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In November, she came to this international space conference at the Space Center in Houston. She was one of the representatives for the United States. Oh, she's... Oh, yeah, brainy, brain, brain.

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But she remembers very little about... That's what I mean. I'm Deanie Parrish with Wings Across America. Today we are interviewing Joan Lemley.

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Let's start over. Okay. Go ahead. Lemley. I'm Deanie Parrish. Hi, Deanie.

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With Wings Across America. Today we're interviewing Joan Lemley. Wait, I have to stop. Are you starting over?

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No, just go ahead. Okay. Today is the 28th of April, 2003. We are in Joan's home in Vero Beach, Florida. I don't know if I said what class she was in.

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No. Start over, Nancy. I have never had to start over before. - Okay, we're starting over one more time. - Ever.

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- Go ahead. - I'm Deanie Parrish with Wings Across America. Today we're interviewing Joan Limley. Today is the 28th of April, 2003. We are in her home in Vero Beach, Florida.

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Joan was a WASP, class 44-6. Okay, Joan, if you will tell us your full name and when and where you were born. My full name, first marriage and all that? Sure.

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Joan Marion Grevenberg Michaels Lemley. I was Joan Michaels in training. Okay. when I was out. Where were you born? I was born in Dallas, Texas, conceived in Waco.

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And when's your birthday? October 21st, 19, well I was born 1920. So I'm 82 years old, to be 83 in October. And proud of it. Yes. Joan, tell me about your mom. My mother hated flying. She was wooed by my dad when he flew old OX5s over her house in Dallas, dropped candy, boxes of candy in the backyard, and then he would fly back to his field and

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into Highland Avenue in Dallas where he was barnstorming. So this went on for about a year, And she never went up. She didn't like it. She probably didn't want me even to be flying with them.

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And she became a beautician. She's Irish. My dad's French. And never the twain shall meet.

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The Irish can't see French ways, and the French couldn't see Irish ways. So they divorced when I was a year and a half. And they went back together again when I was seven.

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And my mother at that time was just a housewife. And my dad was flying, belonged to the Aero Club in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, started the Aero Club in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Then they broke up after a year and he went on into New York. And he was, he flew all of his life. - Okay. - From the age of 18.

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- But when you were born, they were living in Dallas. Yes, yeah. And then what did he do to support the family? Barnes stormed.

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He was starting a transport company. I have an ad in the 1919 Dallas Times. And he and two other fellows were going to start an airline. They have an ad in the paper,

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in this very sheet that I can show you. And one of the men ran off with the airplane and crashed it. And that was the end of his dream. But he was going to start one of the first airlines.

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When they were apart, when you were a year and a half, who did you live with? Oh, we were in New Orleans with my dad's family. And my mother came back to Dallas

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with my grandparents, the Kellys. Tell me about those grandparents. Well, my grandfather was an oil man, started one of the first oil wells.

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He didn't start it, but he worked at the first oil well up in Titusville, Pennsylvania. And then when the oil went down to Oklahoma, he went to Oklahoma. And that's how I got to be in Dallas, because they moved on to the oil in Texas. Okay.

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Did your grandparents live near you in Dallas? Well, I lived with them. Okay. Yeah, the Kellys.

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Okay. And then how about your father's parents? They lived in New Orleans and when we were over there, that was just a year, year and a half, and we stayed with them for a while.

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What did your grandfather do? Which one? In New Orleans. He was in real estate.

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And your grandfather, your mother's father? About the oil? He was pretty, well in those days, 64 was pretty old, wasn't it? And he died and then my mother had some problem with a knee and she was in the hospital for

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a year so that took care of me. I had to stay with my grandparents because she was in the hospital a year. What did your grandparents teach you? What did you get from them?

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Oh, my grandmother Kelly was a wonderful gal. All the old Irish adages, "A penny earned is a penny saved," and all the things that you can get out of an old adage book. Kelly: When you were growing up, what was a typical Christmas like in your home?

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Oh, dolls, Christmas tree. I tell you what, I was an only child and I was not around children very much and I have been a loner, so-called loner, all my life and still am. So I really, we did not have big family things.

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There was not a family there that big. My grandfather died in Dallas, and then my grandmother, it took me up to her son, her oldest son, who was in Toledo, Ohio, where I started school, the first of thirteen schools. So moved around a lot.

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Okay. So where did you start? You started school in Ohio? Toledo, Ohio.

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Okay. And the grandparents from Dallas moved to Toledo? Just my grandmother. is the only one left since my grandfather died.

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Kelly: Why did she move to Toledo? Roslyn: Because her oldest son asked her to come live with him. Since my grandfather died, she sold the house on Highland Avenue—no, Palo Pinto in Dallas. I think it is 625 Palo Pinto.

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Kelly: During those early years, how close were you to your father? Roslyn: Not very close. My dad had gone off after he barnstormed throughout the South. He tried to get aviation jobs all throughout, but there weren't too many.

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I didn't see dad until I was seven. Then he and mother went back together again in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I was in the second grade. Then did you move in with them?

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Moved back to Dallas. Oh, yes, right, we moved together about a year, but my mother resented his flying, something terrible. She absolutely would not put up with it.

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Did your grandmother move back to Dallas with you? Yes, we went back to Dallas. Then where did you, you were seven? More schools.

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Then Oklahoma, more schools. Shawnee. When you were living in Dallas, did you live in town or did you live out of town? Well, in Dallas, Palo Pinto Street is right near Highland Park.

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You know where Highland Park is? And I would say right now it's pretty well populated. I would say it's in town. They say it's a pretty nice neighborhood.

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A cousin of mine just sent me a picture of the house where I was born. And it's still nice, in a nice neighborhood. more trees and shrubbery than it used to be when I had pictures when I was a baby. Kelly: Okay. So you were in Dallas from the time you were seven until what age?

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Roslyn: You see, I started school in Toledo when I was seven. Then we moved to Pittsburgh for one year. Then we went back to Texas, and I suppose—let's see, I was nine then two years later. Kelly: Okay. And then where did you move from Dallas?

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Up to Oklahoma, Shawnee, Oklahoma. Why did you move to Shawnee? Well by that time my mother had joined her sister and husband who had a daughter just about my age, six months younger, and we all lived together in Shawnee.

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Those were years in the Depression. So your mother and your grandmother and you moved to Shawnee. And your dad was still off flying. He possibly was in New York at that time.

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How often did he come back to Texas or to Oklahoma to see you? Not after seven, after my seven years. I did not see him again until I was eleven. What grade were you then when you moved to Shawnee?

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Maybe third? It is hard to say because I went to so many schools. I would have been in, it was a Catholic girls school and there were four grades in one room. It was a country school.

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Okay. And Shawnee? I would have been in the fourth grade there, the third grade down in Dallas. And Shawnee, did your mom work?

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Yes, beautician. That's where she took up beauty culture. And your grandmother? My grandmother was, let me see, where was grandmother?

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I think she was with Mother's sister for a while. And Shawnee, did you live in town? Yes, on Louisa, Louisa Street. Another part was the Martha Ann Apartments, I remember.

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In elementary school, do you recall any of your teachers that might have made an impression? Yes. nun who was in the Shawnee school smacked my hands. That's the first smack I ever had. And I don't know what I did, but she I was called to the front of the room and she said put your

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hands out and I did and she smacked my hands with a ruler. I was mortified. I remember her and also remember her for teaching elocution. She would run elocution lessons at the same time she was teaching two other classes in the same room.

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So we got to hear all these students pronouncing and reading. - So there were three grades together. - Three grades in one room.

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- Was it unusual for a Catholic school to be in Shawnee, Oklahoma? You know, I haven't thought about that, but I imagine every town has a Catholic church or school, and I don't know if it's still there or not.

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I was in school with Indians, a couple Indian girls and Indian boys. How were they different? Well, to tell you the truth, after I left Shawnee, I was so used to passing Indians on the street, not the kids who were in school with me, but just passing some Indians who

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kept their hair greased and never bathed. And I would take a deep breath when I was approaching one. That's how they were different, I think. And I continued to do that when I moved to another city, and I thought, "Why am I doing

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this? I'm holding my breath when I'm approaching somebody." And that was passing an Indian. Now that's not very nice. Because a lot of people have Indian blood and they're wonderful people.

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Kelly: Right. When you were in elementary school, was your mom involved with school at all? Reid: No, no. Kelly: PTA or anything?

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Reid: Not at all. Kelly: Okay. Reid: My mother—well, I have it in some of your questions there. Kelly: Right. Do you remember any of your playmates? Did you have playmates?

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Yes, I remember a little girl in Dallas, her name was Eula May. Isn't that a good Texas name? And she lived about four doors away from me. And I remember she was ill for a long time and I would go visit her.

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And I think she was in bed. She must have had maybe cerebral palsy or something like that. But that's the only one I remember. and also a little boy who lived about two doors away,

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he ran over my little finger with his wagon. And I still have sort of a circular scar on my little finger and it started to bleed immensely. And I ran home and my grandmother was doing the wash.

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And in those days it was all hand done. She had a huge tub of rinse water. She grabbed my hand and put it in the water out in the backyard.

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- Wow. - So I had two little playmates. Yeah. One boy and one girl. And do you recall any time that your dad came to see you when you were in Shawnee? No, never. No. Okay. He and Mother had, they just didn't get along

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too well at all, ever, ever. Okay. Would he write to you? My mother threw all those letters away, unfortunately. I got to read one letter and it was so sad and it was the reason why we moved back to Pittsburgh. He said in the letter that he wanted to be a real father and take care of his little girl and would my mother please come back to him. And so

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that's when they went back together again for one year. But my mother was a very jealous woman, very controlling, and she did not like his flying. He had a joie de vivre. Irish people do not have that too much. They are happy, but not the joie de vivre. Dad had that. He was a nice person, and everybody loved him. That is what she did not like.

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When you were in Shawnee in elementary school, do you remember any particular subject that you liked in school? No, there probably was too much of a mix there, listening to all the other lessons and things. I just remember those elocution things, and I thought they were wonderful. I don't know why I didn't get in. Okay. Then how long did you live in Shawnee before you moved again?

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About three years. We made one trip to Oklahoma City for six months in those three years and then back again. We went to school in Oklahoma City and we would pass the capital that had, oh it must

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have been a hundred oil wells around the capital in those days. You been to Oklahoma City lately? Well there may be a few far off in the distance but it was filled with oil wells. Why did you go to Oklahoma City for six months?

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I don't know, I guess my uncle had a job over there or something. Lot of moving around, it was depression. Kelly: Right. And your mom and your grandmother went?

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Litz: I think my grandmother—my grandmother may have been up in Toledo, Ohio or Pittsburgh, whatever. Kelly: During the times you were at Shawnee, did you ever visit your grandparents in New Orleans?

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Litz: No, never. mother never saw them again until they visited. My grandmother, called Mare, came to Pittsburgh one time when I was about a teenager. Okay. Then you moved back to Shawnee. Then how long did you stay there and where did

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you go? Well, then we went to Dallas. And I went to maybe three schools down there. Dallas, Fort Worth, back and forth, until I was eleven. Were these also Catholic schools?

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No, never went to another Catholic school until I moved back to Pittsburgh at age eleven. When you moved back to Dallas, it was your mom and your grandmother in you? And my mother's sister and her husband and their little girl, six months younger than I.

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Wow. In Dallas then, when you were going to school, was it close enough for you to walk? How did you get to school? Always, always.

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Yeah. At one point we lived near a railroad track, had to cross a railroad track and go up a hill and our little dog called Fala was killed by a train. We moved around an awful lot in the Depression in Texas and Oklahoma.

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And each time you would move somewhere would your mother then go to work at a beauty shop? Yeah, first she did, starting out with going to people's houses and fixing hair. She liked that. It was her whole life. Did you and your little cousin get along really well?

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Very well, yeah. They stayed friends until she died about five years ago. Where did you start? Once you finished elementary school, did you go right into a high school or was there a middle school? moved to Pittsburgh, went to another school. This is only the beginning of 13 schools.

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I mean, I may have gone to already six by where we are right now, by age 11. Lynn Roberson Did your mom know anybody in Pittsburgh? Why would she move back to Pittsburgh? Lynn Roberson Her mother, my grandmother there, and my uncle.

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And what we had done was, mother went to the Chicago World's Fair, I remember, 1932. And I was staying with my aunt and uncle, mother's sister, and her husband and my cousin. And my mother suddenly said, "We're going to New York to see your dad."

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And maybe, maybe that was another letter. I don't know. But she threw all those away, as I say. So we get on a train and we go, we make a stop at Pittsburgh and there's her family,

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her brother, his wife, my grandmother, and they're all at the train station to see us just as we're stopping. We got off the train about ten minutes or so. So we go on to New York and we stayed at a hotel, I think it was called the Victoria,

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it's near Times Square. And mother was telling me what my dad looked like. Of course, I hadn't seen him since I was seven or eight, about eight. And I was now 11, three years later.

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And he came through the doorway and we all went to lunch. And we went down to Red Bank, New Jersey, where he was testing the Bernelli flying wing. And he took me up in an open plane. We flew around the Statue of Liberty.

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And I just loved it. an open plane. Of course I had a helmet on and everything. So we were there for about three days or so and so we got on the train again and stopped at Pittsburgh again. And there they convinced my mother that I should be in a Catholic school. What was I doing

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in Dallas? So we stopped and we got off the train and I never saw my toys again, nothing. They were all left in Texas, and that was it. Stayed in Pittsburgh. And I was in eighth grade, I think, then.

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And stayed, and I went to high school there in the same school, St. Rosalia's. Okay. In high school, do you recall a favorite teacher there? Yes, Sister Josephine.

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It was all girls. I had twenty-two girls in my class, and I loved science. And we had a laboratory that didn't have any equipment at all, but I enjoyed science and chemistry.

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And didn't get to perform any experiments or anything, but I loved it. Loved the book. I liked French. I loved Latin.

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I had four years of Latin, two years of French. And it was an excellent education. I had one teacher who was an English teacher, and she was a very staunch Irish nun. And I learned the best English from her that anybody could ever learn.

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Did you wear uniforms? Yes. Four years. The seat was finally worn out at the end of four years.

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It was that wool serge, and it gets real shiny from the wooden seat. As you were growing up, who were your role models? Well, I must say my dad, because I talked about flying. And my old high school friends used to tell me that I kept saying I was going to fly around

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the world someday. And I did want to fly, after that little airplane ride in New York. What was your social life like? I must say, going back, who was my role model?

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I thought of becoming a nun. We only had 22 girls in my class and four became nuns, and I seriously thought about it. I thought that would be just a good thing to do.

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Because like I say, I've been alone. I'm always around adults. I had no friends. I really couldn't take people home

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because of my aunt and uncle. They ran a business and somebody was sleeping time and I had to be quiet, always had to be quiet and help my grandmother with to cook the meals and clean up, do the kitchen, scrub the kitchen every

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Saturday, clean out the refrigerator once a week. I had my chores and I wasn't allowed much to go out. Maybe church affairs that's all. Very controlled childhood. So your social life was pretty much...

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I had no social life. None whatsoever, except the church, church functions. What was your ambition, other than maybe being a nun? Did you have anything else?

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Very much involved with art at that time. Loved art. Went to Carnegie Tech on Saturday mornings. It was called Carnegie Tech then.

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It was Carnegie Mellon now. But I thought that art would be my major occupation and I loved it. I drew and drew and drew and I really did like sculpture because I was getting credits at Carnegie Tech then.

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Three credits in sculpture, one whole summer. I just loved every bit of that. Did you have to pay to go to Carnegie Tech? I think a small, very small amount on Saturdays.

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- But your mom was still working. - Oh yes, she had a beauty shop by then. - When you were in high school, other than the art, did you have other outside activities?

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In fact, sports? - Ice skating, ice skating, love that. We had tap dancing on Friday afternoons at school. And I loved that 'cause I had done that a lot

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Shawnee, Oklahoma. That's about the only thing. I wasn't allowed to go out, so I wasn't allowed to date, so I didn't go anywhere. I didn't have activities with anybody. I was allowed to ice skate on Saturday afternoons. I'd go to art school at Carnegie Tech in the mornings and then maybe go ice skating Saturday afternoons.

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What year was it when you were a senior? 1937. Okay. I graduated '38.

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Okay. When you graduated, what were your plans? I wanted to go to college so bad. I wanted to go to tech, Carnegie Tech. But there was no money, and I got a half scholarship to Marymount University. and nobody could afford that for me.

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So I took one to Duquesne that was sort of passed on because I came out the top third of my class and so I had my choice of these scholarships. So I couldn't afford Marymount and so I had to go to Duquesne and I got a job

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with National, N.Y.A., National Youth Administration and I earned my way, $25 a month that went the tuition of taking everything from the biology professor, three different sessions

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a week, and transcribing them. The nuns had insisted that we do shorthand and typing in high school. It was supposed to be an elective, but they insisted that we all do it. So I had that to fall back on.

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Where did you live when you were at Duquesne? In Pittsburgh. I lived on Beachwood Boulevard. It's called Squirrel Hill.

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Squirrel Hill. Oh. So when you were going to McCain, you still lived at home? Squirrel Hill.

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Okay. With the family. How did you commute? Aunt and uncle, grandmother and mother.

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[laughter] But it wasn't close enough to walk. How did you get to school? I walked a mile. And I came home for lunch when the weather was good. And then that was four miles a day.

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And then in the wintertime? Walked. The hands would freeze on my lunch bucket. Okay. And how long did you go to that school? That was six years. Yeah. That was, would have been seventh, eighth grades and then four years of high school. All in the same school. Wearing uniforms the whole time. No boys, just girls. Just girls.

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I wasn't allowed to see a boy, I wasn't allowed to look at him. What was graduation like? Well one of my classmates knew an altar boy at St. Philomena's Church, that was another Catholic church nearby.

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So she arranged for Charlie Baker to take me to our graduation dance because I didn't know any boys to ask. And so Charlie Smith was my date. Date. That was graduation and maybe I don't think my mother was there. I don't know who was there. Can't remember. Wore a white cap and gown, handed a diploma.

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When you were growing up, did your mother make your clothes or did you? I made my clothes. I made all my clothes when I was in high school. Who taught you to sew? I guess my grandmother. Yes, yes.

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You ask me, you know, what kind of impression she made. Well, she taught me everything I knew. I spent most time with my grandmother, really, more than anybody in the family. Then once you graduated from high school, you went on to Duquesne.

