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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Whistle a tone or something. [Whistle] Did Deanie sing for you?

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Did she sing? She ought to have sung on hers. And then if you can get a two-shot. [Whistle]

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The nice thing about this is, Millie, whatever you say is the truth, because it's your version. You sure it's the truth, pal?

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Whatever you say is true, it's your version. Okay, hi, my name is Nancy Parish. We are in Austin, Texas. Today is September the 9th, 1999. This is Millie

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Davidson, Dalrymple, and she is a WASP and we're going to do her interview. I'm going to get up and go to my place. Hi, Nancy. She was a WASP. Oh, you still are a WASP.

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I am. You are. If we could just start with your name, when you were born, where you were born. Mildred Banford Inks. That's it.

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Lano, Texas. Actually, I was born in Austin, Texas in a hospital because I was unexpected. I've always been in a hurry. And so I was premature and my first crib was a shoebox. I was the first

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Infant three pounds believe it or not And I stayed in the hospital for six weeks. Well, my mother got to go home actually We never bonded for that reason

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And then we went to Leno where I was where my family lived my father was a Ford car dealer there and my mother had grown up on a ranch and I went to school in Lano and when I was five years old there was a very bad boy whose father was the principal of the schools and he was five years old and his father wanted him to go they

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didn't have a kindergarten in Lano but he decided that if if he could get one other person to send their child at five years of age to the first grade that he could send Tony. And so Tony and I started first grade at five years of age and that principal moved away from Llano the next year. So I went through Llano

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High School as the youngest person in my class, but graduated, made good grades. I was salutatorian. I played tennis and I had fun. I liked being what I was. I liked living in Lanto. My father was the mayor and he thought I was wonderful and I could do anything I wanted to and so he made me believe it too and when I was

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about 10 he handed me a tennis racket and he said you can do it so I did. Yeah, a few, mostly boys, but I played with boys. The churches used to have tennis courts that you graded the ground and then you put lime on it and you put a chicken wire net across and that was a tennis court.

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And that's what I played tennis on until I went into high school. Then in high school they had regular courts and I played. Did you like competing? Oh, I loved it. Oh, sure.

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When was the first time you won? Oh, now that was a long time ago, and I don't remember, but I did only remember the wins. They had county meet then, and then they had state meet. And I won at the city of Llano, and then I won at county,

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and then I played the state meet which was in Georgetown when I was about a junior in high school. And I played in the finals against a lady, a girl from Austin named Joyce Rabidsburg. She beat me. She beat me bad. She'd gone to Austin High School and had the proper training.

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But the interesting thing is that now Joyce and I are partners in the Nationals tennis and we travel all over the country and we have been as high as number four in the nation. But we had about a fifty year intervening that we weren't tennis partners. We didn't even know each other then.

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I didn't know who she was until we finally figured out that she was the one that beat me at state. Do you remember the first time you won? Nope.

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But you'd won many times, too? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I went off and on, and then I came to the university, and at the university we had racket

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club. It wasn't the same as competitive sports now, but they had 25 girls that were in the racket club, and we competed, and I played mixed doubles with the boys' tennis team. But it was mostly social.

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It wasn't really competitive like it is now. But I have a T-letter that says I played tennis for the University of Texas in 1939, '38, '40. Central Academy of Arts and Sciences

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Interviewer - Were you an only child? Bethe - No, I had a brother who was two years younger than I, and he is my best friend still. Of course, he was a brat when he was little, but I put up with him. Let me ask you about World War II, just because I think that broke out.

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I mean, when did it break out? 1941. Where were you? I had finished university, and I was working in San Antonio for a normal quartermaster

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military base. And the reason I was over there is because the boy I was in love with was in training over there, and he was at Brooksville, and he was about to graduate. But prior to that, I had moved over there after I graduated because he was going to

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be there, because civil service jobs were available then. So when it broke out, we were actually back in Austin with two of his roommates and two I lived in an apartment with three other girls, and the three couples of us were over here having dinner and heard about the war being declared.

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Being real deep thinkers, Bill, my later husband, said, "Well, I guess this is the last time I get to wear civilian clothes." We didn't really think it was a serious war, even though they had to report to their bases immediately, so we went back to San Antonio.

