Press because I knew that they did things on Texas. I went down there and talked to them, and they said they'd like to do the book. They did the second book.

03:20:27.680 - 03:20:41.760

Then, of course, when I heard that the Russian women flew combat, I thought, "I've got to go do that." It was easy. I could have probably gotten a dozen publishers, but I thought, "I'll stick with Texas A&M.

03:20:41.860 - 03:21:06.400

They've been nice to me." I put the book together of A Dance with Death, which is a quote from one of the women pilots, Soviet airwomen in World War II. It was probably the most interesting thing for me to do, the most interesting book I'd

03:21:06.420 - 03:21:28.060

done and the one that really fired me up. It's interesting that you can make friends with people that you can't even share a language with, but we had so much in common. When I did the book, after I got it done, everything was on tape so that there could

03:21:28.140 - 03:21:49.580

be no question about what people said. I had the young woman who was our best translator come over here twice and she spent a month with me the first time and about three weeks I think the second time. I sat at my computer and we re-translated from the tapes everything.

03:21:51.300 - 03:22:09.900

We put them down on paper. What's interesting about it was that she knew nothing about flying except that you get in an airplane and it takes you someplace. She kept saying it wrong, what she was telling me in Russian about the airplanes and translating

03:22:09.940 - 03:22:19.320

it wrong. I said, "That can't be." It was because she didn't understand about airplanes. I took her to the airport up north of us.

03:22:19.960 - 03:22:42.780

I said to the instructor, "Oh, I lost my license when I lost my lungs." I threw my log book out. I was in such a state. I took her to the airport and asked this instructor to take her up and give her a flying lesson.

03:22:43.340 - 03:22:58.640

I said, "Really give her a lesson. Make her make turns and show her how to stick and rudder and everything works." He came back and I said, "Well, how'd she do?" He said, "I got so interested in what she was telling me about Russia that I forgot

03:22:58.860 - 03:23:08.180

to really be very careful about it." But she understood. We went to the plane and we worked the controls. When she came back, she could get a translation that worked.

03:23:09.220 - 03:23:29.480

That was the only problem I had, was just that, was her telling me the plane did things or that people did that couldn't happen. We did all the retranslation and Texas A&M was very interested, so they did the book. By the way, it has sold out and they're now coming out in paperback with it.

03:23:30.630 - 03:23:45.900

Isn't that nice? It's optioned once again. There's an English company who's over there now trying to work with the Russians with $20 million, which this gal told me isn't possible.

03:23:46.260 - 03:24:07.680

They can't do it for that. This woman who has contracts with, I think she told me, about 500 individuals who own World War II and that old aircraft, so that they can't use them in a movie unless they go to her.

03:24:09.660 - 03:24:34.100

These aircraft, I mean, she's the one in Hollywood that has the aircraft. She optioned the book just about three or four months ago, two months ago, maybe three. She has the book in the hands of about nine directors and whatever, but they're waiting. They won't commit until they see what happens with this English outfit.

03:24:35.940 - 03:24:58.060

I had word through somebody—who was it?—just a few days ago that they were over there talking people. So whether they actually make a film or not, I don't know. But this woman, for a good amount of money, optioned a book. What are your plans for the future?

03:25:00.140 - 03:25:14.800

I'm going to enjoy myself. Write more books? Put together more books? No, I don't think so. That's so much work. It takes a couple of years to get things done. I think whatever statement I've made, I think is made.

03:25:15.060 - 03:25:32.080

Now I can live on my laurels or just enjoy myself and read. It's things that I've wanted to do for a lot of years and haven't been able to because I was busy working. I'm always driven about what I do.

03:25:32.780 - 03:25:54.960

I was driven with the photography and driven when I went over there. I've had pneumonia sixteen times now and I just have to be, I'm trying to be nice to myself and not push too hard. Let me ask you, of all the things you have done, and wow, there are so many, what is

03:25:55.080 - 03:26:16.920

the one thing that you're most proud of? I think that's almost impossible to say, because in flying, of course, my pride was in having been a WASP. This really made me very proud, and feeling that I made a contribution.

03:26:24.360 - 03:26:34.360

I just love the photography. I don't really know how to answer that question. I'm pleased with every book. I put them together on the shelf and say, "There, there's three now.

03:26:34.900 - 03:26:48.700

Isn't that wonderful?" Because I love books so much. I've just got eons of—I mean, I've got all sorts of books, and I think that they're probably as big a contribution as one could make.