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Yes, Duquesne. Was that close enough to walk? No, I had to take the trolley. It was ten cents one way.

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Now let me tell you about that. When I got to Duquesne, I got to be pretty popular and ask out to dances. And sometimes there were dances Friday night, sometimes dances Saturday night. And my mother laid down the law.

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You are not going to two dances a week. You can go to one dance a week. So she thought I was having a pretty good time. I went to football games at Duquesne when they were playing pit and other out-of-state

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colleges. So Christmas came after that semester, and of course there I was. I was taking all the notes from the biology professor and transcribing them, and I thought I was doing pretty well.

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So came New Year's, and my mother said she couldn't afford the ten cents for the trolley, that I had to help her out, and I wasn't allowed to go back. Kelly: So what did you do? Lowry: For ten cents.

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I couldn't go back to school. I couldn't even take the semis. My mother was very, very controlling. She did not want me to have a lot of boys and go out and things like that.

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I was a good girl, I tell you. Kelly: So did you get a job then? What did you do? Roslyn: No, I helped her out.

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I helped her out. Kelly: Did you help in the beauty shop? Roslyn: Yes. I took appointments for her, helped to clean up and things like that.

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That's what she really wanted. She wanted me under her hand all the time. After you saw your dad that one time, then did he come to see you? Did he come to graduation? Well, somebody came in in my life, and it was to be my first husband. And he was inviting me for bicycle rides, and then he was reading Psaki to me.

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And I thought, you know, this is a very kind person. He was really very nice to me. But my mother didn't like him, naturally. And so that summer, she asked my dad to take me away. We went up to Michigan, Jackson, Michigan, where he was mapping.

00:32:15.120 - 00:32:32.380

We were flying a WACO. He would take me along as co-pilot, because there were only two seats and the photographer was in the back. We did aerial mapping of Michigan that year, up section lines, back section lines, up another

00:32:32.480 - 00:32:47.720

section line, back. All these photographs had to have an overlap of just so many degrees, otherwise it would be rejected for the Agriculture Department. It was a wonderful summer.

00:32:48.110 - 00:33:08.860

We lived in Jackson. I saw Aurora Borealis for the first time and learned to drive on an old Model A Ford, four-door. Then that summer, Dad was going to—I guess he wanted to get an interview with somebody for another job.

00:33:09.740 - 00:33:26.400

We flew from Jackson, Michigan to Roosevelt Field. He got the job at Roosevelt Field. That was CPT course going on then. He was flying out of Roosevelt Field.

00:33:26.540 - 00:33:49.660

I had to go back—oh, no, in the meantime, the people he was flying for must have been—the man was a senator or somebody, very important office across from the library on Fifth Avenue in New York City. We went up this very beautiful elevator and met a Miss Kelly.

00:33:50.560 - 00:34:05.500

She had graduated from New Rochelle, and she said, "This girl needs to be in school." Now, my dates might be a little wrong here. This might have been 1939, definitely then. This might have been the next summer

00:34:05.680 - 00:34:19.280

when my mother still wanted me out of town because of this young man being too interested in me. So, Dad had the job over in Roosevelt Field and he was teaching CPT in 1939.

00:34:20.940 - 00:34:41.300

And then this Miss Kelly insisted I should be at New Rochelle And so they made an arrangement that this would be deducted from dad's salary. And they had apparently this contract with the Agriculture Department, just a government contract which is going on today, thousands of them.

00:34:43.740 - 00:35:10.160

And I don't know what happened, but suddenly the next year I didn't get to come back because either he didn't work for them anymore, he had taken the job over at Roosevelt Field. Anyway, there was a big conflict there, and I didn't get to go back, even though the nun on my floor at Mara Hall, where I lived, gave me her bib and something, a part of what

00:35:10.200 - 00:35:26.840

I had to wear under my cabin gown, which we had to wear every morning to go to Mass at New Rochelle. When you lived in New York, did you live with your dad? Yes, yes, lived with Dad. Had a nice house out in Hempstead, Long Island.

00:35:28.100 - 00:35:48.320

Were there just the two of you? Just the two of us, yeah. He went off flying every day, and I would take a bus and go out to Nassau County Airport and fly back with him in a Cub every day. It was just more fun. And also he wanted to practice some loops and things.

00:35:48.380 - 00:35:57.600

Now he did loops, he did everything in a cub that I don't think anybody else has ever done. And I was ballast in the back. Did he ever let you fly?

00:35:57.740 - 00:36:08.020

Oh yes, yes he let me fly. Could you actually log those hours? No, no. Never did, never put them down, never kept track of them.

00:36:08.460 - 00:36:15.520

Just enjoyed life. I was so happy. I loved it. you didn't go back to school, then what did you do?

00:36:16.920 - 00:36:39.700

Lynn: I ran off. I got married because this whole thing just blew up in my face about going back to New Rochelle for my second year. And no dad, no money, no way to get there, and so I ran off with this same fellow my mother was trying to keep me from seeing. Kelly: So where did you go to get married?

00:36:39.760 - 00:36:45.800

Lynn: Cumberland, Maryland. It's all in the book. Was the judge or did you have a witness? Justice of the Peace.

00:36:47.900 - 00:36:57.760

And what did your mother say? I was disowned. She didn't want to see me ever again. What did this boy do?

00:36:58.640 - 00:37:20.460

He and his brothers had bought a furniture company in Oil City, Pennsylvania. And so he was just a partner in the furniture business. Typical small town furniture, you know. Red plush sofas, or dark wine.

00:37:22.580 - 00:37:29.660

Horrible, you know. You know you've seen them. Kelly: While he was at work, what did you do? How did you spend your time?

00:37:29.660 - 00:37:40.080

Beall: Well, I went to a cooking school for one thing. They insisted on that. What did your dad say about your getting married? Oh, he was furious. He came to visit me.

00:37:42.160 - 00:37:54.620

And it was after Christmas, because I was married in September. And that's when I was supposed to go back to school. And school had already started. And so I did this out of revenge.

00:37:55.720 - 00:38:12.480

But I'm a nasty little girl. And so my mother disowned me. She didn't want to see me again. But Christmas, she weakened and she said, "Well, we want to see you, you and Jack. You come down and see us and spend time with us."

00:38:12.480 - 00:38:24.460

So she did, and they were friendly. They were nice to them. And then the following year, that was 1940, the following year, 1941, my dad came to see me.

00:38:24.820 - 00:38:45.600

He drove mother up to see me from Pittsburgh. And my mother said, "You've never lived like this." third floor flat and a little tiny thing, which I had painted all the furniture white and put a curtain around the sink in the kitchen, things like that. But all I had to do was

00:38:45.660 - 00:39:04.180

I had to cook a dinner every day, have it on the table at five o'clock for my husband. He insisted on that. So that got to be a little hard, not doing anything, just being a little wife. So, how long did you live there?

00:39:04.980 - 00:39:24.940

Steele: Until 1942. It was Fourth of July, and my dad said, "I want you to come to see me." Well, I did make several trips to see my dad. He had become—he went into the service in '41, naturally, right away.

00:39:24.980 - 00:39:37.480

He was called up, so he was in the service. He was based at—it might have been Roosevelt Field. He called and asked me to come to see him. He'd had an automobile accident.

00:39:38.220 - 00:39:57.140

So I visited him. I got over there by the train. The next time, he said, "I want you to come over to see me." He was in the service, and he took me to Woodward—what's the name of that big department store in

00:40:01.200 - 00:40:14.900

I don't know what it is. But anyway, I bought an evening dress, an evening purse, and evening shoes, and things like that. We went to the Shoreham Hotel and had a nice Fourth of July dance and dinner.

00:40:15.700 - 00:40:31.360

And he said, "Why don't you do something for the war effort?" My dad was like that, "Do something for the war effort." He was in uniform and I thought about it and I said, "You know what?" He said, "Why don't you just stay?"

00:40:31.360 - 00:40:35.180

And I did. I never went back. Kelly: Okay. We've got to change tape.

00:40:36.260 - 00:40:42.940

You're doing so good. You are— Becky: I know, but I'm telling too much of my own. Kelly: No, no.

00:40:43.120 - 00:40:48.960

This is wonderful. This is refreshing. Becky: Refreshing? Depressing?

00:40:50.200 - 00:40:53.080

Depressing? Kelly: No, it's not. It's not. Look at you.

00:40:53.080 - 00:40:59.040

You know, look where you came from. Oh, God. Oh, oh, oh. Okay.

00:40:59.660 - 00:41:14.260

Let me ask you about your dad when he went into the service. Was it the Army Air Force? General Tunner's office and Air Transport Command at Gravely Point, Washington, D.C. And Gravely Point, I don't know why they called it that, but it was right adjacent

00:41:14.520 - 00:41:31.120

to the terminal, Washington Terminal. Did he have to go through cadet training? He was in cadets in 1917 for World War I. He was classified after two hours and fifty minutes as a pursuit pilot.

00:41:32.520 - 00:41:52.680

Two hours and fifty minutes dual he was a pursuit pilot in an OX-5. Kelly: During World War I, did he go overseas? No, he was transferred to Kelly Field and then he was ordered to New York to ship over when armistice was declared.

00:41:54.660 - 00:42:15.240

Then he went back to Dallas and barnstormed all over Texas. Obviously, Waco, Nashville, Tennessee. Where were you when Pearl Harbor happened? I was in Order City, Pennsylvania, married to my first husband.

00:42:15.440 - 00:42:35.640

Kelly: So when your dad went back into service in the Army Air Force— Reid: Right at Pearl Harbor, he was in that day. Because he was in the Guard, Air National Guard, based at Mitchell Field, Long Island. Kelly: When he first went back into service, what was he flying mainly?

00:42:35.680 - 00:42:52.400

Do you know? He was in something called Special Projects and Operations. They tested everything flown, everything the Air Force flew, from the smallest fighter to a Constellation.

00:42:53.050 - 00:43:15.440

Kelly: So when you stayed in New York, did you live with him? Fox: This was Washington, where I went to spend the Fourth of July with him. up on Connecticut Avenue across from Rock Creek Park in northwest Washington. He had a nice little apartment on the sixth floor of a building,

00:43:15.940 - 00:43:29.020

but as soon as I got there, he had to go to Hudson Bay for Elliot Roosevelt to pick out a landing spot for all his ferry flights across the North Atlantic. He was up there.

00:43:29.440 - 00:43:45.320

He came back, and I'll never forget this, with a beautiful fox fur that he bought from the Eskimos, brought it to me. I still have it, the most gorgeous thing I had made into a big collar that tapers down to a button right there.

00:43:46.640 - 00:43:59.200

Beautiful fox. Kelly: Okay. When you stayed in Washington and lived with him, what did you do? Litz: I got a job in his office, in operations for General Tunner's office.

00:43:59.680 - 00:44:17.180

I was file clerk, CAF2. I filed all the movements of every aircraft that went overseas. I was the file clerk. The Russians would come in and the British would come in, pilots who were going to pick

00:44:17.180 - 00:44:28.840

up planes and get their orders. I had the files right there and the Russians would try to look in the file and see what the British were getting. The British would do the same thing, see what the Russians were getting.

00:44:29.920 - 00:44:45.620

There they were, every plane that went overseas. The Russians would take their planes out by way of Alaska and the Aleutians and on down that way. I don't know where they would go from there.

00:44:45.680 - 00:44:56.340

I wonder where, across China? I guess so. The British, of course, would go over the North Atlantic. And our pilots, too, would be picking up planes.

00:44:56.420 - 00:45:06.280

But General Tundra ran all that operations. Kelly: And what was your husband's classification at that point? Reid: I don't know. I left him.

00:45:07.420 - 00:45:14.520

Kelly: I'm sorry. What was your dad's? Reid: Oh, his classification? I think he was First Lieutenant or Major.

00:45:14.880 - 00:45:24.040

I don't know. Might have been Major. Because he, on account of being in the National Guard—what did they call the Guard that The flu, Air National Guard.

00:45:24.810 - 00:45:37.220

Yeah. Did you ever see your husband again? Momentarily years and years later. Did you just leave all of your things there?

00:45:37.420 - 00:45:54.740

Yes. He mailed them to me in a great big, I don't know what you would call it, sort of like one of those moving barrels, you know, by the top. your dad would be off flying. What was your social life like in Washington?

00:45:54.980 - 00:46:31.520

Lowry: Not much. I met a young man, Percy Shelton Weeks, who was with the Merchant Marine. He worked in a big office in Washington. Then he went into the Navy. I possibly went to dinner with him a couple of times. He was a very nice man. He lived in Georgetown. All I remember doing one time was very nice. He had a friend, I forget what his name was,

00:46:32.520 - 00:46:59.660

Oliver Hazard Perry, a descendant of Perry, you know, the North Pole. He had a boat in the Chesapeake. One weekend we went up to Gibson Isle in the Chesapeake. You don't know that, do you? Well, anyway, Oliver Hazard Perry had a very nice young lady with him and I was with Shelton Wicks. Then all we did was come back and sail up there. Big,

00:47:00.020 - 00:47:15.280

huge boat, gorgeous boat. Kelly: When your dad would be in Washington, what do you recall doing with him that's outstanding? restaurants, French restaurants, everything. But I was working, you see.

00:47:16.430 - 00:47:47.060

Did your mom ever come down and visit? Once, once. That was another story. But in the meantime, after the apartment up on Connecticut Avenue, my paternal grandmother and my dad's sister came to live in Washington because originally dad was based at Bowling Field, you know where that is, and they wanted to

00:47:47.220 - 00:48:02.940

make a home for him so they talked him into getting a house and it was 144 Darrington Street, Southwest. The reason why it was next to Bowling, you We would not want to live there today. It's a very bad neighborhood.

00:48:04.000 - 00:48:19.720

But anyway, this was all for dad. And my grandmother, Mir, and my aunt, Matil, maintained this little house for dad. And so I moved in with them, and dad was always gone.

00:48:19.890 - 00:48:34.040

He was flying overseas, he was flying through Egypt, bringing back things like that elephant from Egypt, and all kinds of things, bracelets for me. I have things from bracelets, things from India.

00:48:35.100 - 00:48:53.660

He was just around the world all the time. He did so many things. I was going to tell you, running long-range tests on different aircraft over the Himalayas. If there were trouble spots over the Himalayas in B-26s, they were getting vapor locks at

00:48:53.700 - 00:49:08.080

a certain altitude and boys were going down. We had to troubleshoot and find out why they were getting vapor locks, and found out. We would come home, and then they would adjust to all these different things. It was very fascinating being around them.

00:49:12.560 - 00:49:29.480

By the time I moved into the house, I was getting ready to fly. I wasn't there very long. Kelly: Why did you decide to learn to fly? Reifeltt: After flying with my dad?

00:49:31.560 - 00:49:46.560

I wanted to. I was told I started working in his office, in General Tundra's office. Dad had a lot of friends there. I wanted to get a divorce right away.

00:49:47.980 - 00:50:03.960

I found out that Miami was a pretty good place to get a divorce. They wrote me up a transfer to go to Miami so I could get a divorce. There was a fourth faring group detachment down there. That was like a faring group.

00:50:04.240 - 00:50:14.380

The boys were always coming and going, coming and going. I didn't get a divorce. What happened down there? They moved.

00:50:14.700 - 00:50:26.760

So as soon as I got to Miami, they wanted to go to Nashville. Now this all adds into how did I want to get in the WASP. When I was in Nashville, Tennessee, it wasn't very long, about four months,

00:50:27.540 - 00:50:37.780

all of a sudden a man came to a window. The man I was working for was a Captain Wade and he had an office in one of those little temporary housing things.

00:50:38.660 - 00:50:59.540

And a man came to the window of this house and he said, "We would like to give you a letter take dictation. And I said, "Oh, okay." Got my little secretarial thing. And it was directing Jacqueline Cochran as head of the Women's Flying Service. And I don't know

00:50:59.560 - 00:51:26.160

exactly the terminology there, but I thought, "Oh, this is so interesting because I know my dad knows her. You know, I'm going to get in on this." And so I took the letter and typed it up. I never saw these men again, but they had come from Washington. It was something about Hap Arnold. I told my—the commanding officer happened to be a fifth

00:51:26.300 - 00:51:50.960

cousin, Colonel Herndon from New Orleans. He knew my dad, and he knew that we were related. He said, "Anything you want to do, Joan?" I said, "Well, I'll go on leave without absence. I've got to get my license to get in the WASP. This is '43, around June. And so they said, "Oh, anything that, you know, write your own ticket, you can take a leave without

00:51:51.280 - 00:52:18.100

absence." I had saved, to fly, $370. And I was so proud of that. I didn't buy clothes, I didn't, you know, spend money crazily, didn't have a car, used to take a bus out to the airport. Like I said, that was only about four months that I was there, from March to about June or July. I went back to Washington. I told Dad that I'd saved my money to learn to fly.

00:52:18.720 - 00:52:45.920

He said, "Well, I'll tell you what, you use that to live on, and I will pay for your private license, the whole thing." It needed 75 hours in those days. So, I had to go outside of the defense area in Washington, which was Culpeper, Virginia. And I moved into a farmhouse across the railroad track from the airport, a little grass strip.

00:52:46.780 - 00:53:03.920

And the man who had the flying service, he called it Ashburn Flying Service, his name was Bob Ashburn. And I told him what I wanted to do, and he said, "Five hundred dollars." My dad wrote the check, $500, and so I moved into the farmhouse, lived on the second floor,

00:53:04.060 - 00:53:17.960

had a pot or else go outside, and got my private license. Who else lived in that house? An old lady. Just an old lady by herself.

00:53:18.240 - 00:53:30.700

Like a farmhouse. And then did you quit your job in Washington? I went down at Nashville, I took leave without pay, AWOP or something like that, leave without pay.

00:53:31.460 - 00:53:42.940

And that's what Colonel Herndon told me that I could do. He said, "If you need to come back, if it doesn't work out, you've got a job with us." So I was just on leave without pay, LWOP, that's what it is.

00:53:43.120 - 00:53:52.420

Kelly: Do you recall your instructor? How did you find an instructor? Reid: Bob Ashburn, Ashburn Flight Service. The first airport you could get to outside the defense zone.

00:53:53.020 - 00:53:56.160

Okay. Culpeper. Were there any other girls learning to fly? No.