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But I don't think any of us had any idea what war was like, that it wasn't fun and games. We were having fun and games. How did it impact your life from that point on? Bill graduated and he went into bomber training and he went first to Salt Lake City.

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And we had decided not to get married until after the war. So he called frequently and then all of a sudden he didn't call at all and I was really, really concerned. I thought he had gone overseas.

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And then when he came back he said, "I don't think we ought to wait until after the war is over." And I said, "I don't either." So I was going to go to Salt Lake City to get married, and I got on a train.

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Oh it took about three days or four days to come back to Austin, tell my mother I was going to get married and buy some clothes and do some things and go see my family in Llano and tell them goodbye. And while I was on the train, I got a telegram from him saying I've been transferred.

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I'm in Spokane, Washington. So I had to change my trip and go to Spokane, Washington. And when I got to Spokane, Washington, he met the plane and we were going to get married, except they had a three-day waiting period up there.

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But he had looked into it and some people had gotten married the day before and they'd gone to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. So we went to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and he made all the arrangements and I was given away by his commanding officer and my matron of honor had been married the day before and

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his best friend was the matron. And everything just went like smooth except as we were going down the alley he says, "Oh, I forgot the music." But it worked.

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We got married anyway. Then we were there very briefly. After we got there, he found that he had already got an apartment, and it was a small place, but I didn't know how to cook.

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I had never cooked in my whole life, not anything, maybe candy, but that's it. We ate out for a while, and then he said, "Well, shall we get some groceries?" I said, "Sure." I didn't know what to get.

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He knew more about it than I did, but after that first meal, we ate out most of the time. Then we went to Murrock, California, which is now Edwards Air Force Base. It was hotter than the hinges of you know what. I was traveling with another wife, and she and I decided that there wasn't any point

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us being miserable all week because they could only get out on, our husbands could only get out on weekends. So, we moved into Hollywood and got us a two-bedroom, two-bath studio apartment at Hollywood and Vine.

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And it was really nice and the guys were really glad because they came in on Friday after they'd been flying and we had a lovely weekend and then they went back and we still, Franny and I still had the experience of living in Hollywood. Was this during rationing?

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Yeah, it was. We had, I don't know how we got it, we had enough gas. I guess it's because he was in the military, I don't know. We drove, the wives all drove in convoy down from Seattle,

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Spokane, on the coast of California all the way down. because so we had gas I don't know how we did not after we left after they transferred from Murak they went then to Tucson Arizona for final refitting on their B-17s where we thought it was final and at that point Bill's parents

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came up to take his car back and they thought they said they were telling him goodbye and they told all the wives they had to go home. And we said, "Forget that old stuff. We're not going home.

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We're going to go wherever you go as long as we can go." So Bill's family took his car back and I went with another wife who was a, she had a convertible. We thought that was more fun. And she was from Youngstown, Ohio.

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So we took off. We were, I guess we were twenty years old then, without enough gas, without any tires, without anything. But we managed to get along just fine until we got somewhere in the desert we had a flat

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tire. And I remember some very inebriated fellows came along and stopped and said, "What's the matter?" We don't know how to fix it."

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So they got out and they were pretty provoked with us. But they fixed our tire. I mean, they put on the spare tire, but we had ruined the one, so we limped on into the next town.

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And there, my friend's name was Butch Saunders. She went in and sweet-talked the owner of the station and told them that they would send us - we had the money, we just didn't have the coupon - that they'd send the coupon to them if they'd give us a spare tire and let us keep going.

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And they did. People were very, very nice to soldiers and their spouses and everybody. It was a kind time. How did the war affect you at that point, as far as your life?

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As far as what? As far as your life was... Well, it turned it upside down. I had been out of Llano all the way to Austin and San Antonio and Houston and Dallas.

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Well, I had made some trips with my grandfather. I had been pretty much all over the West Coast as a child with my grandfather. As far as being an independent person, this was the first time I made my own decisions. I did what I wanted to and didn't worry about having to answer to anybody else.

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I guess it makes you grow up in a hurry. But I still did not think it was, it never occurred to me that when Bill went overseas that he would be fighting and maybe dying. It didn't occur to me.