03:26:49.860 - 03:27:05.020

But realizing, of course, that those books are probably never going to be read by more than 5,000 people or something ever, or looked at. You can't read a photography book. Kelly: What is your personal opinion of Jacqueline Cochran?

03:27:05.320 - 03:27:22.200

Beall: Oh, don't ask, and I won't tell. Kelly: And the WASP program that she put together? Beall: I thought the program was fine. I thought the woman did it for the wrong reason.

03:27:23.120 - 03:27:40.600

I think she was full of self-aggrandizement. I think she cared very little for other human beings. I think her reasons for doing it, probably, if you got down to the secret of it, were all personal.

03:27:43.360 - 03:28:00.040

I don't think her big interest was in contributing to helping the war. I think she was contributing to her self-aggrandizement. There's all sorts of things that point in that direction. I'll tell you a story I probably shouldn't tell, because although she didn't tell me

03:28:00.080 - 03:28:15.560

not to tell it, it's a story that epitomizes her character. Dora Dorody—oh, dear, Dora, don't get mad at me. Dora Dorody—well, she'll be dead, and then everybody can hear it, and it's all right.

03:28:16.400 - 03:28:22.200

We're all going to be dead, so what the hell. I thought I'd run out of tape before the end of the story anyway, so I should probably change. Oh, okay.

03:28:36.140 - 03:28:44.160

Dora worked for—who makes those? Bell? No, no, no, helicopters. Bell?

03:28:44.400 - 03:29:00.460

Bell, yes, thank you. I worked for Bell Helicopter, and she was chief of cockpit design and something else. She was in the hierarchy, not just a worker. Her degree, did you ever know about her?

03:29:02.120 - 03:29:32.420

She got the first degree based on flying. That's how she got into cockpit design. I can remember when she was in school, she was flying a small plane. She made this, what do you call it when you look through here and it goes up?

03:29:33.240 - 03:29:46.480

Periscope? Kind of like a periscope. But she thought that it was possible to make better landings altogether, one to see if you could make better landings altogether if you couldn't see out like this.

03:29:47.720 - 03:30:04.780

And so this was a part of the psychology that she was going through. And so she rigged this plane and there was somebody sitting in the other seat in case something happened. And but she was completely blacked out in the left-hand seat and with this periscope

03:30:04.880 - 03:30:26.100

thing. And she just sat and looked through it, made her approach and landing. And she said after not too long, she could make consistent landings, absolutely consistent good landings, one after another, after another, after another, because measuring where she

03:30:26.180 - 03:30:50.740

was in relation to this area. Well anyway, so she got whatever degree it was in aviation psychology. And so she, of course, learned to fly a helicopter and had to for her job. And so Bell asked her if she would be willing to get the records away from the Russians,

03:30:50.980 - 03:31:05.240

the Russian women, helicopter altitude, I don't know what all. And she said she would do it. And so she did it. And you know, they have all this testing thing that, I don't know, an official has to be

03:31:05.100 - 03:31:34.120

there and so forth and and so once every so many years and I don't know how often they have a big to-do and all of the people who establish new records are fated there and so she is in sitting at the head table excuse me she's sitting at the head tape must have been something I ate about 17 hours ago she

03:31:34.820 - 03:31:51.980

she was sitting at the head table and Cochran was sitting next to her and they were and they were they started talking about Dora and how she'd gotten this record and that record and how you know all that and Cochran leaned over to her and said, "If these were important, I'd have them."

03:31:57.060 - 03:32:14.040

Need I say anything more? And that's right from Dora. Most amazing statement of a person I ever heard, of somebody who cared nothing at all for anybody else.

03:32:15.300 - 03:32:31.180

[Dog barking] Absolutely, okay. We should be, yes. And do you know of any other woman who could have started the WASP training program?

03:32:32.900 - 03:32:49.940

No, and I think the reason is because they didn't have enough clout. It might have started slowly the way it did and worked up into something, people with aviation time, but I'm sure there were people who possibly could have done it, but who weren't interested in doing it perhaps.

03:32:50.680 - 03:33:12.940

There were a number of older time pilots and there also were senators and congressmen, women, who might have thought to ask for something like that, but no, I think it's a valid judgment that she had the drive and the will to do it. And her reasons for doing it aren't important to us.

03:33:14.020 - 03:33:26.200

But you asked me. So often something good can happen out of somebody's selfishness or self-centeredness, I should say, or something like that. And if they do, great.