00:53:57.340 - 00:54:14.360

But let me tell you, and you know this girl, when the defense zone—within months, the defense zone moved in. So Manassas became the first airport outside the defense zone, and Bob Ashburn moved his flying service to Manassas.

00:54:14.840 - 00:54:37.380

It was still a grass strip. So there I met my first WASP, who's going to become a WASP, Mary Hansen, your class. And we were so happy to see each other because she knew that I'd already talked to Jackie. Jackie said, "Well, your father wants you to work in the office with me, and he doesn't

00:54:37.540 - 00:54:51.040

think you want to fly." And I said, "No, I want to fly. This is what I've been doing." And she had a big office in the Pentagon, and of course, she still did after the war.

00:54:52.540 - 00:55:05.660

So I said, "No, no, I want to get in the WASM." She said, "Well, you'll have to be on the list, and I'll call you whenever we get an opening." So by this time, I think it was October.

00:55:06.420 - 00:55:22.380

And in the meantime, I got a job with TWA, because I wanted to learn engines. And it was right on the field at Gravely Point, near where Dad was. And so I went to the hangar in TWA and I climbed on a C-54 every day and I screwed de-icer boots on.

00:55:23.380 - 00:55:33.060

And I said to them, "When am I going to get on engines? I want to learn about engines." And he said, "Oh, you have to work six months before you can get on engines." So I still screwed de-icer boots on.

00:55:33.460 - 00:55:53.380

In the meantime, Jackie called me around October and she said, "Well, come January and get to Sweetwater, first class, '44-'46. Kelly: Let me back up and ask you, how did your dad know Jacqueline Cochran? Reifeldt: At North Beach Airport, which is now LaGuardia or somewhere in there, she was

00:55:53.400 - 00:56:05.640

the beauty operator. Must have an affinity for beauty operators, my dad. So here she was, this young girl, beauty operator, and she appeared at the field and she wanted to learn to fly.

00:56:07.640 - 00:56:27.540

And there was a man on the scene, too, Floyd Audlum. And my dad had known him because dad was freelancing around New York. He was flying for Pathé News, Fox Movietone News, and anybody who needed flying. And he used to fly Floyd Audlum down to his estate in New Jersey.

00:56:28.880 - 00:57:01.340

And here was this young woman who wanted to learn to fly. And so, by the time she got to her cross-country phase, Dad and she flew to Canada. In the meantime, they were falling in love with each other, he and Jackie. And in the meantime, Floyd Audlum became enamored with her, too, and he had a lot of money.

00:57:01.520 - 00:57:32.660

one time he was the wealthiest financier in the United States, Floyd Audlum. Did you ever meet him? Okay. When he wanted to marry Jackie, she went that way and he got a divorce by, and I'm not really sure about this, but he awarded his wife as part of the divorce settlement, Lord and Taylor's. Now I'm not sure about that

00:57:32.800 - 00:57:56.080

that department store. It was on Fifth Avenue. It was one of the big department stores. I know it wasn't Altman, but there are only just a few department stores on Fifth Avenue at that time, and we're talking 1930, '31. And so that way Dad knew her for many, many years. All that time they'd seen each other. They were still running

00:57:56.080 - 00:58:08.020

running into each other when I was in the WASP. She was curious about how I got stationed at Bryan. And then she wanted to come out there. Kelly: Let me ask you about the first time that you met her.

00:58:08.190 - 00:58:16.900

What was your— Reid: I went to her office, and that's what she told me. She said, "I don't think your dad wants you to fly. He wants you to work in my office."

00:58:16.900 - 00:58:30.440

I said, "No, I don't want to work in your office." I said, "I want to get in the WASP." Kelly: Did you go to her office? I think the reason he didn't want me to fly at that point, I'd already taken him

00:58:30.560 - 00:58:43.320

up as a passenger in a cub at Manassas. And he yelled at me all the time. He said, "Okay, do your eights around a pylon." And so I started out.

00:58:43.320 - 00:58:55.880

I found two pylons and went around these farm silos. He said, "Who taught you to do them downwind?" And I said, "You know, you do them both ways. End of the wind, downwind.

00:58:56.840 - 00:59:16.900

And then when we went back to land, I was on downwind and I turned on base and I turned on final and I had to give a little power, a little power. He said, "What happened to your judgment?" And then I thought, "Well, maybe that's what he told Jackie.

00:59:17.060 - 00:59:31.960

He didn't like the way I was flying that Cub. And he might have thought that I was a lot safer on the ground because he had tried to teach me to drive up in Jackson, Michigan. And he didn't like the way I handled the clutch in that old Model A Ford.

00:59:35.300 - 00:59:54.780

The gravel would fly on the gravel road. So anyway, he knew he would turn it over to me in the air in Michigan, though, when he was mapping. All I had to do was, now he had a weight hanging from the top of the cabin to maintain level

00:59:55.080 - 01:00:08.680

wings. So that was his artificial horizon, you might say. And then, of course, he had a needle and ball. And I had to keep the altitude within no more than three feet.

01:00:08.780 - 01:00:30.360

I mean, I had to fight to keep the altitude and the wings level and the heading right on the line and this went on for hours and hours in the air at 15,000 feet with no oxygen in Michigan. And so he knew I loved it and he knew I loved flying this Cub back and forth from Nassau

01:00:30.440 - 01:00:44.440

County. I'd had all this before, before I went to see Jackie. But maybe just being a father, you know, thinking a girl, he knew Jackie could fly. didn't think the best or whatever.

01:00:45.040 - 01:00:56.480

Kelly: Do you know how your mom felt about your learning to fly? Reifeltt: Oh, well, you know what she told me when I got out of the WAPS? She said, "You didn't have to do that." That's how she felt about it.

01:00:56.620 - 01:01:15.060

Kelly: Did your dad ever fly with Cochran? Reifeltt: Oh, yeah, he flew cross-country with her on her first cross-country to Canada. We went to Canada. And they were in love, I guess.

01:01:15.820 - 01:01:33.380

Kelly: What was your first impression of Cochran when you met her? Ritz: That day, I thought she was very friendly and she was very nice. Kelly: Did you have to take a physical to get into the— Ritz: Oh, I think I did, yeah, Air Force.

01:01:34.020 - 01:01:51.400

Do you recall what you thought the WASP, what the program was all about? Lucky: She told me. Jackie sat there at her desk and she said, "It could be very dangerous." She was trying to talk me out of it.

01:01:52.040 - 01:02:10.180

She said, "You know, we had a girl, our first fatality, and somebody committed sabotage. They put sugar in the gas tank and she crashed and she was killed. Now I don't know who that was. I thought it was the girl, Elizabeth, what's her face? Erickson.

01:02:10.300 - 01:02:26.080

Erickson. No, no, no. That was my class, Elizabeth Erickson. No, this girl was, it might have been a P-38. It was one of the girls who were faring, one of the girls who was, that's proper English. Yeah. Or perhaps one at Camp Davis.

01:02:27.480 - 01:02:36.780

Yeah. But I'll never forget that's what she said. It was the sugar in the gas tank. It was sabotage. Kelly: But that did not discourage you? Roslyn: No.

01:02:38.300 - 01:02:54.180

My dad had had thirteen crashes in his life. He ended up in a tree in New Orleans in 1919, big headlines in the paper. I knew things like that happened, but you just had to be careful. You had to do it the right way.

01:02:54.510 - 01:03:09.380

Kelly: Once you met with Cochran, then how long was it before you actually met? I was on my way. Kelly: How did you get from Washington to Sweetwater? Roslyn: That's a whole new story.

01:03:13.800 - 01:03:39.620

This was around October, and all the little secretaries and so forth knew that I was going to go into the WASP, knew I was Colonel Grevenberg's daughter and all that. They said, "Oh, there's another girl here, a secretary, who is going to that same class. going to. And her name is Penny Pence. And we've got to, you've got to get you two

01:03:40.500 - 01:03:59.500

together." So Penny said, Penny wasn't really friendly, but she said, "Well, I'm driving." She said, "If you want to come, okay." And so I said, "Well, that's wonderful." And she said, "Well, be at my apartment at such and such a place, like North Washington somewhere on New Year's Eve.

01:04:00.840 - 01:04:20.400

And she said, "The door will be open." And my aunt, Mattil, drove me over there, Christmas Eve, or New Year's Eve, and the door was open and there were pennies, things all packed and everything. And she wasn't there, and she didn't come in until about four in the morning or so.

01:04:20.560 - 01:04:41.020

She'd been out celebrating. And I had my bag, and she said, "Well, okay, let's get going." And I'll never forget it. We started out, and we went along that skyline drive with snow and ice, sheer ice.

01:04:41.840 - 01:05:00.940

And she had, I remember, a four-door, some sort of a black car. I don't know what they would be, DeSoto or something. Our first stop was Richmond, Virginia, but it took that long to get to Virginia. We got to Virginia, I'd say, about three in the afternoon.

01:05:02.340 - 01:05:18.880

That's from Washington, D.C. She had trouble when she went to get gas, and she found out she didn't have any gas. She had to take it to a garage, and they said she had a hole in the gas tank and it had to be fixed.

01:05:19.040 - 01:05:26.300

And she said, "Well, go ahead and fix it." And in the meantime, I wasn't with her. I was back at the hotel. We had separate rooms.

01:05:27.460 - 01:05:38.280

And we met at dinner in a very lovely dining room. I never will forget it. All sort of wood paneled, nice soft lighting. She sat across from me and we had our dinner.

01:05:39.000 - 01:05:49.500

She was telling me about the car and she said it would cost $38. And I said, "Well, I offered to split everything with you." And I said, "I will pay half. I never will forget, $38.

01:05:50.660 - 01:06:00.420

And so that was going to, I was going to give her $16, which I did right there. I split the gasoline and everything. Of course, we had separate rooms in the hotels. We didn't have any trouble there.

01:06:01.500 - 01:06:19.300

So we finished dinner and we hadn't said very much. The only thing we talked about was the car. And she said to me, out of a blue, she said, "We're not going to be friends." Well, I had never had anybody say such a thing to me.

01:06:20.080 - 01:06:35.060

And I said, "Oh, is there something I've done or said?" She said, "No, no." And that was it. And so we continued almost in silence to Waco, Texas.

01:06:35.760 - 01:06:51.700

And I didn't know I was going to Waco, but I ended up in Waco. And she disappeared for two or three days. And I don't know when we had to be at Sweetwater. Could it have been like the 10th of January or something like that?

01:06:52.720 - 01:07:08.600

But anyway, here we are in Waco and I get to see her maybe two days later and she has a terrible cold. She called me on the phone, talking like this, you know. I said, "Oh, heavens, I'm sorry, you know, that you have a terrible cold."

01:07:08.600 - 01:07:19.640

And I said, "Can I get anything for you?" And she said, "No." And I went out and I got some oranges and I got a little hand squeezer and I squeezed her orange juice and took it to her.

01:07:20.680 - 01:07:38.440

And she still wasn't friendly. And then we drove to Sweetwater the next morning, and by the time we got to Dallas and on to Sweetwater, we were driving at night in a blizzard. I never will forget that old highway going out to Sweetwater or Abilene.

01:07:39.040 - 01:07:48.700

The snow was coming right at us horizontally. Drove that whole way. We got to Sweetwater late that night. And she never was friendly.

01:07:49.600 - 01:08:13.560

She washed out, and I don't know what phase it was, but the girls who were in her bay found out that her brother had been killed overseas. And when she went up for the ad hoc committee, she never told them that. And they might have made some, given her some leniency if they had known what was bothering

01:08:13.680 - 01:08:27.940

her. Like the day Mary Hansen was killed, Doc Ives said to me, "You're not flying today." Because I saw them bring in her crash stuff. And we were supposed to be going down to the auxiliary in an AT-6.

01:08:28.520 - 01:08:41.220

He said, "You're not flying anymore today." Because that affected me. Mary Hansen was a dear friend, and she had lent me her little wishbone pin for my primary check for good luck.

01:08:42.000 - 01:08:52.180

I wore it, and of course I passed. Kelly: Wow. What was your impression of Avenger Field when you went out there? Reed: I loved every bit of it.

01:08:52.640 - 01:08:58.880

Loved it. I liked the military. I liked the discipline. I liked to be organized.

01:09:00.340 - 01:09:15.000

When you got out to Avenger— I'd been—remember, I'd been flying off in grass fields. Nothing was paved. Manassas, Culpepper, and with Dad up in Michigan, maybe some of those were paved.

01:09:15.090 - 01:09:30.920

I don't know. When you got out to Avenger and were assigned baymates, tell me about your baymates. Wonderful girls. Still friends with Frankie Lovern over there in a retirement home in Sarasota.

01:09:31.300 - 01:09:51.640

Been a wonderful friend all these years. Eve McNulty, I stayed in touch with her. She moved to Naples and she had Marilyn Saunders, Marilyn Miller Saunders, and Frankie, and Audrey Maxwell, and me down to stay at her house and visit with her and go to take a

01:09:51.320 - 01:10:02.760

plane ride, Naples Airline, who was over at Cape Cod in the summer and down at Naples in the winter. And there was Audrey Maxwell. She came to see me one time.

01:10:05.040 - 01:10:13.960

And I remember one thing about Audrey. "Star Eyes." Remember that song? She sang it all the time.

01:10:14.220 - 01:10:25.140

"Star Eyes." Remember? "Star Eyes, da-da-da-da-da-da-da." Then there was Mary McConaughey.

01:10:26.680 - 01:10:42.180

She has not remained friendly. She lives right up here in Daytona or somewhere up there. She will not communicate anyway. But Eve and Frankie and Audrey Maxwell, there was one other girl who washed out.

01:10:42.760 - 01:10:58.060

And then the Millers started moving in with the Ms and the Ns. And that's how Meryl and I got to be really great friends for 55 years. I miss her terribly because we had a great time. She moved to Vero Beach because of me with her whole family.

01:10:59.580 - 01:11:18.860

And Eve, they were all wonderful friends. Later on, Eve flew from Chicago one time. She was delivering a plane for two men who owned Sports Afield magazine. And so she was taking it from Chicago to New York for them to fly to Miami, and they invited

01:11:18.940 - 01:11:36.680

me to fly with them down to Miami. So we all flew to Miami, and Dora Dougherty, the great B-29 pilot, and she was aboard with Eve McNulty, and then these two men from Sports Afield magazine. And so we had a great time.

01:11:38.200 - 01:11:47.340

What was the first airplane you flew at Avenger? Stierman. Stierman. Yeah, PT-17.

01:11:47.880 - 01:11:58.160

Okay. What was a typical day like when you were in training? Well, Eve McNully was our—what is it? Squadron commander or something?

01:11:58.160 - 01:12:04.280

Yeah. Because she was in the military. She had been in WACs or something. Maybe not that, but something.

01:12:04.580 - 01:12:19.520

So she knew all about getting everybody out there and calling names, calling to order, whatever that is. Just saying, "Here, present," or whatever. So we would wrap our white scarves around our heads and go to breakfast, march to breakfast,

01:12:20.340 - 01:12:37.500

and chanting all those wonderful songs. "Hup two, three, four, hup two." And we'd have breakfast of green eggs, green scrambled eggs, and then some fruit and things like that, cereal.

01:12:39.180 - 01:13:02.560

The cereal was boxed and we would put that in a little bowl that we'd pick up on the mess line and get a little container of milk. And one morning I was eating my cereal, sort of blind. And Dorothea Rexroth came by and she said, "You're eating them too!"

01:13:02.560 - 01:13:15.320

And I looked and I was eating bugs out of the box. Bugs had gotten into the cereal. They're probably really old. That was a typical morning.

01:13:16.340 - 01:13:33.880

Then march off to the flight line. I guess we got to go back to the bay, you know, maybe to clean up or whatever. And then off to either ground school or the flight line, every single day. Ground school was wonderful, learning all about weather, learning all about navigation,

01:13:34.520 - 01:13:54.580

engines, physics. Our physics teacher dropping the ball, you know. Kelly: Describe what your quarters were like. Our quarters were very bare, had concrete floors and six cots, which we had to keep

01:13:55.200 - 01:14:09.940

well tucked in and enable the sergeant or whoever, the lieutenant, to drop a quarter on it and it had to bounce. So you had to pull that quilt real tight. And everything had to be ship-shaped.

01:14:11.660 - 01:14:26.000

We got demerits if there was something that they didn't like on the inspection. Saturday morning inspection. And one time, those windows, which we had to prop up in the bathroom, you had to put something there to hold it up.

01:14:26.720 - 01:14:44.380

Well, that got knocked out and it fell down on my toothpaste tube and squashed it. And the next thing I knew, I was on the demerit roll for not having my toothpaste tube properly rolled. Well, it was so smashed that I couldn't really roll it very well.

01:14:45.240 - 01:15:02.200

Of course, I had to just put it in the glass, where our toothbrush and our toothpaste had to be in the glass. I don't remember exactly where that was in the bathroom. I know we had those sandstorms, and of course, we at that time had to get a shovel to get

01:15:02.280 - 01:15:21.500

the sand out of our bays. On the west side, our windows were on the west side. We had two windows and then one door, a window in the bathroom and a couple of windows on either side of the door to the walkway. It was all pretty barren and we used to

01:15:21.540 - 01:15:48.580

sun outside in the dirt. No grass, but I remember oftentimes when we had some Saturday afternoon or Sunday maybe of lying out in the sun. Our zoot suits were hanging in like a little closet beside our cots and we had to have everything just so our shoes lined up and the zoot suits that we weren't

01:15:48.640 - 01:16:08.700

wearing nice and clean and the white scarves. Remember the white scarves? They blew off on the open planes but nevertheless you had to wear them. How did you clean your zoot suits? In the shower at the end of the base. You got an outside shower and you got in

01:16:08.700 - 01:16:32.460

you soaked it down and turned the water on and that was it. Clean your suit suit. You remember that. Kelly: While you were in training at Avenger, was your dad ever able to come and see you? Roslyn: Yes, he did. He came out to see me. Your class probably was night flying. I went

01:16:32.480 - 01:16:55.820

up on the flight line and sat with him. He was only there for just a few hours. I do and maybe a B-25, I don't know, maybe an A-26 maybe. And we were sitting on the flight line watching the girls go off to night flight. So you were two months ahead of us, and you were probably doing night flight.