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We went then from Tucson. We drove, Butch and I drove, all the way up. They went to the port of embarkation, which was Syracuse, New York. We managed to get up there by ourselves.

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In Syracuse, we stayed at the Onondaga Hotel. Unfortunately, I didn't have to cook there. We ate out, and they were refitting their B-17s, Ds, to make them B-17Es, and I don't know what it was for.

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And so the boys really had an awful lot of free time because they had all their flying training in that they needed. So we just had a ball. The people in Syracuse had never seen any soldiers, and they were happy to have us,

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and they wined and dined us and had parties for us, and we just had a ball. We arrived in, I'm not sure what month it was. We were married in June, and this had taken about June, July, August. We were probably into September by then.

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We had our June, July clothes, and we were up in cold country. So we bought some warm clothes and still had a good time. Interviewer - Had you ever had a thought about learning how to fly? Well, I had flown with Bill, yes.

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When he was in the CPT program, when he was in the University of Texas, as I was, and as soon as he got his license to take somebody up, as soon as we got $25, we went flying. And he let me hold it in the air. I never had, I didn't log any time and I hadn't flown any.

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And then there was, my grandfather had intended to buy a plane. He lived on a ranch and he was a very forward-thinking man and he had a big stock pond built near his house and he intended to buy an airplane and get me to fly it and have pontoons so I could land it on the lake to take him places he wanted to go.

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But the war came and he couldn't buy a plane. So that, yes, I had intended. And when we were very young, my grandfather had leased a plane out of San Antonio with a pilot, a cargo plane, and took all of his grandchildren, four of us, up in this plane.

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And we flew over Llano, and we flew over his ranch, and we dropped parachute notes down to our friends that, of course, plummeted and didn't parachute at all. They just hit hard. So I had flown then, and I had flown off and on.

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We had barnstormers come in for fifty cents a ride. You could fly, and my parents wouldn't let me do that. But I think that's the reason my grandfather took us up flying. But I think it's interesting that of his four grandchildren, three of us all became pilots.

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What was it like the first time? When did you know you were going to be a pilot? Well I didn't really know I was going to be a pilot until after Bill was gone. I didn't intend to be a pilot.

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What did you intend to be? a journalist. I was going to write a great novel or something wonderful. I don't know. I took a degree in journalism, but I didn't have any great ambitions. I just intended to have fun. That was my goal in life. It's still my goal in life.

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But after Bill, when Bill, they went out to work one day, went out to the flight line one day, and I didn't know when he left. And I felt really, really bad about that because I would like to have said goodbye. And it was a Sunday, and it's just one of those fortunate things.

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I went to a church nearby and the sermon was on the piece that passes all understanding. I thought he was maybe all of them, maybe he knew that there were a lot of wives up there. Then I took a train and came back.

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By that time my brother was in the service, so I stopped in to see him in Monroe, Louisiana, then came on home. a job in the Adjutant General's Department of the Capitol and met a friend whose husband was a—had been on Corregidor.

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Her husband had been West Point and sent to Corregidor, and her father was regular military. So she and I became good friends because we were the younger ones there and without husbands. And then I got the message that Bill was missing in action. And I thought, "Oh boy, he'll make it. I mean, nobody can get him down."

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But then I started getting letters from the friends that we had made in the group, and I know what happened, and I knew that there was not any hope of his coming back. And Kay, my friend whose husband was—she hoped a Japanese prisoner at best. I talked about it and I said, "I had read about the WASP program."

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So I said, "Let's go get some flying hours. Maybe they will lower the need or maybe we can fly enough hours to get them." I forget how many were required at that time, but we just went out to a local airport here, Doc Hales Airport, and we started flying.

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We had allotments from our husband and our own job money, and so we just poured everything we could into flying time. We flew morning, noon, and night when we possibly could, and got our twenty-five hours and took our private license and applied to the WASP.

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Then had an interview in Fort Worth and got all kinds of letters of recommendation that you had to have. If I had known what the chances were of getting in or the chances were of getting through then I might have been a little less optimistic.

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Who did you interview? Helen, no, no, I forgot. I remember what she looked like, and I remember the interview, and I remember having to line And for depth perception, you had to get those things just level.