03:33:26.540 - 03:33:41.520

I'm grateful to her. I'm grateful for that program. Well, I just wondered if you thought maybe if somebody else had, it would have been too late for you and me.

03:33:42.680 - 03:33:48.560

Oh, yes. Well, I'm sure that we led the way to what's going on now. I know we did. There's no question about that.

03:33:48.780 - 03:34:01.880

Well, in the view of that, let me just ask. But, and Cochran, regardless of what the reason she did it, did a good thing for us and for the country. I mean, it isn't all our gratitude to her.

03:34:01.960 - 03:34:18.240

there must be some gratitude of what we did and how many we lost. And so, yes. So I'm not so certain that the families of those who were killed are very grateful, but, but I mean, we were doing what we wanted to do.

03:34:19.300 - 03:34:34.480

And I think it was a good service. And the hateful part is that, that all these men began to grumble that we were, we had their jobs. I don't think that would happen now. It doesn't happen. the world has changed and she helped change it.

03:34:36.000 - 03:34:47.140

So for that I have nothing but gratitude. >> And along with that, what do you feel the legacy of the WASP will be? >> I don't know.

03:34:48.240 - 03:34:58.740

Just what we talked about. I mean, we were the first ones to do it. And probably it's a part of what turned into feminism or whatever that sort of drifted away now

03:34:58.980 - 03:35:07.460

because we don't need it. people can do what they want to do more than they could. These are lithium. Oh, that's great.

03:35:07.580 - 03:35:08.920

Yeah. Great. OK. We're rolling.

03:35:09.240 - 03:35:21.320

OK. Well, then let me ask you, if you could say something to children in future generations-- and you are talking to children in future generations--

03:35:21.340 - 03:35:50.140

that might encourage them or give them the inclination to do something with their lives. What words of encouragement or advice would you give to children? >> I don't know if I can do a child.

03:35:51.040 - 03:36:07.360

I don't know how to talk to a child. >> Well, let me rephrase that and say to a student. To a student I'd say work hard, get your work done. But it's all, I had a number of students in photography

03:36:07.720 - 03:36:27.800

who I asked what they wanted to do with it and they said they wanted to be famous. And I said then you're in the wrong department here. Because if you do what you do for love, I do, and so I don't know any other advice to give. You do it the best you can, no matter how long it takes.

03:36:28.400 - 03:36:48.340

None of these things that I've done, one picture takes a while. From the time you take the picture, you develop the film, you go in there and you enlarge it and then you have to go through the whole process of getting it out of there. That whole process would probably take you, for every hour you're out there with a camera,

03:36:48.460 - 03:37:03.500

you're in there ten hours. It's hard work, it's drudgery. And if you're not devoted to what you're doing, you're going to make a blotch of it, and you have to be single-minded and devoted.

03:37:04.680 - 03:37:16.840

And if that doesn't work for you, go do something else, until you find the thing that does that for you. There's no substitute. I mean, carrying a camera doesn't mean anything.

03:37:17.120 - 03:37:40.500

what you do, it's what you see and how you feel about what you see. And I don't think you should try to do things that are beyond you, unless you go study it for a while. I don't know.

03:37:43.920 - 03:37:52.580

There's a lot of platitudes and things that everybody says, I guess. But I think hard work. But work is something-- the trouble

03:37:52.610 - 03:38:08.160

is that work is something that I don't do. I am in there long hours to get pictures, but it's through devotion that I do it, not just for the hell of it or because I want to be famous or something.

03:38:09.480 - 03:38:26.280

It shows in whatever you do how devoted you are to it and how much of that is just, "I'll just do this or do that." It doesn't work. It works if you want to be third rate or less, but you're wasting your life.

03:38:27.140 - 03:38:40.140

It's not easy to find what you want to do. I think you have to try things maybe. If you have an inclination, you think, "I think I'd like to do that." You can find out pretty fast, I think, by just trying it.

03:38:44.840 - 03:39:02.360

I think things that are creative take the longest time. But bring the most joy. Well, they did for me, but I can't say that they would for anybody else. I mean, you know, there are people who are teachers who are not very good at doing it

03:39:02.200 - 03:39:32.840

maybe, but they're damn good teachers, and so that comes for a lot. In your life, through the good times and bad and the happy times and sad, what gets you through sad times? I've had some that just time got me through them.