01:16:56.640 - 01:17:19.740

And he shook his head, and he saw these girls with their parachutes over their shoulders walking out to the AT-6s, you know, and he said, "Oh, honey dear," he said, "are going to do that." And you see, he was thinking about, "Oh, this is my daughter, should she be doing this?" But he didn't say anything negative about it. He just said,

01:17:20.100 - 01:17:39.920

"Are you going to be doing this?" I said, "Yes, ten hours, ten hours a night flying." Kelly: Were you surprised when he came because of regulations saying that— Lowry: I think knowing Jackie, he could do anything. He could come. I know we were up there at night. I don't know about bed check or anything, but he was there.

01:17:40.300 - 01:18:10.100

Kelly: Do you remember your solo flight in a Stearman? Lowry: Yes. Yeah, sort of. Not too much. The big thing with my instructor, he was a little fellow. When he was showing me confidence maneuvers and rolled over, he was so afraid that I was not strapped in, because one of the girls in the previous class had fallen

01:18:10.260 - 01:18:25.380

out when he rolled over, inverted. And he watched her go down in her parachute. Of course, it was her first parachute jump. From that time on, he was really concerned about being strapped in and the safety belt.

01:18:26.010 - 01:18:44.800

Kelly: How did you communicate while you were— And you know about those. He had this little funnel thing that he talked into, and it went into my ears and my headset. And he would talk to me that way.

01:18:45.280 - 01:18:54.100

I don't know whether we could talk back. I don't think we could talk back. But he talked to us like that. That went into—I guess we wore helmets, didn't we?

01:18:54.620 - 01:19:05.980

Not the white scarves, a helmet. And maybe one ear, and we heard what he wanted to say. Now do this, now show me a slow roll. Now do a nimmelman.

01:19:06.640 - 01:19:23.380

Now do a Shondell. Kelly: Tell me about the auxiliary fields. Rockwell: A hut with coffee and smoking. I never smoked before until everybody was in there in this little tiny room.

01:19:24.120 - 01:19:40.140

And when we'd park our planes, after we shot landings or whatever we were supposed to be doing, getting everybody off the main field, there we were, crowded into this little tiny hut, drinking coffee and smoking. Which I didn't do much later.

01:19:40.420 - 01:19:53.760

I quit. Kelly: What was the most difficult subject that you had in ground school? Do you recall anything special? I loved it all, loved weather.

01:19:54.240 - 01:20:00.600

I've loved weather all my life. Can't get enough of it. I wanted to take meteorology. I didn't have any money.

01:20:00.770 - 01:20:06.000

Levy: Morse code. Did that— Reed: I loved it. We only had two.

01:20:06.000 - 01:20:19.860

How many? Fifteen words a minute. It was the lowest. Levy: While you were in training, did you have time off to go into town, for example?

01:20:20.460 - 01:20:34.500

I don't remember going to town too often. I remember only a couple of times. The reason I remember it is that crazy Russian check pilot. Remember him?

01:20:35.190 - 01:20:48.360

You don't remember him. He was in town, this one place where we ate. It was unusual to see one of the instructors off base, I guess. That's the only reason I remember it.

01:20:50.300 - 01:21:07.920

I don't remember, really. There was only one big trip that we'd take between phases. We got a Texas travel car and Beze Leveque, Meany Miller—Meany wasn't exactly our class.

01:21:07.920 - 01:21:25.120

She was an instructor and she was going through our class. Did you ever know Meany? And Sonny Miller and Marilyn Miller and I took this travel car down to Del Rio, Texas. And we went across the river.

01:21:25.410 - 01:21:45.420

We stayed at a motel right near the bridge across the dry Rio Grande. There might have been a little water down there. But we crossed there and we stayed in Vigo Cunha all day, having a ball, buying jewelry, eating Mexican food.

01:21:46.420 - 01:22:13.620

And by the time five o'clock came, we were drinking tequila, I'm sorry to say, finally dancing with little Mexican men, and having a great time, just a wonderful time. Finally, a bunch of civilian instructors who were teaching at some field in Del Rio, there was some air base down there or something.

01:22:14.520 - 01:22:29.020

They came in and they said, "You girls get back across the river right now." We thought, "Well, they're saying get out of here." They insisted that we get out. They didn't think it was the right place for us.

01:22:29.760 - 01:22:42.140

They thought things were getting a little too funny. And so we left. We went on. We went back to the motel. Vicky Rideout: Good. She's got change tape. Lynn Roberson: Yeah.

01:22:42.310 - 01:22:48.100

Vicky Rideout: Okay. Listen. Lynn Roberson: Great. Vicky Rideout: What does this have to do with flyer? Lynn Roberson: It's a travel car.

01:22:48.150 - 01:23:06.980

Vicky Rideout: Okay. And once you got back over into Del Rio, then how did you—you had that car rented from Sweetwater? He went someplace. He went someplace. He went back, I guess, but that's another story. I'm not going to tell you this on camera.

01:23:07.860 - 01:23:26.880

Oh, okay. But Meanie Miller, when we got back, we started talking, and we talked and we talked and we talked. And I don't know, we sat there out on the steps and just talked about our lives for some reason, you know. And she was rather interesting. I don't know what happened

01:23:26.880 - 01:23:40.240

to her. She wasn't our class, but she was an instructor in going through the WASP training. So anyway, she was one of the Millers, and that was one of the things that was the big thing.

01:23:40.320 - 01:23:58.280

There were three, four Millers. So anyway, Marilyn Miller, my old buddy who moved to Vero Beach, was looking for me, and She had gone through different rooms because she knew that all of us were bunked somewhere, you know.

01:23:58.820 - 01:24:11.940

And she was looking in on these different rooms. And she came on, Meany and I sitting there, and I guess it was just about daybreak. And she said, "Where have you been? I've been looking all over for you."

01:24:11.940 - 01:24:22.300

Now, don't put this on. And then she told me what she had seen. There were two girls from Sweetwater. One was your class, 44-5.

01:24:23.190 - 01:24:35.320

The other was the woman who flew in England with the RAF or RAF or something and had a metal plate put in her head. What was her name? I'll think of it in a minute.

01:24:35.440 - 01:24:39.740

Yeah, she was in my class. Hazel Raines. Hazel Raines. They were lovers.

01:24:40.440 - 01:24:59.560

They were in bed together. Marilyn had run into them looking for me, and they were in bed together. She was shocked and of course she told us about it. And Hazel had a great big Cadillac or something convertible.

01:25:00.720 - 01:25:16.720

And she said, "Oh," she said, "we didn't even know that we were all there until the morning when everybody woke up." She said, "Oh, you can drive back with us." So we drove back in her car, in her girlfriend, in your class, that blonde.

01:25:16.900 - 01:25:28.060

I've got pictures of her. You'd recognize her in your class. I've got all these in my photo album. But, Dora, you know you can't put that on the page.

01:25:28.060 - 01:25:39.100

I think that's the best story you've told. Yeah, yeah. Did you, wait, let me ask you, did you know there were such things? No.

01:25:39.560 - 01:25:52.860

I didn't either. No. My gosh, no. Oh dear. Oh dear. Okay. Okay. Evidently that was probably between primary and

01:25:53.380 - 01:26:05.480

after you finished primary that you took that trip. I guess. It was sort of like a break, two-day break or something like that. Did any of your baymates wash out? Yes. The first girl washed out,

01:26:06.500 - 01:26:27.640

Her name is in the training, I recognize her name, Mildred somebody. She came back crying one day. The reason she washed out was her instructor said, "Force landing in a PT-17." She picked out a good field, but she flew under the wires, scared the instructor to

01:26:27.840 - 01:26:46.220

death. She was up to the ad hoc committee and gone. I mean, she'd only been there a couple of weeks. And of course, Penny Pence, she got ousted, too, from that ad hoc committee after receiving

01:26:46.320 - 01:27:00.580

word her brother had been killed. She might have been the one that she was seeing in Waco, I don't know, but she would not talk and she wouldn't be my friend. You never met her, naturally.

01:27:01.720 - 01:27:25.980

have much to do with any of the girls in other classes. Linda: When you went into BT's, describe what instrument flying was all about. Roslyn: Well, now this sounds like bragging, but my instructor said, "Where have you had instrument flying?"

01:27:26.060 - 01:27:37.080

I said, "I never had instrument flying." He said, "Oh, yes, you have." I said, "Never did, flew with my dad all the time." Then I told him about mapping Michigan.

01:27:37.700 - 01:27:51.240

He said, "That's it." He said, "You've had it." He just thought I was the cat's meow. He took me over, and after my check ride in Abilene, you know how we go to check flight

01:27:51.280 - 01:28:03.140

over there because of the range? We came back. He put me through every unusual position you can imagine, rolls, loops, everything under the hood.

01:28:03.150 - 01:28:17.420

He made me be under—I couldn't even celebrate. I was really working on the way back from Abilene after I passed my checkride. He sent me to Bryan. You know what they sent around a questionnaire, "What do you want to do?"

01:28:17.420 - 01:28:32.220

I wanted to fly P-47s. I said, "That's all I want to do is fly P-47s. I went to Bryan. They didn't have a choice, the instrument instructor school, because of him and because

01:28:32.260 - 01:28:42.900

of flying MAP in Michigan. Isn't that funny? Kelly: While you were in training, were any of the girls killed? Reifeldt: Yes, two girls in my class.

01:28:44.160 - 01:29:15.220

The one girl had a mid-air with my friend Mary Hansen, and the other girl, she had leaking oil, I think. No, no, no, no, no. The hydraulic line broke in the cockpit right beside her, where it was. She picked out a field, and she knew she had to get down because this hydraulic fluid was burning her eyes. She was just being able to pick out a field. She

01:29:15.280 - 01:29:35.300

was on her way down, much too low, and she decided to jump. She was killed. How did that make you feel? Well, I knew, I knew, you know, that there were problems. Then the next day you had to fly again?

01:29:35.760 - 01:29:50.320

Yeah, yeah. The only thing that affected me was Mary Hansen, because I went up to the tower and I saw the truckloads bringing the crashed pieces in. That bothered me a little.

01:29:50.480 - 01:30:00.760

even though I hadn't known Mary Hansen that much, we probably saw each other Saturdays and Sundays when we went out to Manassas to fly. And I wished her luck, 'cause she left in October,

01:30:00.940 - 01:30:07.720

see, I didn't know her very long. She was in two classes before me. When did you report? - That was my class.

01:30:07.780 - 01:30:16.920

- Sure. - While you were at Avenger in training, did Miss Cochran ever come? - Yes, she did.

01:30:17.160 - 01:30:27.000

She did the parade inspection or whatever they called that, where they used to stand on that platform with the generals and so forth. Kelly: At graduation? Reid: Yeah, but I never saw her.

01:30:27.320 - 01:30:32.180

Never saw her. Kelly: Okay. So, you never went in and talked to her when she would come? Reid: No.

01:30:34.340 - 01:30:57.940

The only time that I even came close to her was my graduation. And that's when my dad flew in the B-24, and he had celebrated the night before. I don't know with her or with whom, but one of the, what they call the women who stayed, they were our trustee, what are they called?

01:30:58.180 - 01:31:14.120

Establishment officers. Establishment officers, yeah. Well he had spent some time with her in town, and talking about training and everything, And so he wasn't feeling too well when we went to the auditorium for our graduation,

01:31:15.220 - 01:31:35.240

and he stayed in the back. And then all of a sudden, my whole class up to the M's had gone up to get their wings, including everyone after me, and I'm sitting by myself. And Jackie said, "I'm going to call up an old friend of mine, a father of one of

01:31:35.080 - 01:31:52.600

the girls and have him pin her wings on. So there he was. He came up to the stage and I was finally called up. I was the last one. She made a little joke about Dad and so forth. He pinned my wings on. Kelly: Pretty special.

01:31:52.600 - 01:32:08.240

Roslyn: He took a movie, and I have the movie of some of us marching. Color film. Kelly: Tell me about your uniform. Oh, the Santiago blue? Well, of course we loved those, and we got those a little early.

01:32:10.080 - 01:32:36.960

We got those maybe a month before we graduated in August, and we got to wear them. A few of us, now I don't know why, we were invited over to Waco, to the officers club, and we got to fly PT-17 individually. Each one of us had our own PT-17 to fly to Waco to have lunch at the Officers' Club

01:32:37.100 - 01:32:49.580

in our new uniforms. How did it go like that? The battle jacket, the slacks. And we also, a few of us, and I don't know why it wasn't a whole class, got invited

01:32:49.680 - 01:33:09.520

down to Pecos, the B-17. B-17 landed, picked us up, and flew us to Pecos, Pecos, Texas, the Officers' Club lunch. And Eve McNulty had to relieve herself in the B-17, and she did not know what to do.

01:33:10.700 - 01:33:30.420

So she went back to the tail, where there was a big hole where the gunner used to be, but it was then blank, it was open, and it all came back on her. And her new uniform. So much for our beautiful blue uniform.

01:33:31.500 - 01:33:42.380

Kelly: And this all happened before you graduated? Reifelt: Yeah, yeah. We were extra special getting invited all over to luncheons at officers' clubs in our beautiful uniforms.

01:33:43.380 - 01:33:53.380

Kelly: Beside your dad for your graduation, were there other celebrities there? Reifeldt didn't see any. Kelly: There, he didn't see a call. Reifeltt: No.

01:33:53.390 - 01:33:58.680

Kelly: Okay. And when they— Reifeltt: Not even a general or two. Kelly: Oh.

01:34:00.480 - 01:34:09.820

So when you got your orders, they— Reifeltt: I was so disappointed. I wanted to fly P-47s. And there I was going to Bryan.

01:34:09.850 - 01:34:23.120

I didn't know anything about Bryan. And I was in for six more weeks of grueling training. I mean grueling. Reifeldt: Tell me about the trip when you left Sweetwater.

01:34:23.330 - 01:34:33.840

Reifeltt: On the B-24? Reifeltt: Well, Dad— Reifeltt: Were you by yourself? Reifeltt: Dad being a weight—no, they had ten girls aboard in the B-24.

01:34:34.740 - 01:34:51.680

And Dad being a weight and balance man, spotted each one of us throughout the B-24, maybe four in the cockpit. Some had to stand in the bomb bay and hold on. Some were in the—maybe two in the tail.

01:34:52.620 - 01:35:14.060

This thing is mammoth inside. It was just so big and very surprising. These things that were—the bomb bay possibly held all those terrible bombs that they dropped. You had to climb in from this bomb bay that opened like that in the bottom, and you just

01:35:13.940 - 01:35:22.620

had to pull yourself up into that, the best way possible. No steps or anything like that. You had to be strong. Of course, we were always chinting ourselves at PT.

01:35:23.220 - 01:35:43.920

We were strong girls. So anyway, after being stationed all throughout, he took off. I told you about the operations officer, which was related to me later on, shaking his head. He said, "That man will never get off with those girls."

01:35:43.920 - 01:36:02.540

He was probably holding a Requiem right there for ten girls, because he knew that B-24 was not going to clear 6,400 feet. We got off. My dad, after all, he had been flying since World War I, every type plane you can imagine.

01:36:03.500 - 01:36:20.780

We cleared the lines, remember, at the highway, the telephone lines, and we were on our way. Somehow, I don't know whether this is in my mind or what. I thought we landed in Nashville and Dad took us all to lunch at my favorite restaurant. I'm not sure.

01:36:21.780 - 01:36:36.580

That might be just a fantasy. But we did get to Washington, and then we dispersed. Mary Reinberg is another girl besides Sister Teresa. And I'd love to know all the names of the girls who were aboard, because it was a last-minute

01:36:36.780 - 01:36:49.580

thing. They said, "Well, find nine girls and take them back to Washington, anybody living back that way." It was not done the night before or anything, it was done just that morning after graduation.

01:36:49.760 - 01:36:58.800

Kelly: Did your dad have a full crew on that airplane? Reid: No. He had a stripped-down B-24. That means everything taken off of it.

01:37:00.720 - 01:37:18.120

He picked it up in California, some Air Force base. It might have been in combat, I don't know, stripped down. He picked up a little engineer, a young engineer, a non-com, and he flew with them all the way to Sweetwater.

01:37:20.940 - 01:37:38.140

He wanted to take as many girls—he had this in his mind, he had it all planned. That's why he didn't have a crew. He knew that he wanted to take some girls up, give them B-24 rides. We all took turns trying to fly the 24, and with no boosters, we couldn't press the

01:37:38.360 - 01:37:44.440

rudder pedals. Not budget. You couldn't even turn. You couldn't turn the wheel, nothing.

01:37:44.870 - 01:37:58.820

Kelly: At that time, where was he stationed? Reid: He was stationed at Washington National Air Transport Command. Kelly: And his rank at that time? He might have been a major.

01:37:58.920 - 01:38:07.740

I think our roster says major. I think it was major. Kelly: So you landed in Washington? Reid: Yeah, Washington National.

01:38:08.820 - 01:38:14.700

Now Reagan. Kelly: Right. Then where did you go? You had a few days off.

01:38:14.700 - 01:38:36.060

Reid: I was graduating. He was testing a new nose in Miami, Florida. The new nose was on a C-46. They were having trouble with, I don't know whether it was glare or whatever, or extra

01:38:36.520 - 01:38:50.360

lights that were coming in. But the old nose on the C-46, they didn't like, so they were trying to put a C-47 nose on it. If you know a C-47 nose, the windows come down, and then it goes out to the nose.

01:38:50.400 - 01:39:05.480

The seat 46 was just straight from the windows on down to the tip of the nose. So he was doing that testing in Miami, and he said, "Why don't you come down to Miami?" So I don't know how I got down there. Maybe he flew me down.

01:39:06.960 - 01:39:24.900

I know that—oh, no, this is just after graduation. This is before I got to—yeah, my base. I'm talking about after we got out. I took an airline, went to Pittsburgh to see my mother, and then went back to Washington.

01:39:26.020 - 01:39:41.420

And Dad said, "Well, you're going to be based at Bryan." He said, "I think I can get a flight down there, get a plane flight down." And I said, "Oh, what type of aircraft do you think?" He said, "I don't know."

01:39:41.420 - 01:39:56.800

And he still didn't know when we were walking out to the line at Washington National. And we walked up to a B-25, my love. And I said, "Dad, you did this. Oh, no!"

01:39:56.800 - 01:40:08.200

He said, "Yep, I'm flying to Brian in the 25." So he put me on his co-pilot, and he let me fly the whole time. It was the whole time with IFR. I loved it.

01:40:08.520 - 01:40:24.780

That's all I had to do, you know, maintain altitude, maintain a heading, and there wasn't much to do. So he wanted to stop in Baton Rouge to see his brother. So we landed in Baton Rouge and had lunch with his brother, my uncle Frank.