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Oh, and the other thing is I was skinny then, real skinny, and Kay was sort of large, so I had to gain some weight to get in. I was the minimum of everything. And Kay had to lose some weight because she was quite large, so we weren't pals there

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for a couple of months before we finally got in. But we made it. And then in November, we went to Sweetwater. They had a big party for us at the office, telling us farewell, we're going to go to

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Sweetwater and have a good time. Meanwhile, I had to go get some more gas, so I went down to the ration board in Bill's car and I didn't know where it was. And I kept looking for it and looking for it and couldn't find it.

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I was going real, real slow and all of a sudden I realized, "Oops, I'm going to hit the curb. There's a boy there on a motorcycle." So he jumped off and pulled the motorcycle up and I stopped and it didn't hurt anything or anybody, but it really upset me and I was crying bloody murder because I was so upset.

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I never had done anything. I had learned to drive when I was twelve years old because my father was a Ford car dealer And he wanted to use his daughter as a demonstrator to persuade the wives who lived on the ranches that they too could drive these Model A cars.

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So I got to demonstrate cars, and we didn't have to get licenses then. So I had a car from the time I was twelve years old. I had my own car. And I never had any accident at all, and here I was.

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So I was in tears, and fortunately a friend of my mother's came by, and he said, "Just calm down. I'll call your mother." Anyway, later I had to go see the judge.

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And he said, "You had to get the gas." And he said, "Well, they don't have motorcycles up in the sky that get in your way, do they?" And I said, "No, sir." And he said, "Okay, I'll put you on probation for thirty days."

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And that's all there was to it, except that after that I gave the keys to my car to Kay, I never drove for thirty days. And then we went to Sweetwater. Did you go in your car?

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Sure, but Kay drove. And I just left it there in the parking lot. I did not drive that thing for thirty days. I was shook.

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What kind of car was it? It was a Ford, of course. Is there any other? There was none other.

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I still drive Fords. My mind is a mercury now. My father had died when I was fifteen. My mother was a dependent type person, and sort of after my father's death, my mother

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looked to me for, well she leaned mostly on her father, but then we moved to Austin so she could get a job. This was the height of the Depression, and when Daddy died he had a lot of cars on hand that nobody could pay for, and a lot of people owed him money, and there just was no money

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available. So she needed to get a job, so she came to Austin and she got a job with a friend of My father was on the Lower Colorado River Authority, one of the first people who started the LCRA to get the dams in Texas.

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At this time, they were building a dam called Hamilton Dam on the Colorado River, the first of the big dams. It was being run by a man named Insull. He had absconded with the money that was to finish the dam.

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It was to furnish electricity, and he had skipped the country and took the money. And so the dam was in limbo. There was no money to finish the dam, so it just stood there. Most of the people in our little county, in Burnet County, they were the ones that were

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working on the dam, so everybody was unemployed. A lot of the dam people had houses out there, and they had gardens, and their kids were in Lano's schools or Burnett's schools. They had nowhere else to go.

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There were no jobs, but at least they had a home. The merchants in Lano and Burnett were carrying them on groceries and the necessities of life. They all had cars, which they owed my father money on. So he then, with a group of other—the Mayor of Burnett and a couple from Austin and Lyndon

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Johnson—a group of them went to Washington to start lobbying for money to finish building Hamilton Dam. This went on for about a year, I guess. And then finally, they did succeed in getting the funds allocated to finish Hamilton Dam,

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but my father died on a trip. He got pneumonia on a trip to Washington. When he came back, he died. So they finished that dam.

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He knew they were going to get the money. I'm glad about that. They finished that dam and they named it for Congressman Buchanan, who had ramrodded the bill through the Congress.

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And then they named the second one after my father, the Roy B. Inks Dam, which is the power dam. The Buchanan Dam is the one that holds the water back and is a recreation, and the Roy B. Inks Dam is the power dam.

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And then later they built the LBJ, they built a lot, four or five more dams, but that was the beginning of the Lower Colorado River Authority. And I forgot how I got started on that. I just want to ask you real quick, and then we're going to be finished with this tape.

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It was the most traumatic experience that a person, a young girl could have because he was my father. He adored me. I adored him.