03:39:40.960 - 03:40:00.060

An interesting thing, I think that my guilt over what happened in that accident stayed with me all these years. I was talking to a woman at the VA hospital, and she suggested I go to this woman who does just what do they call it, traumatic stress syndrome or whatever it is?

03:40:01.280 - 03:40:10.220

Post-traumatic. Post-traumatic. And do you know that when that started to come out, I had a terrible time. She made me write it like four or five times.

03:40:11.420 - 03:40:28.780

And the second time, the first time I typed it in my computer and punctuated and the whole thing and she said, "Go back and write it." I cried and I carried on. Natasha got in my way and I pushed her and she slammed against the door there.

03:40:29.270 - 03:40:44.140

I broke two or three dishes. I was in this state. After another couple of times of writing, it disappeared. It's just the most fantastic thing that you can go on all those years of your life with

03:40:44.140 - 03:41:02.100

guilt and with these feelings, and then you can get them out of you. This woman I'm sure works like hell with all these GIs who can't get over the war and things they've seen. Whereas ordinary people probably say, "What's the matter with that guy?

03:41:02.560 - 03:41:26.680

Why is he acting like that?" I think all the GIs that are out on the street that can't hold a job and everything, I I think you have to come to terms with things some way. And I didn't know that I needed to come to terms with it.

03:41:29.640 - 03:41:43.540

But you can't just shove it to the back of your mind because it's going to stay there forever. However long that might be. Is there anything that I've left out? Oh, Lord, I hope not.

03:41:44.160 - 03:42:04.060

Can I ask you, because this is kind of off the subject on the way in, but you served your country for a lot of years. I mean, you weren't just seeing the world, you were serving your country. In light of the September 11th, can you tell me maybe what patriotism means to you today

03:42:04.400 - 03:42:15.720

as opposed to what it was like in World War II? It feels exactly the same. I just wanted to go get my uniform out, which I can't get into anymore. I wanted to go do something, and there's nothing I can do.

03:42:19.020 - 03:42:50.320

The paper came with this flag thing in it, and I stuck it up my window. I stood there and I thought, "I'm too old to do anything, so I'll hope that our country strong and that the people who are fighting this war stay alive and are good people. I don't know what patriotism is, the strong feelings of love of your country and of the

03:42:50.460 - 03:42:59.240

people in it. It's really the country itself. If you were just here and there was no people, I don't know how you'd feel. I think we're very interwoven.

03:43:01.600 - 03:43:25.220

It's the one thing, I've liked some of the reactions to it. I've liked the fact that people aren't just madly buying everything. It's nice to see these people trying to sell cars with no money down and no interest on them, and everybody begging people to buy.

03:43:25.980 - 03:43:55.960

the most shocking thing in this world is to realize if we all stopped buying, this country would fall apart. I never knew. I mean, we don't work the soil or anything like that. I mean, isn't that astonishing? We have to buy. So I went out and bought some stuff. I thought, I'll be patriotic. I spent quite a bit of money just, and each time I bought

03:43:55.960 - 03:44:15.040

I felt good. Instead of guilty, I thought, "Look at this wonderful thing I did." And so I bought a couple of new cameras and a whole bunch of stuff, you know. [laughter] Doing my best for my country. And I felt that way, too.

03:44:15.040 - 03:44:29.840

I thought, "I did it now. That's good. Instead of waiting, I'll get everything I need right now." I didn't really need, but I wanted. I wanted to ask you about the lady that was the bootlegger. How did you find out about her?

03:44:29.980 - 03:44:41.360

Was that a house? It was a house on the edge of town. Everybody knew. All you had to do was ask another WASP who's been there longer or anybody in town, "Where

03:44:41.360 - 03:44:47.780

do you get a drink around here?" "Oh, go see Ma Coleman." She was just out and out. That's what she did.

03:44:48.060 - 03:45:06.840

I think all the city wanted her to do was to not display it. That's why it was under those tremendous haunches. Everybody at Sweetwater almost can tell you a story about going there to Ma Coleman's. They really can.

03:45:08.540 - 03:45:18.040

We'd sit in the car that first time. We sat in the car and everybody said, "You go in. No, you go in." Then they said, "Nog, you drove.

03:45:18.110 - 03:45:27.500

You go in." Is there a secret wrap on the door or anything? No. Just Doc, she's sitting there.

03:45:27.740 - 03:45:35.080

She's waiting. I can see her just big as a barrel. Boy, don't you wish you had your camera then? Yes, I thought of that.