01:40:25.620 - 01:40:41.180

And then he flew me into Bryan. We taxied up to operations. Here was the new WASP getting out of the B-25 reporting. And Suzanne Parrish, Suzanne Delano Parrish and I were the only two girls that were ever

01:40:41.380 - 01:40:57.300

permanently based at Bryan. Joe Duckworth let us be the first permanent girls there. He didn't want any women on that field. He had to have the nurses, didn't like it, and he didn't ever want any WASPs, but we

01:40:57.360 - 01:41:03.960

were the first two. Kelly: How did he treat you? Litz: Just like a father. He was so wonderful.

01:41:04.860 - 01:41:32.800

He is a legend of aviation. He wrote the first instrument book, really, I guess besides Jimmy Doolittle and the Colesman people who had the first instrument school. He wrote this book, which is the most fabulous book he ever read on instrument flying.

01:41:35.460 - 01:41:49.520

He had the legend because he was the first pilot ever to fly through a hurricane, through the eye of a hurricane. I don't know what the type of aircraft it was. It might have been an AT-6, but he was just an old-time pilot.

01:41:50.960 - 01:42:03.980

Everybody knew him, wonderful things written about him. It's too bad that more things haven't come out about Colonel Joe B. Duckworth. Kelly: When you got there, did your dad meet him? Reid: No.

01:42:03.980 - 01:42:23.140

Kelly: Had he ever met him? No, no, never. After I got through that grueling course, and not very many people until just recently, I'll tell you about that later, did an RLNL box low approach.

01:42:23.940 - 01:42:33.080

Did you ever hear about that? No. No, okay. Well, I don't want to go into that right now, but I had six weeks of intense weather,

01:42:34.500 - 01:42:57.560

an intense ground school on navigational aids and things like that. And it was just beautiful. It was the best instrument school in the whole nation. And we were very, very busy and flying under the hood, and we were expected to orient ourselves

01:42:57.700 - 01:43:17.440

and practically take a plane down to touching the wheels on the ground on the ILS. And we had three ILSs at that airport. We had two at auxiliary fields where we practiced over and over again making ILS approaches, and one at the main field at Bryan.

01:43:18.140 - 01:43:25.500

Beautiful training. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I loved it with a passion. Where did you live?

01:43:26.180 - 01:43:48.440

the base with the nurses. Suzanne Parrish and I lived in the base. Kelly: And what was that base—its mission? Was it an instrument training school? What was the mission of the base? Reid: Army Air Force training—AAFTD, Training Detachment. Yeah, it was strictly instrument

01:43:48.540 - 01:44:03.540

training. Kelly: Were they training cadets or training— Reid: You know what they were training? They were training the fellows who were coming back from combat. B-24s and B-17 pilots, and they were ground looping the first day they

01:44:03.600 - 01:44:25.820

got in the AT-6 like crazy. The siren would be going all day long, ground looping AT-6s, because they had climbed out of four-engine bombers and got into a single-engine plane. And you know the AT-6 had to be controlled pretty carefully. And I'll give you a little secret, Suzanne ground-looped us sixth while there.

01:44:28.890 - 01:44:41.060

Bet she never told that. Kelly: So you were teaching officers? Reed: Never got to teach. The order came through, we were being disbanded.

01:44:42.000 - 01:45:07.420

And Colonel Joe did not know what to do with us, and he put us in the engineering department. So just like all the girls in the training part of the Air Force, we tested AT-6s, wing changes, tail changes, instruments, whatever, that had been worked on. Reifeldt: When you were stationed there, what was your social life like?

01:45:08.570 - 01:45:27.840

Rockwell: Nothing. We went back to the nurses' quarters, and we had a fine time with the nurses. We ate at the officer's mess, which was really good food, for breakfast and lunch and dinner. I only remember going out one night.

01:45:28.560 - 01:45:42.120

I remember having a party in town somewhere, a whole bunch of us. I don't know whether Suzanne was along or not, maybe some of the nurses, a group of fellas and girls. That's the only time I remember going out.

01:45:45.320 - 01:45:56.520

How were you notified that the WASPs were going to be disbanded? Buckner: I remember that. I do not know whether we got something printed out. I guess it was a printout, yes.

01:45:57.260 - 01:46:16.120

We probably reported to the engineering office in the morning to test fly. There was an envelope and we opened it. It was probably telling us that as of December 20, 1944, we were no longer. How did that make you feel?

01:46:17.640 - 01:46:32.840

Lucky: I was pretty sad. I thought, after all this, and I did not get to even teach instruments, and I had worked so hard on all that. I was all primed, a grueling oral.

01:46:33.580 - 01:46:56.860

After I had my instrument check right during that oral-no-box-low approach, I had either a two- or four-hour oral. Two officers, Christopher Wach and Oscar Backe, who had a big job with the FAA later on—in fact, they both were with the FAA later on, but they were the ones that gave me my oral.

01:46:57.740 - 01:47:19.720

Rose: While you were there, just the two of you, did you have contact with any of the other WASPs? Did any of them fly in, or did Ms. Cochran fly in? No. Oh yes, oh yes, Miss Cochran did. She ran into my father in Washington. I don't know how they always kept running into each other. And she wanted to know who he knew

01:47:19.960 - 01:47:46.600

to get me into Bryan. And he said, "Well, I don't know." He said, "I thought you did it." Now this has been a letter. I can show you the letter. And she said, "You that I would never be prejudiced against anybody and I would never show prejudice against anybody or what's the word I want, you know, to give somebody special treatment. I never did

01:47:46.700 - 01:48:04.380

that with any girl and you know that as well from your stories. And she said, "No, I had nothing to do with it." But when she found out I was at Bryan, she wanted to come down there. So they gave her a two-week VIP course at Bryant.

01:48:05.020 - 01:48:17.460

She never called me when she was there, you know, never showing any partiality. That's the word I wanted. Never said hello, nothing. And she was gone after two weeks.

01:48:18.300 - 01:48:41.840

She flew the AT-6, and she wanted to ride in the A-26 that was on the field. And she brought her Lockheed, she flew her Lockheed down there. And when she left, her instructor said to me, "She's too heavy on the AT-6 and too light on the A-26."

01:48:43.080 - 01:49:04.180

So anyway, that's all I knew about her instrument course, her VIP course. Of course, she was treated royally, but I never saw the officers club mess or anything. Colonel Joe probably entertained her. She probably stayed with him. Kelly: Is there anything about your training or anything about being at Spence that I have

01:49:04.180 - 01:49:32.980

left out? Anything unusual happen when you were flying at Spence in the engineering testing? No, not at Bryan, nothing. When I was on my long cross country, you know, the little girls who write us and email us wanting stories, they are so hepped up on, "Did men discriminate against you?"

01:49:32.980 - 01:49:48.100

They want to know how the men treated us. And I have two stories about that. On my long cross country, the AT-6, I was parked on the ramp at Tucson, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

01:49:49.460 - 01:50:02.680

So in the morning, I don't know why I was the only one after breakfast to get out there, but I was all by myself. And as I passed the hangar, there was a bench with about four young lieutenants sitting there, just sitting.

01:50:03.440 - 01:50:22.880

And of course, they were watching me walk out to my AT-6. So I walked around and you know what you do with the wing, you shake the wing a little bit and look at the wheels and check the sump pump, let that water out, and go around, lean on the tail, climb in the cockpit.

01:50:24.080 - 01:50:42.140

And just before I did my cockpit check, CIGFTPR, I called clear, clear. Well the first word I heard from them, all of them were over about maybe 100 or so, 200 feet away, "Clear! Clear!"

01:50:42.940 - 01:50:57.840

And I thought, "Well, I'm just not going to pay any attention to them." So I started the engine, and before I knew it, one was on either wingtip jumping up and down. And they said, "This is the way you pre-flight!"

01:50:58.260 - 01:51:14.520

Now is that discrimination or what? That's nasty. So that's what I felt from them. So when I got to Bryan, a little fella who chocked my plane one day, I just landed, chocked

01:51:14.520 - 01:51:34.560

my plane, I got out and he said, "I'd love to go up with you. I'd love to go up and see how a woman flies an airplane." I said, "Oh, well, I'll see what I can do, get you a ride." I went in and talked to my engineering officer, Jack Mitchell, who was right here in town,

01:51:34.920 - 01:52:00.960

sales manager for Johns Island, now a colonel—calls himself colonel, I mean retired. He said, "Sure, I'll get you a passenger permit for him." I put this young fellow in, who was probably a private or something like that. So I put him in the seat and the AT-6 made sure he was all strapped in and everything.

01:52:01.080 - 01:52:10.640

So we take off. I fly him around, whatever I was supposed to do that day. Came back and landed. And I said, "Well?"

01:52:10.640 - 01:52:23.640

He said, "Well, I don't see any difference." And I thought, "What does he expect? Did he think that airplane was going to fly differently because a woman was flying it?" It was so funny.

01:52:23.640 - 01:52:32.640

I just love that story. He thought something was going to be different. He did not see any difference. Is not that funny?

01:52:33.700 - 01:52:46.540

So anyway, those are my two stories. That is all I know about discrimination. Otherwise there was not any. Kelly: When you and Sue left that air base, did they do anything special?

01:52:46.920 - 01:53:01.740

Reifelt: No. Oh, Colonel Joe came up to me. Even before, when I was having dinner, he said, "Where are you going, Joan?" I said, "Oh, Dad's testing the C-46 down in Miami and wants me to come down there."

01:53:01.740 - 01:53:11.360

He said, "How are you going to get there?" I said, "I don't know. Here I am in Bryant at College Station, Texas. Dad's in Miami, and that's where I'm going."

01:53:12.140 - 01:53:26.660

He said, "Well, we've got a B-17 going to Pensacola tomorrow morning. You want to get up early and fly over as far as Pensacola in the B-17?" I said, "Oh, great, wonderful." I thought it was just wonderful being a B-17.

01:53:27.900 - 01:53:49.180

So Chris Wach, who was later with the FAA and who got me my transfer to Vero Beach—I will tell you that's much later, years later—well, he was flying the B-17. They went into an auxiliary field, an old triangular auxiliary field in the middle of nowhere in Pensacola, Florida.

01:53:50.140 - 01:54:07.620

I get out, here come two men with a deer, a dead deer on a pole. They were taking it back to Bryan for a venison roast. Loading that into the B-17 when I got out. And I'm in the middle of nowhere.

01:54:07.940 - 01:54:21.160

I don't know how I ever got out to get a train or anything over to Jacksonville and then on down to Miami. So I finally got to Miami. And Dad had a place for me to stay.

01:54:22.260 - 01:54:35.120

Some old friends of his, Frenchy Williams and his wife had an apartment over on the beach in Miami. And Frenchy was over in Tripoli. Frenchy Williams is a name.

01:54:35.860 - 01:54:51.380

He was President Truman's Air Force One pilot later on, years later. But anyway, his wife was all alone with their little six-year-old girl, and I stayed with with them for three months. Kelly: Did you get a job?

01:54:51.530 - 01:55:00.960

Roslyn: No, I was just having fun. Dad was there. We would go to the officers' club. All the big hotels along Miami Beach were officers' clubs.

01:55:01.740 - 01:55:21.200

So it was just one wonderful time. But then reality struck in, and of course I had a little money saved up. I think I had $300, about that. And Marilyn wrote me, and—no, no, a whole bunch of girls, Genevieve Norris, she washed

01:55:21.300 - 01:55:42.260

back to '44, '47. Whole bunch of girls were skiing in Vermont, and they said, "Come on up and go skiing with us." So I took the train up to Washington, middle of winter, it was cold in March, and we all

01:55:42.140 - 01:56:13.120

went skiing up at Stowe, Vermont. I got Marilyn to come over from little Worcester, Ohio, and meet me in New York. Then we somehow got all on the train and on up to Vermont to ski. And that's a little story about my son's name. There was a blonde woman, typical Norwegian woman with blonde hair and the braids wrapped around her head and a little son that she

01:56:13.220 - 01:56:30.700

called Bumsa. He was four years old and the best skier you ever saw. I'm learned to ski and we would go cross-country with Bumsa. He was going up and down and so was his mother, whose name was Leve Heierdahl.

01:56:33.520 - 01:56:58.300

I asked her about his name because we were all staying at a lodge. And she said, "Oh, it's—what is the word, Russian and German for Buren?" And Bamsa was a diminutive of Buren. And so Buren means bear in Russian and Norwegian and German and many Slavic languages.

01:56:59.800 - 01:57:18.400

So I thought to myself, "If I ever have a son, I'm naming him Beer—no, Burin." Of course, that didn't go over too well with my folks. But anyway, when we were skiing up there, it turns out she went back to Norway and contacted me to visit her.

01:57:18.960 - 01:57:36.040

She's Thor Heyerdahl's wife of Contiki fame, and we communicated quite often. He ran the Contiki across the Pacific. It was a straw boat. I've got his book.

01:57:37.720 - 01:57:49.420

But anyway, that was just a little side thing. That's what I did after the WASP. Went skiing at Stowe, Vermont. Kelly: When you finished that skiing trip, then where did you go?

01:57:49.840 - 01:57:59.020

Reid: Went back to Washington. Dad was still in the service. Then what did I do in Washington? I think I got a job again.

01:58:02.180 - 01:58:15.100

No, no, no, no. I went back to Washington. I wanted to work on my instructor's rating, civilian instructor's rating. And I was flying around High Blue Valley, Hyde Field, some of the little fields around

01:58:15.340 - 01:58:29.200

Washington, going up in a cub, working all by myself, you know, what I was supposed to be doing. Then Dad was coming home from the Philippines and we were moving to New York, so that put an end to that.

01:58:30.540 - 01:58:40.960

Kelly: How did you pay for those to fly then? Roslyn: I had three hundred dollars saved up. That went a long ways. Kelly: You did not spend that skiing?

01:58:41.140 - 01:58:49.440

Roslyn: No, no, did not spend very much. Kelly: Then you moved to New York. Roslyn: Yeah, I moved to New York. Kelly: And your dad was stationed—

01:58:49.280 - 01:59:13.120

And Dad was coming back from the Philippines, where he'd been with General Alexander. And he was coming back, he was flying a B-25 around the world, the other way from the Philippines, not across the Pacific, but around the world. And the man, one of his best friends was one of the vice presidents of American Airlines.

01:59:14.140 - 01:59:33.200

Dad was going to work with American Airlines. So in the meantime, I'm all enthused. I get up to New York and I go to American and I get hired as a stewardess. And I contacted Maryland to come over to New York and go through this stewardess training

01:59:33.340 - 01:59:52.980

with me. So we start stewardess training in 1946. Oh, I'm leaving a whole year out. When we—after Stowe, Vermont, Marilyn said, "Come back home with me because we can ferry."

01:59:53.360 - 01:59:59.940

And so I ferried for the rest of the year. I saved a lot of money ferrying. I made a lot of money doing that. Kelly: What were you ferrying?

02:00:00.220 - 02:00:17.980

Roslyn: PT-19s and PT-17s and one Ryan, PT-22. Kelly: And this was for private organizations? Roslyn: Yeah, fixed-base operators. Down in Akron, Ohio, Rudy Vanderveer in his outfit, and then back in Washington, my old

02:00:18.220 - 02:00:30.160

instructor, Bob Ashburn, Ashburn Flying Service. I made a lot of trips for him. And that was good money. I made about, I'd say, a hundred dollars a trip, ten cents a mile.

02:00:30.830 - 02:00:50.120

Kelly: And you would ferry them to their field? We'd have to take the train, and this is wartime, we'd take those trains packed with soldiers and bags and all kinds of things. Probably sometimes we had to stand between Mansfield, Ohio and Chicago.

02:00:50.780 - 02:01:06.720

Sometimes maybe from Chicago to Kansas City. We'd go to places like Victoria, Texas, Ponca City, all over, all over. Kelly: Were these new airplanes? Reed: No, mothballed planes.

02:01:08.360 - 02:01:22.940

One place that might have been Ponca City, I'm not really sure what it was, it was PT-19s. Marilyn took off, and those planes hadn't been flown for a year. She took off in that PT-19.

02:01:23.320 - 02:01:42.460

She did a slow—not a slow roll, a roll on takeoff. Right after she cleared the edge of the field, she did a roll. I still don't know how she did it, because ordinarily to do a roll, you had to drop the nose a little bit, get some extra speed, and then roll.

02:01:42.780 - 02:01:48.140

But she did, she rolled that. Kelly: Did she do it on purpose? Roslyn: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

02:01:48.280 - 02:02:03.160

She's a little devil. She's not alive now to tell you these stories, but one night she had a party right here up in Johns Island in Vera Beach. She had a little bit too much to drink, as she was prone to do.

02:02:04.240 - 02:02:17.440

And she had guests. She had about, oh, about 15 people that she was trying to impress and tell stories about being in the WASP. And about night flying, she said, "You know," she said, "Before I went in the WASP, I was

02:02:17.520 - 02:02:36.820

an instructor, so I had a little time under my belt, and I was pretty much acquainted with flying." And she said, "But I wasn't about to go out into that black Texas night." And she said, "Those girls just didn't know what they were getting themselves into."

02:02:36.820 - 02:02:58.900

And she said, "When they were all going off to San Angelo at night, Weatherford, Texas, off Lightline, I was staying in the upper pattern." We had two patterns for night flying, the lower pattern and the upper pattern. And she was in the upper pattern for two and a half hours, the time it took to go on a

02:02:58.960 - 02:03:15.380

cross country, and then come down and land. And that's what she did for ten hours. She never went cross country. So anyway, it's just one of the little stories.

02:03:15.720 - 02:03:29.960

It really tickled me because it only took fifty years to get that story. I guess a lot of them had stories. But I was off. Every night I went out night flying, something happened.

02:03:30.440 - 02:03:40.360

Oil prop leak, couldn't see anything, had to hang my head out of the cockpit to see the smudge spots. Kelly: This is while you were at a venture? Reifeldt: Yeah, night flying.

02:03:41.600 - 02:03:55.980

Generator failure one night, lost all my lights, had to come back and fly along the tower so they could see my exhaust on the right side. so they would give me instructions. Kelly: Do you need to change tapes?

02:03:56.240 - 02:04:00.300

Did you have a radio? You had a radio in the office. Reifeldt: Generator failed. I had no electric.

02:04:00.800 - 02:04:06.800

Lost everything. All lights, nothing. Because they were sitting way in the back. Kelly: Looking back, I don't blame them.

02:04:07.000 - 02:04:20.340

Reifeltt: Yeah, they were sitting in the back and they couldn't see anything. Funny. Kelly: Go back to night flying. Describe some of your night flying.

02:04:21.000 - 02:04:29.720

Reifeltt: How do you tell them when you have gotten to the point where you are going to If you don't have a radio. Oh, right. You know, when you have generator problems, you lose everything.

02:04:30.100 - 02:04:41.600

I had no lights, and you can't call a tower. You're up there flying like a bat. Nobody knows you're up there. So anyway, I got back to the field.

02:04:41.720 - 02:04:57.480

This is 4 a.m. in the morning. I had to make a pass by the tower at their height. It was about, what, 150, 200 feet or whatever. So they could see the exhaust on the right side.

02:04:57.940 - 02:05:11.600

It's a blue light. And then you go around after you make your pass, get your altitude, a thousand feet or whatever that altitude was in the pattern, 800 maybe. And then they give you landing lights.

02:05:11.870 - 02:05:27.640

They have that little instrument they can flash. Aim it to the cockpit. Where did you go on your long cross-country? Rockwell: To Tucson and over Blythe and down to Yuma.

02:05:28.440 - 02:05:47.780

And Yuma at that time had a ten-thousand-foot runway. And on a hot day in the middle of July, 110 degrees on the ground, the AT-6 floated over ten thousand feet. He just did not want to sit down.

02:05:48.980 - 02:06:06.220

We were not as heavy as some of the planes that were flying there at Yuma, that Air Force base. So, we just floated right over all the way down. Kelly: When you went to work for the airlines as a stewardess—

02:06:06.220 - 02:06:22.020

Rockwell: We were not wanted. They told us, they said, "Your place is going to be in the back, in the cabin, and not in the cockpit. And we went on a training flight after six weeks of ground school in Flushing.

02:06:22.040 - 02:06:44.060

It was the last class in Flushing before they moved to Dallas. And Marilyn had been out with her boyfriend, a Northwest pilot, the night before. And flying didn't exactly suit her that morning. And she spent the entire trip in the ladies' room.

02:06:44.410 - 02:06:58.580

She was ill. And she didn't pass the checkride, the so-called checkride, as the story is. They thought she got airsick. She wasn't a candidate.

02:06:59.420 - 02:07:19.900

They knew she had been a pilot, but she'd had a little bit too much with her boyfriend the night before, the Northwest pilot. Kelly: Where were most of your flights to? Either to Boston, to Buffalo, to Chicago, to Memphis, or Nashville.

02:07:20.840 - 02:07:44.900

I had the same route the entire time. And then the WASP were having their first reunion in September 1946 at Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. And I had, with American, I had, they'd been furloughing stewardesses all summer because traffic was down, I guess, during the summer.

02:07:46.000 - 02:08:16.080

And they put me downtown on 52nd Street and 6th Avenue on a corner. They had six elephants pull a DC-4 across the Queens Bridge with the wings off. And they assembled one wing and put it cat-cornered on this corner, 52nd Street and 6th Avenue. And I was there for two weeks telling the public, "Yes, this is what an airplane looks

02:08:16.180 - 02:08:34.980

like inside." All these people, thousands of people, had never been on an airplane before. They had their first chance to look at an airplane. And they would get in, and number one, they had sample booths for overseas flights with

02:08:35.020 - 02:08:49.380

like a Pullman with the curtains. And they would get on and they'd say, "Oh, I didn't know you could sleep on an airplane." They would have to tell them that was for overseas. And it was all so new to them.

02:08:49.460 - 02:09:10.100

They'd get to look at the cockpit and everything. This is actual DC-4. So anyway, having done that and knowing that the first WASP reunion was coming up, and Mr. Piper had saved 150 cubs for us to deliver all over, some South America, some Alaska.

02:09:11.060 - 02:09:20.480

Glory Heath was there. She had one of her friends, her name was Haas. Was she in your class, Betty Jane Haas? They both lived in New York City.

02:09:21.050 - 02:09:24.200

Huh? Fister? No, Haas. Her last name Haas.

02:09:24.700 - 02:09:49.840

H-double-a-s. Yeah, okay. She had one to South America, I think, or Panama Canals, then. So anyway, I was just fascinated. I wanted to do that, and I went to the superintendent of services and I said, "Could I just have a week because I have a plane to deliver and everything from Lock Haven?" He said, "Were you a wasp or

02:09:49.700 - 02:09:56.440

"Are you a wasp?" Snotty. And I said, "Once a wasp, always a wasp." I resigned.

02:09:57.150 - 02:10:07.340

I resigned. I went to Lock Haven, had a wonderful time. All the girls, I've got all kinds of pictures, magazine articles on us, and that reunion. Right.

02:10:07.740 - 02:10:18.840

So, where did you deliver? Lambert Field, St. Louis. And so, I came back. How did that happen?

02:10:19.540 - 02:10:35.440

Just before I left, I guess, a Tom Hall Miller, who was public relations manager, came to me and he said, "Joan, would you like a job with Piper?" He said, "I know you gave up your job as a stewardess. He said, 'Maybe he'll be looking for a job.'"

02:10:35.500 - 02:10:48.380

I said, "Yeah, I'd like to do that." He said, "Well, give me a call." I said, "Well, I'll be coming back to Pittsburgh to see my mother on the way back." I don't know, taking a train, I guess.

02:10:49.420 - 02:11:07.480

So he will give me a call and he said, "I'll meet you in Pittsburgh." So he met me in Pittsburgh and he flew down in a Piper Super Cruiser, Cub, or something like that. And he let me fly back and I went to altitude.

02:11:07.860 - 02:11:26.420

And he said, "Oh, how high are you going?" I said, "I'm going to clear the mountains." He said, "I've never been this high before." I was flying the Cub maybe 4,500 feet or 555, whatever it was, you know, the northeast bound.

02:11:27.520 - 02:11:42.740

And I had just really met him. He came down there for me to fly him back to Lock Haven. So we landed and I had the job. And I stayed, I roomed at the mayor's house in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, one room.

02:11:43.520 - 02:11:56.740

And Pub Piper also roomed there. Pug, P-U-G, Piper roomed there. And then there were other sons, Bill Piper and Old Man Piper and all that. And what was your job?

02:11:57.380 - 02:12:11.980

Assistant Public Relations Manager. I wrote an article a day for the Lock Haven Express newspaper, and I answered all the mail about Piper. I would like to have some information about Piper.

02:12:12.200 - 02:12:21.680

Tell me about Piper." Then you send them house organs and things like that, little folders on Piper. Kelly: Were you able to fly occasionally? Roslyn: Yes, yes, yes, I did.

02:12:21.790 - 02:12:45.260

I got to deliver some planes. The editor of the Lockheed Express was flying into—one time taking an airline, which he had to go to Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Tom Hall said, "Joanie, go up and pick up Becky Smith."

02:12:46.560 - 02:13:01.520

In the mountains there, you just do everyday flying. You do fly up the valleys, because there is a nice valley from Lock Haven Express Airport up to Williamsport, where the airline comes in. This day, we had an overcast.

02:13:02.960 - 02:13:21.080

Maybe the peaks were in the overcast, but I flew up the valley, and it was no problem, say 300 feet or 400 feet, and landed at Williamsport. The usual crowd waiting to meet the airline coming in and waiting to depart or waiting for friends and all that.

02:13:21.900 - 02:13:33.920

So I get out of the supercruiser, and I walk into operations to wait for Becky to come in. They said they can't land, they can't make the approach over the mountains. So they're going to go on.

02:13:35.540 - 02:13:52.720

I had to go back. I go out and get in the super cruiser and take off and go back to Lock Haven. When I got back, Tom Halls had already got a call from operations manager at Williamsport that, "Don't ever do that to us again."

02:13:52.720 - 02:14:10.900

All those people out there wanted to know why the other plane, the TWA, couldn't land and she got in. I thought that was so funny. And the funny thing is, I had a mouton coat at the time and high heels.

02:14:11.360 - 02:14:21.660

And I'd get out of the super cruiser in that mouton coat and high heels and then go out and take off again. They just couldn't get over that. You and Miss Cochran.

02:14:22.260 - 02:14:47.460

Yeah, oh yeah, my mouton. There's another story about that. fur coat and Jackie. Go ahead. You want me to tell it? Sure. Well this gets on to many years later. Jackie invited me to be her co-pilot to Europe in her Lockheed and it didn't, there are a lot

02:14:47.460 - 02:15:13.980

of stories connected with that. If you want me to start from from that scratch. So we had many, many meetings at the Pentagon. We had lunches with a bunch of generals, always a lot of generals around Jackie. And she invited me to dinner at her penthouse. And this is about the third time I was there at the penthouse in her apartment. She had her own beauty shop

02:15:14.100 - 02:15:27.660

set up and everything in that gorgeous penthouse. I think it was one of the main hotels in downtown Washington. - About what year was this? - '47, about '47.

02:15:29.260 - 02:15:45.080

And she told me she was gonna take me on as her co-pilot. And so this one night she invited me to dinner and she had four very big men in the government or service or whatever.

02:15:46.740 - 02:15:57.080

And we had a very lovely dinner, which was all catered, brought up from the dining room, and all she had was this lovely long table. She sat at one end and I at the other.

02:15:58.160 - 02:16:16.260

These big generals and people were sitting between us. There might have been either three on one side, three on the other, or two. I can't remember, because I only remember two men's names. One was Big Bill Donovan with the OSS.

02:16:18.120 - 02:16:42.160

The other was Freddie Brisson, head of SHAFE, Supreme Expeditionary Headquarters, whatever, and that was based in Belgium. So they're complimenting Jackie, and she's saying, "But I don't know a foreign language. What will I do?"

02:16:42.160 - 02:16:59.660

"Jackie," they would say, "with your charm, you don't need to know a foreign language." And so all the thing was centered on her during the dinner, of course. So after dinner, she gets out a quilt and she puts it on the floor and she starts to

02:16:59.720 - 02:17:17.460

shoot crap with a couple of the officers or generals or whatever. So she's busy shooting crap on the floor, one end of her living room. And I was talking with Big Bill Donovan, and he said, "You know, we want people like you in the service.

02:17:17.760 - 02:17:34.480

He said, 'Come to see me.' He said, 'For some reason, we'd send you to Argentina.'" Well, I don't know, maybe because I had black hair. I don't know why he said that, because that had a lot to do with my thinking about working

02:17:34.620 - 02:17:52.220

for him. And then later on, there was Freddie Brisson. And I had known a girl in Nashville, Tennessee by the name of Brisson. And I had to go home because I had to get a cab or I don't know how I was going to

02:17:52.300 - 02:18:09.140

get home, but I had no car. I know I had maybe a cab or something. So I was leaving this group, one woman, Jackie, with all these men. I remember where she had two on the rug on the floor with her on the blanket, and of

02:18:09.140 - 02:18:22.440

course that left Big Bell Dunnivan and Freddie Brisson. So I was on my way out and I said to Freddie, "You know," I said, "I think I've met your wife. Would she have been in Nashville, Tennessee?"

02:18:22.820 - 02:18:37.160

And he said, "Yes, she could have been in Nashville." I said, "Does she have dark hair?" He said, "Yes, she has dark hair." I said, "Is she very pretty?"

02:18:37.180 - 02:18:55.500

He said, "Oh, yes." Jackie's back here on the blanket, and she said, "Of course you know her, my darling. She's Rosalind Russell." Well, I tell you what, I think I blew the whole thing right there.

02:18:56.300 - 02:19:13.900

The next interview I had at the Pentagon, she said, "Well, the European trip is off. The Air Force has invited me to the Pacific, and they're going to fly me in a C-54, and I'm going to take all my lipsticks for the boys in the service so they can give them to their girlfriends."

02:19:13.900 - 02:19:28.200

Now, where she thought they were going to have girlfriends in the Pacific, I don't know, but that's what she said. She was going to take lipsticks. So we went and had another lunch with General Frank and General so-and-so and all these

02:19:28.300 - 02:19:42.760

generals at the Pentagon once more. And she was debating now, what would she wear? She said, "The first stop we make is going to be Hawaii, and I'm going to be staying with the Doles.

02:19:42.850 - 02:19:57.980

We're going to the Dole Plantation." See, this really wasn't a military trip at all. And she said, "I don't know what kind of a coat to take." And I said, "Well, you know, in a C-54, it's going to be pretty cold."

02:19:58.090 - 02:20:11.640

I said, "What about Muton?" That's all I knew. And she said, "I'm thinking about mink, white mink." And I said, "Well, white mink's fine."

02:20:11.640 - 02:20:29.520

So that was it. The trip to Europe was off, and the Pacific was coming up. She asked me what type of fur coat she should take, and I said "Muton." Anyway, this all came about because of the Bryan thing, probably thinking that I'd

02:20:29.520 - 02:20:42.380

be a great person to have along, instruments and so forth, in her locket, which I knew nothing about. Kelly: Was that the last time you had contact with her? No, no, no, many times after, many.

02:20:44.100 - 02:20:57.120

Socially and so forth. I've been to, I don't know why, all alone, visited her and Floyd at their Sutton Place apartment in New York.

02:20:57.520 - 02:21:05.200

You know Sutton Place, New York? - I've heard of it. - Yeah, very, very, very. Before the Trump Tower, I suppose,

02:21:05.300 - 02:21:19.240

this was the place to live, because the DuPonts lived there, Richard DuPont, and several very well-known people, including Jackie and Floyd.

02:21:20.120 - 02:21:29.640

And I was over there, and Floyd, that was the beginning of Floyd not feeling too well. And she was taking good care of him. She was his sole nurse.

02:21:30.440 - 02:21:47.760

And during that evening, she was telling me how she took care of him and all that. And that was her big concern then. And another time, my dad and his new wife

02:21:47.970 - 02:22:11.220

and I went out to Sands Point. That's a golf club on Long Island, a very restricted club, I guess you might say. She and Floyd had a cottage on the 19th hole, right on the course itself.

02:22:11.960 - 02:22:33.320

I guess that's how they spent their days, playing golf. We had a lovely time. She had cocktails, and she said, "Oh, let me put some things in the oven to have a snack on."

02:22:33.320 - 02:22:55.260

RKO. And Floyd was like, this was, we were sitting on the porch and Floyd was like this opening here as you see for the kitchen and it was all open and he had to shout to Howard Hughes on the phone about RKO. I don't know, one was buying and the other was selling. Anyway, Jackie came back from the kitchen where there were, there were

02:22:55.280 - 02:23:11.780

kitchen help and she said, "I put some of those little wieners in the oven." And I I said to her, "Did you open the can?" She said, "No, why would I do that?" I said, "Because they'll explode if you don't open the can."

02:23:11.980 - 02:23:32.020

So we went back to the kitchen and she opened the can and put them back in. Kelly: During any of the times that you were with her, did she ever discuss anything about the WASP and why we were disbanded? No, not even those meetings in the Pentagon or the lunches.

02:23:32.560 - 02:23:58.560

She was always surrounded by adoring generals and so forth. One time I was to meet—I don't know whether it was a WASP meeting or what—in the Waldorf Astoria, a certain little area at the Waldorf. I got there and there weren't any other WASPs. There was Hap Arnold, passed out, his

02:23:58.720 - 02:24:18.300

head on the table and out of it. There was Jackie and she was sort of, she said, "Well, poor Hap, he's not feeling well." I don't know whether I was just meeting them or whether I was meeting a group of WASPs. I'm not really sure. Somebody would have to fill me in on that.

02:24:18.640 - 02:24:47.420

When you were around her, did you ever feel—the word's not inferior, but did you ever—were you in awe of her, or was she just another friend? I wasn't in awe, because I knew from my dad the things that he said. I had these letters that he had written me from the Philippines when all this was going

02:24:47.700 - 02:25:11.280

on. It was, "Be careful with Jackie." I wasn't in awe of her. After all, when she set the speed record, what was his name, Chuck Yeager, he was with

02:25:11.280 - 02:25:34.160

her and I guess he was flying alongside of her or with her in another plane or something like that pulling her through it. And then there was those times in Cleveland air races when she would be flying in from maybe California and getting out in her mink stole and everything. We were just sort of laugh

02:25:34.160 - 02:26:06.560

about it, you know. That's Jackie. She really had to be the center of attention. Or feeling inferior, sure, you know, yeah, you're inferior with all that power around you. Big, huge office in the Pentagon and nothing but generals around you and eat with generals. And the beautiful place that she had in that penthouse in Washington. She called to me one time,

02:26:06.560 - 02:26:34.500

she was getting ready to get dressed I guess, and she said, "Look in the third drawer down and pick out a purse for me." Well, I opened this third drawer down, all these purses were wrapped in white tissue, you couldn't even see them. And how was I supposed to pick out a purse for, I don't know. And I felt really foolish, because I didn't know what to pick

02:26:34.620 - 02:26:58.040

out. I think I unwrapped one and said, "Well, how about this one?" It would never be the right one. But that's Jackie. Kelly: How long did you work for Piper? Oh, about four months, because they had, they're seasonal, up and down, up and down, and by

02:26:58.460 - 02:27:19.120

January they had to let the vice president go, and I wasn't needed. You know, I was just an assistant taking over some of the public relations manager's job, and people were being left out, right and left. That's what I wanted to say.

02:27:19.120 - 02:27:46.820

Kelly: So then where did you go from there? Fox: Went back to New York and got a job at the Chrysler Building for Texaco. Nothing that I wanted to do, not even aviation. for a brilliant physicist slant attorney for Texaco.

02:27:48.680 - 02:28:09.960

He used to give me all these things to type up with the chemistry names and so forth, like glyethyl something or other. I couldn't stay because I couldn't afford to live. Dad had already married, and they went to Mexico every year.

02:28:11.680 - 02:28:28.500

Dad had given up the apartment where we had lived when the airline thing was going on. I moved into the city, which I didn't like. I lived in a hotel across the street from where they lived, but I didn't have anybody. I had a very calm life.

02:28:30.160 - 02:28:47.680

I went back to Pittsburgh to visit my mother, and I stayed. Kelly: What did you do? Reifeltt: Got a job as an assistant buyer, and then finally was buyer of women's accessories. Kelly: In a department store?