03:45:35.500 - 03:45:46.320

I have a picture stashed right here of her, which is probably as good as any place to store a picture in your head. Wow. Okay, I think that's it for me.

03:45:46.600 - 03:45:55.220

I just wanted to say thank you. Oh, you're certainly welcome. And for the children and future generations, thank you. You're welcome.

03:45:55.380 - 03:46:01.060

You've been great. Well, I've been naughty, and I'm glad you think— You've been extraordinary. You've been tremendously interesting.

03:46:01.200 - 03:46:15.720

I'd really done a lot of—I could talk for another five hours about all those things, some of which I'm ashamed of, but you know, you did them, and you're still here. And that's history. And nobody got hurt, so—

03:46:15.720 - 03:46:23.700

Right. And history is important. Absolutely. I see these planes they crop dust in now.

03:46:24.760 - 03:46:32.400

And you know they're low-winged aircraft, and if you flipped over, you'd just be gone right in that cockpit. God, I'd never get in one.

03:46:32.600 - 03:46:41.000

It would save my life. High-wing plane is the safest thing you can be in, because you can get out. Flips over, you can get out.

03:46:41.960 - 03:46:51.840

We had a man down at Hobbs, New Mexico, went out to fly his airplane. We don't pay any attention. He never told us anything. He just stored the plane there.

03:46:53.020 - 03:47:05.500

His wife called late that evening and said, "Have you seen my husband?" We said, "No." But somebody went in and looked and said, "His plane is gone, so he must have gone someplace."

03:47:05.500 - 03:47:17.900

Well, he never told me, and I'm worried. Nothing you could do about that at night. no flight plan or anything. The next day, they put out a search for him, and his plane wasn't five miles from the

03:47:18.090 - 03:47:31.320

field. He'd had a forced landing, and that's a low-wing aircraft. He flipped over, and it's metal, it was hot. They said he was so dehydrated, he just clawed at the inside of that thing, trying to get

03:47:31.360 - 03:47:50.060

out before he died. I know, and that really, boy, that was a statement about, you know, land a plane like that. And I said, "Do you know if you leave a runway and you have a forced landing anywhere out here in this land, you're going to go over on your back.

03:47:52.460 - 03:48:10.500

That nose wheel is that big around, it's going to cut like a matchstick. It's going to break off and you're going to be upside down out in the middle of nowhere." And they just, "Oh, he could never fly a tail dragger." I said, "Well, I guess you don't care about being safe."

03:48:10.500 - 03:48:16.940

And you know all they have to do, they can change it to a tail dragger. I didn't know that. Oh, really? Yes.

03:48:17.180 - 03:48:26.220

They can switch a -- Yes, there's some way that they can do that. This fellow at the airport told me. I guess he's telling the truth.

03:48:27.480 - 03:48:31.340

Wow. I'm going to turn my lights off. That would be nice. Yeah.

03:48:32.200 - 03:49:01.500

gonna tell you, of course you're three classes ahead of me, but I would not have done one thing that might even smell of trouble while I was going through training. Consequently, I did not know that lady. Of course, in the first place, I was Southern Baptist, so I didn't drink, so I would wouldn't have known. But some of your maymakes did. Well, maybe so. But I just think the rules,

03:49:02.520 - 03:49:23.940

I wouldn't have broken a rule. Well, but that's the difference between 43 and 5 when Betty Hoss went in and Betty Pfister, Betty Hoss. But she got arrested for coming back into Sweetwater, coming from Big Springs. They sent her to get the booze. And when she came back in, the sheriff arrested her, they put her in jail.

03:49:24.300 - 03:49:33.500

- And she spent part of the night in jail. - But she, she even decided to be in the jail. - Yeah, oh it was, she said, oh cockroaches. - I deserve to be in jail.

03:49:34.780 - 03:49:46.500

- No, I just think you were more daring than I was. I was just, I was so naive. - I mean, it's like that police car, I could see that. I never thought of it for years and years,

03:49:46.560 - 03:49:55.400

and when I thought of it, I thought, And you were playing chicken with that state policeman. - Yeah. - And because I won, I thought I was--

03:49:55.720 - 03:50:00.360

- I know. - Very daring. - I know, but I don't know whether that's damn foolishness, probably.

03:50:00.980 - 03:50:03.640

- Well. - Probably. - Hey, you're still alive. - You would've waited.

03:50:03.820 - 03:50:04.280

- Yeah.