02:28:47.680 - 02:29:03.940

Reifeltt: Yeah, a department store. The funny thing is, I would visit—this is really funny. I got this funny little job as a buyer in this department store. This is my dad and Ruth in Palm Beach.

02:29:05.300 - 02:29:24.680

At a cocktail party, there were the owners of the department store. I said, "I work for you as a buyer." Kelly: How long did you do that? They were sold out from under me.

02:29:25.460 - 02:29:53.640

Things were very, very interesting in Pittsburgh. And then I had a job as a secretary for Gulf Oil, and that was another chemistry thing for one of their scientists. And then comes a meeting where a young man, who had been a POW in the war and a B-17 pilot,

02:29:55.480 - 02:30:14.100

picked up my dinner tab. This is a group of people, big sort of aviation event in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, and this man decides he's going to buy my dinner. And when I went to pay for my dinner, they said, "Oh, it's already been taken care

02:30:14.780 - 02:30:23.060

of." And I did not know him. And I went over to him and I said, "I don't like that." I said, "I want to pay for my own dinner."

02:30:23.060 - 02:30:41.320

He said, "Buy me a beer sometime." And before the day was over, we flew in his Bonanza. And I was quite taken with his pilot skills, because we had a low overcast, but he was flying all along, he knew exactly where he was because he knew the country so well.

02:30:41.400 - 02:31:04.880

And there were two people in the back seat also. And so we got back and I disliked him intensely. And my friends told me that all I talked about on the way home was how much I disliked him for doing what he did, picking up my dinner tab, and how could he do that and assume such things. And so about a week later he called and he said,

02:31:04.880 - 02:31:28.080

how about that beer?" I said, "No, no, no, no, you're married." He said, "All I want to do is just buy you a beer. I promised you. Or you buy me a beer." That was it. So I said, "No, no, no, no." My mother said, "Oh, for heaven's sake," she said, "quit arguing about who's going to buy a beer. If he's only going to come and have

02:31:28.080 - 02:31:44.900

a beer, what's the trouble?" So I said, "Oh, okay." So I went out with him, and instead of going to the corner bar to buy a beer, he took me to his favorite nightclub where there were ice skaters and everybody making a little

02:31:46.500 - 02:31:58.160

noise about them. One little ice skater was saying, "You're flying me to Chicago," or something like that. Oh, yeah, this is a big deal."

02:31:58.160 - 02:32:18.180

So he took me home that night, and he wasn't trying to be fresh or anything, but he looked at me and he said, "I'm going to fall so hard in love with you, it's going to change my whole life." So we drove home, and he was almost killed.

02:32:19.120 - 02:32:34.780

He had a head-on collision. person in the other car was killed and he had a 50% chance of living. And that's how a very big, strong love affair started. I married him.

02:32:35.570 - 02:32:50.780

Kelly: Wow. Roslyn: Yeah, and he had two wonderful children and loved him more than anything in the world. But I didn't love him until I saw him in the hospital all just really banged up. Kelly: What was his job?

02:32:51.720 - 02:33:04.680

Reed: He at that time—he at that time, he got out of the Air Force—he was a prisoner of war when he came home. Kelly: Where was he? Reed: He was in Stalag 17, Stalag 3, and all those different Stalags.

02:33:04.680 - 02:33:20.180

They kept moving them around. Kelly: Had he been shot down? Reed: He was shot down in a B-17. Messerschmitt came up behind and shot three men aboard the gunners, the bubble gunner

02:33:20.240 - 02:33:35.840

and then tail gunner and one other gunner, side gunner. He was copilot. The wing was shot off. The B-17 was on fire, in a spin, and he and the first pilot got out.

02:33:37.140 - 02:33:53.660

other men in the plane got out. They jumped, and the Germans got them as soon as they got on the ground, and put them in POW camp for eighteen months, a year and a half, until armistice, until D-Day. That's when he was released.

02:33:55.280 - 02:34:08.820

So he had a lot of experience. Then he was in a lot of hospitals and everything for a long, long time. He was pretty badly hurt. He had stomach problems and things.

02:34:10.530 - 02:34:23.000

And then, of course, that car accident didn't help. And he recovered from that. He had a gash right through his forehead on down into his cheek, and a slash here and a slash there.

02:34:23.580 - 02:34:39.300

And the left front wheel was—banged his knee. It came all the way through, back, back through the engine and everything. Just smashed. So anyway, that's what started.

02:34:39.980 - 02:34:54.320

Kelly: Did you feel guilty that he had crashed? Reed: I was really bewildered, because I didn't know how I felt about him. That night I was with him. He was making fun of me.

02:34:54.340 - 02:35:09.680

He said, "I've never been out with anybody who doesn't do things with their hair." He thought women should have their hair all fixed and curled up a certain way. And I've always just been like this, I mean all through my life. I hate fixed hair."

02:35:10.460 - 02:35:29.360

And he said, "Why don't you do something with your hair and your nails?" And I said, "Well, I never went with anybody who wore painted ties or wore those pointed toe shoes." And he thought my clothes weren't right and everything.

02:35:30.500 - 02:35:55.300

And I guess he just didn't like me. So then when I went to see him in the hospital, I had to see him later on, later at night, and the funniest thing happened to me, and I was sitting in a chair, sort of off to the side of the back of his feet, and I saw my heart jump out of my body and hip-hop over

02:35:55.440 - 02:36:09.040

to him. And when it was all over, it came back to me the same way. He became a terrible alcoholic. He drank a fifth a day.

02:36:11.200 - 02:36:24.680

And I had my two babies, and I had to go to work, and I supported them my entire life, their entire life. Just them and I. In the FAA.

02:36:25.390 - 02:36:32.360

Kelly: Were they both sons? Roslyn: No, one boy, one girl. Kelly: Oh, okay. My girl was born first. I didn't even tell my husband I was pregnant.

02:36:34.500 - 02:36:54.000

Didn't even tell him. Did he use that airplane in his business? Yes, he did. He would fly to Detroit and go to the factories a lot. And I made quite a few trips with him. And we flew the Bonanzas a lot. We'd go to see Dad. They had a house on the Jersey Coast near

02:36:54.000 - 02:37:12.100

Spring Lake. We would fly to New York for a ball game, and we would fly up to Erie to get a cup of coffee or something like that. We were flying all the time. I checked out in the Bonanza. Kelly: Why do you think he got so involved with drinking?

02:37:12.630 - 02:37:30.820

Lowry: I don't know. His mother said that he never drank before he went in the service. I did not understand this. It possibly was that terrible tragedy of being shot down, because he had terrible nightmares and he never talked about it.

02:37:31.420 - 02:37:49.060

If you've ever known any of these pilots, I was just to a luncheon with a whole bunch of them, seventy in fact, of World War II pilots, and most of them bombers, and had been shot down. They never talked about it until—they're just starting to talk about it nowadays.

02:37:50.000 - 02:38:15.600

starting. And my husband the same way. He remarried and the last year before he died he had joined that Warbirds group and he was becoming a docent and they wanted him to tell his war stories. And he was talking about it. Never had talked about it in his entire life. It was a terrible, terrible tragedy.

02:38:16.700 - 02:38:28.120

They put those boys with hardly any time. One man stood up at this marvelous luncheon that I went to just about three weeks ago now. He said, "You know," he said, "we went over there and we flew those bombers."

02:38:28.120 - 02:38:38.640

He said, "You know how many hours I had?" He said, "I had 300 hours training." That's all they had. They were putting a B-24, B-17 to be shot at.

02:38:40.000 - 02:38:53.200

Flak all the time. I've got the most gorgeous stories from this 388th Bomb Group. I guess I better not get up. All their war stories are coming out now.

02:38:53.380 - 02:39:04.760

They're just starting to talk about it. Fascinating. Kelly: How far are your children apart? Lowry: Seventeen months, and I would probably have six more if I were still married, if

02:39:04.800 - 02:39:17.720

I stayed married to him. Kelly: How long after you were married did he begin to drink a lot? Reed: He was drinking. I wasn't with him an awful lot.

02:39:17.840 - 02:39:28.920

I was working for the FAA in Cleveland. Kelly: After you married? Reed: Yeah, after I married and before I was married. I got my job in Cleveland in 1952.

02:39:34.720 - 02:39:55.340

We were married at Parma, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cleveland. I had to spend about four months up there while he went back to Pittsburgh and ran his business. When I got down to Pittsburgh in January, I went to Pittsburgh's center, Air Route

02:39:55.600 - 02:40:10.020

Traffic Control Center, and worked there. I got pregnant, I was afraid to tell him because he didn't want me to get pregnant. And I didn't have a choice. And so I didn't tell him.

02:40:11.300 - 02:40:27.960

And one time there was a very bad thing happened with him and went out and it was obvious that he'd been with another woman. And so I left. I hired a truck and I moved all the stuff that I'd had.

02:40:28.220 - 02:40:48.480

television set, all the other things, moved it, drove the truck, and I was pregnant. I was two and a half months pregnant and he didn't know it. And I was still working, doing the center, working shift work all around the clock. And my mother and I helped me pick out an apartment near the Pittsburgh, greater Pittsburgh

02:40:48.740 - 02:40:57.740

airport where the center was located. Have you ever been in a traffic control center? It's an experience. Promise yourself you'll do it someday.

02:40:58.220 - 02:41:12.220

Just go in a center. As soon as you walk in, you say, "It's not possible." They are handling hundreds of aircraft in one area, and it's all divided up into sections and so forth.

02:41:12.920 - 02:41:32.100

Departures, arrivals, and en route, and crossing each other, and separations, and everything. It's the most wonderful thing that anybody could ever see as far as aviation. Well anyway, after driving this truck and finding an apartment, I started to miscarry and I ended up in the hospital.

02:41:32.460 - 02:41:47.720

And that's the first time that Lem, Alan B. Lemley, knew that I was pregnant. And I said, "I'm coming back to you." And he said, "Well, how do you know I want you back?" And I said, "Well, I'm coming back anyway."

02:41:47.940 - 02:42:04.380

So anyway, I had my daughter, Mary Ann. And when Mary Ann was six months old, I took her to Palm Beach to Dad's, and I intended to leave him. And Ruth, Dad's wife, had said, "Well, you know, there are plenty of jobs down here.

02:42:04.560 - 02:42:22.540

Come down to Palm Beach." And so I left with every intention of not going back. And he came down the second week I was there and told Dad how much he loved me. And my dad takes me the next morning and says, "Honey dear, I've known a lot of people

02:42:22.540 - 02:42:37.760

in my life. This man really loves you." I went back and I got pregnant with Bear. And then when Bear was a year old, I decided this life is not for me.

02:42:38.300 - 02:42:51.220

I'm leaving. And so therefore I left and I supported my children. I got my old job back with the FAA and continued for thirty-two years. FAA.

02:42:51.630 - 02:42:58.880

Robin: Wow. So you were living then in Pittsburgh with the FAA? Robin: Yes, uh-huh, yeah. And my children were born there.

02:42:58.890 - 02:43:10.480

Robin: Right. And who took care of the children when you were working? I had to get a babysitter. I worked shift work at first, but then I made supervisor, and when I was supervisor it was

02:43:10.560 - 02:43:22.680

much better. And then I was offered the job in Oklahoma City, which was days, eight to four, and that was perfect for my children. So I took that right up, went to Oklahoma City.

02:43:23.440 - 02:43:38.020

Where did you live in Oklahoma City? Did you live near the airport? No, living near the airport in Oklahoma City is not the greatest place. I lived about eight, ten miles away in an apartment.

02:43:38.860 - 02:43:51.520

And then I rented houses. I wanted to buy a house, but my mother joined me. And she said, "No, if you buy a house, I'm not going to live with you." She didn't want me to get into real estate or buy a house, so I rented.

02:43:52.860 - 02:44:09.140

Kelly: When your children were growing up, were you able to participate in some of their activities? Roslyn: Yeah, I went to band concerts, and I went to see their teacher, went to Parents' Day, when I could if I happened to have off, which wasn't very often.

02:44:10.460 - 02:44:26.180

But if there was a concert on a Saturday or Sunday, I did that. Do you want to change tape? Sure. Okay, that's what these little taps are for.

02:44:26.220 - 02:44:32.580

Can I get up? Where are we? We're in Oklahoma City. Working for the FAA.

02:44:32.660 - 02:44:44.820

Oh, working for the FAA. Oh, yes, yes. My mother came out there with me. We drove her dog, kid's cat, and I got a little station wagon.

02:44:45.700 - 02:45:03.060

What were your children interested in in school? My daughter, Art, started drawing when she was two and a half years old. Used to decorate any paper that I had lying about. She still remembers that and brings that up to me. But I wasn't allowed to draw on that paper.

02:45:06.140 - 02:45:21.160

Doesn't she ever do that, bring things up to you? Kelly: Right. And your son, was he into sports or what was he interested in? Reifeldt: My mother always said he was a sensitive one, but I never saw that in him, but Mother

02:45:21.260 - 02:45:40.460

did. And he was—I don't know how to say—he wasn't very good in school, but his teachers loved him. They would all end the year up, wherever he was in school, saying, "He is a delight."

02:45:40.580 - 02:45:58.900

He is just a good mixer and a nice guy. Tell me about your children now. Bear is a corporate pilot, and he just takes after his father. He is a marvelous pilot.

02:46:00.760 - 02:46:10.680

My daughter is an artist and she is over in London. She's been there since 1984. She's a real Brit. She has a British accent.

02:46:11.940 - 02:46:32.820

And she married a man who had an autistic child, five-year-old child. And she fell in love with that little boy and decided that she could do a lot with him and she has worked with him. And being an artist and surrounded by a lot of art all the time and going to see all the

02:46:32.980 - 02:46:59.200

museums with him, she had an opportunity about a year and a half ago offered by the Wellcome Trust Foundation. And they have done a lot of research on autism. And they were proposing a film and they asked for presentations and she offered hers.

02:46:59.340 - 02:47:18.780

She was one of 50 and then she was narrowed down to one of eight. And then finally she was selected. And her idea was to, the effect of art on autistic people and how they relate to it. And so she had a lot of experience in that and that's what they bought and they gave

02:47:18.760 - 02:47:48.240

her the contract. So she is the producer of this film and it's supposed to be coming to fruition in the fall, the fall of this year. So we'll see what happens. She had to hire a director and she had to hire a musician and various other people to accomplish this. But her art is all around me. I have, oh there's

02:47:48.160 - 02:48:02.940

some in the kitchen, some of her art that I keep near me. Do you have other grandchildren other than that? I have no grandchildren, just that one autistic boy who is not my grandchild, actually. Have you seen him? Have you met him?

02:48:03.020 - 02:48:22.960

Oh, I see him often, about once a year I go to London. He's going to be 15 the 19th of May, 15 years old. And she still works with him. When your children were growing up, were they able to visit your dad and your mother? Yes.

02:48:23.840 - 02:48:27.360

Their dad, you mean? No. Their dad. Oh, yes.

02:48:27.820 - 02:48:44.740

Well, Dad was in Palm Beach or Mexico, either one. We did see them one time in Washington when they met us at the train. We were visiting my relatives. Yes, they often saw—and when I moved to Vero, Dad came up here often.

02:48:45.680 - 02:49:06.780

But I came here because of him. My stepmother was dying on Christmas 1968, and I was out in Oklahoma. She asked me to try in any way possible to come over to Florida to be near him because she knew she was dying.

02:49:12.520 - 02:49:27.340

I was asking about your children being able to visit with their grandparents. Oh yes, and my dad would come up to Vero Grill often. And there was a marvelous restaurant in town, it has an old name because it used to be called The Bucket.

02:49:28.020 - 02:49:38.120

And it was right down here at the end of the street you came over to the beach on, Beechland Boulevard. It was right to the ocean. And now it's called The Ocean Grill.

02:49:38.760 - 02:49:56.960

And they have one special table in there, one huge round table with a beautiful chandelier over it. And when Dad came, we would always have a big party, Mother, the children, Dad, and his girlfriend, and just generally have a nice time, maybe other friends that were along.

02:49:58.240 - 02:50:18.420

So we did come up often. But what I was trying to tell you about coming here from Oklahoma, his wife was dying. And so I went to this—my old operations officer from Bryan, who had the temporary job of academy director, Christopher Wach.

02:50:19.120 - 02:50:33.560

Kelly: What academy? Litz: FAA Academy in Oklahoma City. And it just was circumstantial that he was the head of everything. And he said, "Well," I said, "I'm going to—I want to—need to transfer to

02:50:36.420 - 02:50:58.820

Florida." want to go. Ordinarily you don't get moved around like that. But he was the one who gave me my oral at Bryan. So he wrote up the orders and or had somebody write them up and the next thing I know I'm assigned to Vero Beach, Florida. And that was a big mistake. My dad

02:50:58.880 - 02:51:11.360

died the next year. I came here, broke, threw up my whole life to come here and he died the next year on my birthday. Did she die first? Yeah, she died shortly after I talked with her on the phone.

02:51:11.380 - 02:51:23.900

She died January 13th, and that was Christmas Eve when I talked with her. She didn't last long. When you moved here, your children were already away from home? No, no, they were little.

02:51:24.080 - 02:51:34.360

They were little? Like 12 and 13. Getting in new schools and everything. That was really bad, very bad, taking them away.

02:51:34.360 - 02:51:53.900

My daughter had been in the lab school at the University of Oklahoma in the eighth grade. She had two PhDs teaching her math, and she got to this high school and they had her in home economics. She had nothing, nothing.

02:51:54.860 - 02:52:14.240

Beautiful education had gone down the tube, way, way beneath her. The whole thing was such a bad move. They didn't want me here in Vero Beach. They had never had a woman in the station, the FAA flight service station.

02:52:14.830 - 02:52:27.980

They didn't want a woman. They never wanted a woman. And they were very, very rude to me. And one man called me "the female" for one year.

02:52:29.040 - 02:52:49.020

If he would hand me a piece of paper, give this to that female." When my books came over, because I was in training in Oklahoma City, and I had a lot of training manuals, and so Oklahoma City didn't have a home for me or an address for me, so they shipped it to the station.

02:52:51.180 - 02:53:10.280

My first day, the things were already here, and this supervisor said, "Here, I'll you with them." And he kicked them down the stairs of the terminal building. He kicked them down the two flights of stairs and then let me take them out to the car.

02:53:11.720 - 02:53:22.360

That's what they thought of having a woman. Kelly: Then you knew what discrimination was. Reid: Yeah, I never had it in the WASP, but I've certainly had it here. This has been the worst.

02:53:22.840 - 02:53:35.920

Even when I was in the Air Traffic Control Center in Pittsburgh, I never had it, never. But this is the first place. I don't know what it is, whether it's Southern men or—I just don't know. Can't imagine.

02:53:37.190 - 02:53:53.420

Kelly: Then how long did you work for them? Roslyn: Sixteen years. And then went back in 1990 as a weather contract observer, or contract weather observer, because Because at that time, they kept consolidating these flight services.

02:53:53.640 - 02:54:09.120

They had moved it over to St. Petersburg. And when the Weather Bureau decided they needed to have the weather from all these different stations that they had closed, where the FAA had been, then they hired contractors. They put out bids.

02:54:10.260 - 02:54:36.440

And that's a big secret. The government puts out something called the Commerce Business Daily. It's about a two hundred and, oh let me see, fifty-three, no it's about a hundred and ten pages daily of a big yellow paper with all the government bids printed out that you

02:54:36.580 - 02:54:59.580

could bid on, Nancy can bid on, all of us could bid on, and unknown to the general public. And every day they published that and it cost $263 a year to subscribe to it. And you can also get it a half year for half the price. But all those wonderful contracts are in there.

02:55:01.910 - 02:55:19.060

Kelly: What year did you retire? Lowry: End of 1984, after thirty-two years. And all I got was a little certificate. And now Joan, what do you do with your time?

02:55:20.380 - 02:55:46.780

Well, I missed my weather job, which was not--it was lost because of automation. And that to me was about the saddest because I loved my weather job, observing. And what they did to us, there are over 1,100 sites in the U.S. They installed a Mickey Mouse, and I will say that, repeat that 10 times,

02:55:47.380 - 02:56:05.920

a Mickey Mouse gadget that they call an ASOS, an Automatic Surface Observation System, ASOS, A-S-O-S. It's a sensor. It's a light that reads at the lowest level up to 12,000 feet,

02:56:06.400 - 02:56:20.160

But it also measures every altitude of a cloud. You know how a cloud is puffy, and you might have a cloud overhanging this way, and a cloud is a cloud.

02:56:20.320 - 02:56:32.740

It doesn't have any specific contour. But this thing measures it two or three times as it passes over. So you might have a ceiling of 2,700 feet

02:56:33.040 - 02:56:43.800

and another ceiling at 3,000 feet, and another ceiling at 3,200 feet, which doesn't make sense. You know, it's so ridiculous. Then, of course, it does the visibility.

02:56:44.280 - 02:57:00.120

It has a sensor looking out for the visibility. And also a rain gauge connected with it, all the little sensors. And this can be relayed to a computer. So for two years, we didn't know that this was going

02:57:00.120 - 02:57:12.760

to be the end of our job. We monitored the computer for two years. It was so far off from human observation, pitiful. I mean, you'd go out and we'd see a base.

02:57:13.300 - 02:57:21.280

You know, being a pilot, you're used to looking at base clouds. Say, "Oh, there are about 3,000 today." And so you write down 3,000 broken.

02:57:22.320 - 02:57:36.240

And here is the stupid machine coming back and saying, "2,500 scattered, 2,700 scattered." You know, measuring all the different levels of a cloud. Pitiful, pitiful.

02:57:37.020 - 02:57:47.600

They just recently inaugurated a way to detect a lightning strike, which we now have on the computer, and the weather, you can get lightning strikes

02:57:47.800 - 02:57:57.840

very easily mapped out. So that was easy, but they've incorporated that now in the observation, so they at least know that there's a thunderstorm maybe five miles

02:57:58.040 - 02:58:03.840

within the station. They didn't know that before. Nobody, no pilot knew that. I pity the pilots.

02:58:04.600 - 02:58:18.500

And I've asked many pilots what they think of it, and they say, "Oh, it's ridiculous." My son thinks it's ridiculous, too. And also, out west, they have installed a voice,

02:58:19.100 - 02:58:33.440

one of those phony voices. Well, they say, "Clouds, 3000," very hard to read. And my son Bear says it's extra hard to read when you're in the air.

02:58:34.570 - 02:58:47.420

And you have a jet whistle and noise outside the window. Trying to understand this automated voice. The whole thing is ridiculous. And I did that for eleven years and I loved it.

02:58:47.450 - 02:59:07.840

I loved it. And they take it away for this machine. So what do you do with your time now? Well, the first year, I just sort of arranged my whole spring around a flight, or a trip

02:59:07.940 - 02:59:22.340

to Ireland and a trip to England. That was last year. And then I have a lot of friends, and I have a calendar there with day in and day out. I have so many things to do, I forget.

02:59:23.480 - 02:59:50.880

not bragging that that's just crazy that's a crazy way to lead your life but that's the way it is right now. Do you belong to some organizations? Yes last week I paid $26 for a dinner and I missed it. I totally forgot about it. It was the Military Officers Association, MMOA, which became MOA from Troa, retired

02:59:50.880 - 03:00:18.360

officers or what is what that used to be retired officers Association Troia and I belong to that maybe eight years ago and I didn't like dinners with bar that bars going to be open for an hour and all that I don't like that because I don't drink and I I just didn't like the kind of function so recently I went to

03:00:18.240 - 03:00:35.600

one of their luncheons, and they really had somebody that was interesting. They had a man who was a Cuban, born and brought up in Cuba, and told of his experiences in revisiting Cuba. I thought, "Well, that was so interesting.

03:00:36.540 - 03:00:53.600

I would like to join again and come to the luncheons." This is what I do. And then I belonged to an organization, 388th Bomb Group, that my husband belonged to. I must show you his picture when he was flying the 17.

03:00:56.000 - 03:01:23.940

All these men who went to England, some of them in B-17s, were based at Nettishall, England. And when my ex-husband died, my daughter went up there and found a little Quonset hut with all the memorabilia that they had on that base at Nettishaw, all the B-17s flew out of there and called themselves the 388th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force.

03:01:24.760 - 03:01:39.960

His name is written in a log, you know, when he first reported. And it was just fascinating to see those things. And the memorial to them. How many went down?

03:01:39.960 - 03:02:00.140

How many survived? So I get their newsletters all the time, and I'm on email with all these people throughout. Email with my friends, the WASP, Mary Burchard, Sue Delano. Kelly: How have you been involved with the WASP organization?

03:02:00.300 - 03:02:08.620

Roslyn: Not very. Too busy all those years. Too busy supporting my children and working, that's all. I couldn't get involved.

03:02:08.960 - 03:02:23.560

I went to four reunions. First one was Lock Haven, and then I went out to San Diego. Were you there? Kelly: No. Roslyn: And Colorado Springs, and Washington. Where did you go?

03:02:23.680 - 03:02:35.220

Kelly: I went to Washington. Roslyn: Oh, were you there? Okay. All right. Kelly: Of all the things that you have done, what is the one thing in your life that you're most proud of?

03:02:40.020 - 03:03:02.720

You know what, it's something that took all the flying and used everything that I've ever had, and it was weather briefing. Getting the weather for pilots who were flying all different places throughout the whole U.S., in Alaska, in South America, and the Bahamas, and the Virgin Islands.

03:03:03.920 - 03:03:20.020

I could use all my pilot knowledge and everything in doing that. I got a lot of satisfaction out of doing it. I got a lot of satisfaction out of flying. I loved the wonderful times I've been in the air with my dad and flying the Wasp.

03:03:22.600 - 03:03:44.580

I treasure those times, really. Kelly: What is your opinion of Jacqueline Cochran? Well, I think she's a very strong woman and self-determined. I think she's likeable.

03:03:45.000 - 03:04:06.440

I saw how these men respected her and how they thought of her. And I think, you asked if I was awed by her, I think these men are awed by her, or were awed by her. Entirely capable from all the things that she's done.

03:04:07.080 - 03:04:26.480

After all, she was just a little beauty operator, you know, who wanted to fly. Go back and recall for me the story about when she said that you might have been her daughter. We were at the Shoreham—wherever her penthouse was in Washington, downtown Washington, D.C.

03:04:26.580 - 03:04:40.440

It might have been Shoreham. Then again, it might have been some other big hotel. But she had the entire top floor, the penthouse. And she had gathered all of us girls together who lived in Washington.

03:04:41.920 - 03:05:01.740

And I don't remember—it might have been snacks and something to drink or whatever. And we were all milling around and we were standing beside the sofa. Jackie was among some of us there. Other girls were the upper classmen, you know, they always stayed apart.

03:05:01.900 - 03:05:22.280

They did not want to join. And she said, "Do you know that I was almost the mother of this girl?" To whoever was standing around, I don't even know who was standing around, and I sort of sneered a little bit and laughed, which reminds me about those upperclassmen. You know the

03:05:22.500 - 03:05:42.780

girl who worked in her office, what was her name? Betty. You read about her all the time when Jackie was alive because she was with her out in California at Indigo and she helped with the golf course and all that. She was in her office at the Pentagon. Kelly: No, I don't know.

03:05:43.560 - 03:06:01.560

Anyway, that girl I met when I visited her at the Pentagon. Out in Colorado Springs, I got on the elevator one time. She was on the elevator with her classmates, her upper classmates. I said, "Good morning."

03:06:02.820 - 03:06:16.760

They all looked at each other like, "Why would she be saying good morning to us?" They never said a word. They just looked at each other. She's saying good morning to you, she's saying good morning to me.

03:06:17.880 - 03:06:31.860

And that girl that I had seen at the Pentagon was one of them. And I was really saying, looked at her when I said, "Good morning." But that's the way they've been. They have a little clique all of themselves.

03:06:33.240 - 03:06:49.260

They're let's say ingrained in our psyche, in all of our newsletters. Oh my, they better not be seeing this. Uh-oh. I do speak my mind.

03:06:50.640 - 03:07:06.100

Let me ask you, honesty is the best policy. In your lifetime, I know you've had some good times and you've had some bad times, and happy times and some sad times. What has gotten you through those sad times?

03:07:08.640 - 03:07:27.000

- Well, I think it's a lot like what my father said. And when you asked me to write that philosophy down, when I started flying, Dad said, "Just remember one thing. "You fly the airplane, don't let the airplane fly you."

03:07:28.020 - 03:07:38.380

And when you asked me that question to think about what I did with my life, I thought, "That's the whole secret of life. You just take command of your life.

03:07:38.890 - 03:07:49.400

You know, if what's needed, you get out there and you have to do it. No ifs, ands, or buts. You have to do it. And I thought, there's the whole thing in a nutshell.

03:07:50.040 - 03:08:02.340

Fly the airplane. Don't let the airplane fly you. And of course, I have another one there that I thought could be interpreted nicely, too, That's it.

03:08:02.960 - 03:08:23.440

There are some old pilots and there are some bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. We used to laugh about that all the time. That was a favorite saying over at Roosevelt Field back in the '30s when Dad was teaching CPT.

03:08:24.480 - 03:08:31.720

In other words, don't be an old, bold pilot. Don't be. Kelly: I've got to stop for a second. I'm going to swap batteries.

03:08:31.720 - 03:08:39.640

Just a minute, let me get you to sum this up on camera. Oh, okay. We'll take this. Okay.

03:08:40.040 - 03:08:55.720

Okay. If you could talk to children 50 years from now, when they will be watching this and hearing what you have to say, what would you like to say to them that might encourage them

03:08:55.720 - 03:09:15.200

to do something with their lives that might encourage? - Well, I wound up this, don't let the airplane fly you. In other words, you take control of your life.

03:09:16.110 - 03:09:32.520

You make the best of it with what you have. There are two ways to go, the wrong way and the right way. and you just have to take the right way. And then the other thing that he always said,

03:09:32.580 - 03:09:48.380

there are old pilots, there are bold pilots, but no old bold pilots. To me, that is a sign of respect and character. And I interpret respect by respecting the machine.

03:09:48.520 - 03:10:04.940

We're talking about flying there. But then it can be translated into respect people, Respect machines, respect animals, respect the environment, respect the computer.

03:10:05.140 - 03:10:19.340

You know you can't let a computer go wild. You have to do everything according to what you have to do. You can't get away from it. So then to go on from that, to build character,

03:10:19.720 - 03:10:36.000

that teaches you character, right there, respect. And it also teaches discipline, doesn't it? And you have discipline in you fly the airplane. Don't let the airplane fly you.

03:10:36.340 - 03:10:49.180

That's discipline. That means to take control and do it the right way and don't abuse, you don't abuse a car. So many children are being killed in cars,

03:10:49.180 - 03:11:08.600

but say between the ages of 18 and 24. because they don't have the discipline or the respect for a machine, to know what a machine can do, know the limits. And so therefore you learn your own limits.

03:11:10.680 - 03:11:32.880

You don't test them, of course, but you learn through mistakes, like you say, but you can always return and do the right thing. So that's the way I feel that I've had a legacy from, especially dad and my poor mother too,

03:11:33.140 - 03:11:44.760

she never had anything. She opened up her own beauty shop and so she also did all she could with her life. And dad too.

03:11:47.360 - 03:12:07.940

He had so many things happen to him in his life. Went down at sea one time in the middle of the ocean, 300 miles off the coast of New York when he was trying to pick up a film towed by a liner. And fortunately he got out of that.

03:12:08.760 - 03:12:34.740

The plane just got engulfed by a big wave and broke the pontoon off and so forth. So they lost a man in that and they were rescued. But you just have to get back on and make the best of it. And that whole thing is, you know, don't let the plane fly you and don't let life

03:12:34.780 - 03:12:54.460

lead you the wrong way. You take control. And maybe self-determination, being a determined person might not be all that good. Say you have a determined child, they're pretty hard to get along with I guess, a little

03:12:54.540 - 03:13:10.420

determined child. But that's what it takes, self-determination. Wouldn't you say that? And I think if anybody wanted to describe Jackie Cochran, she had self-determination.

03:13:13.060 - 03:13:36.200

What do you feel the legacy of the Wasps will be? I hate to hear about comparison to men. I think it proved an awful lot. You know, did you ever read the 25-page sort of a history of our training and what they

03:13:36.240 - 03:13:48.760

proved through psychological tests and things like that? Well, I have it sitting right behind you. It's a fascinating report. They found that there was no difference between us and the cadets.

03:13:49.320 - 03:14:04.400

They gave the same psychological test to the male cadets they gave them to us. We could put the square peg in the square hole and the round peg in the round hole, the same as they. And the vision tests and everything were the same.

03:14:04.460 - 03:14:15.480

We were no different. And I just dislike being compared to men. But as far as the legacy improves, then we do have to say something about women can do it.

03:14:16.700 - 03:14:30.400

And all these years when we've been shunned and decidable, women can't do that. We can do it. We've got great minds. It's been proven that women were the best at instrument flying because we're so good

03:14:30.460 - 03:14:41.960

at detail. And that's another thing proven about everything women take and do. Detail, detail work. We're good at instrument flying.

03:14:43.940 - 03:15:01.300

Just like that little woman that was flying the KC-135 and let the boom down and directing that boom right down into a fighter. It took a lot of detail. Kelly: Is there anything that I have left out of your life that you would like to tell

03:15:01.300 - 03:15:10.880

us about? Reifeltt: Oh, heavens no. You have touched the depths, the heights of the depths. Kelly: Well, can I say I am proud that you were a WASP.

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Reifeltt: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Kelly: And I am so pleased and proud that you have done this interview with Senator Reifeltt.

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You have something to be very proud of, that daughter of yours. She is wonderful. Thank you. We appreciate this so much.

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And children looking, listening, and watching you in 50 years, you're going to be an inspiration.

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Women can do it. I wanted to ask you one thing, Joan, and this is because I went to a lot of different schools when I was growing up.

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Oh, did you? You said you were a loner. Yeah. How else? - We don't have friends, just move.

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- Why did you keep from going nuts? I mean, how did you? - I don't know. - Going from school to school.

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- You know what they used to say about me when I was a little girl? She plays so well alone. She doesn't need a bunch of friends.

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- Yeah. - I played so well alone. - If they had only known. - Yeah, yeah.

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- I'm overwhelmed. my mother didn't want me to have any boyfriends ever. (both laughing) - Well, I can almost understand that.

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(both laughing) - Oh, you weren't that way with your daughters, were you? - I wanted to pick them out. - Oh, you did?

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- Oh, yeah. - Yeah. Well, I guess she did too, 'cause that fella that was paired with me

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for my graduation prom, she started calling him a sissy. Oh, that sissy. - Oh, yeah.

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- Yeah, no fellow, she didn't see that many fellows 'cause I didn't go out that much. Maybe two of them. And one, Charlie was a sissy.

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I think he came to the house twice. - You were awesome. - Oh no. Listen, we all have these stories, I'm sure.

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- You've got a memory. - Yeah, absolutely. You have the best memory of anybody we've interviewed. - Really?

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You don't remember the sand at Sweetwater? - I certainly, and yeah, that's why I asked you. - They're bathing. - Absolutely.

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- Oh God, that was funny. - Then you have to circle and circle before you could land. - Oh, wasn't that, oh, wasn't that, listen, that reached 3,000 feet, that sandstorm.

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- Right, just like that. - And we had two of them, two bad ones. And shoveling, and Broome wouldn't do it. We had to shovel the sand out.

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- I don't remember shoveling. - The windows were just no good because you weren't there at the right season. We were there for the spring season, you see.

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- Yeah, I graduated in May. - Early summer, yeah. - Yeah, I think summertime was probably the worst. - Oh yeah, oh yeah.

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- And I really wasn't there when it got really hot. - You never had one of those sandstorms then, you don't remember? - Well, yeah, we had sandstorms.

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I remember having to circle before I could land. - Looking out west, it was a pink cloud. - Right. - And it was, you know, it was sky clear.

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There wouldn't be a cloud in the sky. But here was this pink haze out to the west. That was a sandstorm. Tops 3,000 feet down to the ground. Pure sand just blowing. What do you do?

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You hunker down. We had to go to the flight line. We had to tie our zoot suits around our necks like this and take a scarf and tie the scarf around it, tie our slacks, tie our wrists, and go out and get the PT-17s into the hanger and tie down.

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Really tie down. All of us up there working like crazy to tie down the planes. How did you breathe? You probably put a scarf or something over your mouth.

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It was awesome. You talk about awesome. It was. That's a great story.

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But we wouldn't have missed it for anything. Oh, well thank you. Can I give you a contribution? Or do you need a contribution?