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My brother and my mother were closer together, but he thought I could do anything and I thought I could do anything because he told me I could do anything, which growing up in a small town is pretty much the truth. If you've got the right genes and a lot of parental help, you get a lot of ego. Some of it you may be overinflated, but it helps. It helps to help self-confidence.

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I've tried to instill that in my kids. Tell us about the trip to Sweetwater. Was there anything you could tell about the trip? No, it was very dull.

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Kay drove, and we got there and went directly to—I guess we had to go to the hotel first, the Blue Bonnet, and then probably had to—but how did I get the car? How did we get the car out there if we didn't go there? We must have followed—I don't remember.

00:30:00.440 - 00:30:21.000

But somewhere or other, we got out to Avenger Field, either on that cattle car or in the car. car and parked it and started unloading our stuff. I guess we went into the—isn't it weird, all the things you forget?

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I guess we went into the big registration area, which must have been the mess hall there, and found out we were Ds, which we knew, and therefore we were going to be rooming with a bunch of other Ds. We lived in bays, and there were six to a bay.

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In our bay, there was Dinwiddie, Diffin, Davidson, Drezzo, Dingley, and I forgot who the other D was. But Kay and I were pleased to meet all of them. Oh, maybe it was Dunbar.

00:31:05.800 - 00:31:28.080

I guess it was Dunbar. They all looked pretty much like us, except Lucille Dingley was obviously considerably older than we were and very sweet. Two of Dingley and Dinwiddie and Diffin were from California.

00:31:28.880 - 00:31:59.700

Dunbar was from Washington, D.C. Diffen was, and Kay and I were, and Lucille Dingley was too, her husband, yeah. And Dunbar was not. Rose: Oh, to the sixth, yeah.

00:32:00.400 - 00:32:33.820

We had six of these cots in an upright locker, and we shared the bathroom with the Es and the Fs, Annabel Earp and B.G. Everett, and I forgot who the rest of them were. I think there were only two commodes and two showers, but I'm not sure about that either. You had to forget about privacy and vanity.

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There just was not time, nor space, nor anything else for that. So we unloaded all of our stuff and went to get some clothes, and they gave us these horrible old baggy zoot suits, we called them. that were khaki colored and ten times too big for me and even too big for Kay.

00:32:57.680 - 00:33:18.100

Then we had, I guess we just had those Utsu's to begin with because we didn't get the General's Pants until later. I think that's right. The General's Pants were the first time, the WASP had not been well publicized.

00:33:18.500 - 00:33:35.780

I think they were a little apprehensive that maybe the whole program would found her and they might as well just kind of keep it low profile. But then the word got around and some of these generals wanted to come down and see what was going on down at Sweetwater.

00:33:36.940 - 00:33:53.940

So they came down and right quick they had to find some better looking garb for the girls who were there. So they went into Sweetwater and San Angelo and Abilene and every place they could and bought khaki-colored pants.

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And we altered them, turned up the cuffs so they would fit us, and we were supposed to wear white shirts, khaki pants, and these awful white wraparound turbans so that our hair wouldn't get in the way. And that was our dress uniform.

00:34:11.620 - 00:34:29.580

It was pretty grotesque, but it was better than those general's pants. And then later they let us leave off the turbines. So that's the way we performed and dressed up. Most of the time, though, we kind of got used to those zoot suits, that they were comfortable.

00:34:30.620 - 00:34:42.640

We also— Do you remember the first time you took the flying leg training at a mission? What time? No, the first time you took primary training.

00:34:43.840 - 00:35:07.760

Yeah, there were three of us and we were assigned by height to one instructor and we started on these PT-17s No, PT-19s, which is the low-wing biplane low-wing plane and my instructor was Mr. Hunt and I was with with Jane Dunbar and

00:35:13.260 - 00:35:37.600

Diffin we were short. And we went up and it was, you know, it was pretty hot stuff, but I could handle it. It wasn't all that bad. What we had is we had flight line in the morning and the last half of the alphabet, which was flight two, had

00:35:38.180 - 00:36:00.440

ground school in the morning and then flight line in the afternoon and we alternated by weeks. Kay was, since she was military background, was immediately elected commander of their flight commander and then because I was her friend I immediately became the flight lieutenant. And then Madge Leon was the flight lieutenant on the other half

00:36:00.500 - 00:36:15.340

and so we had to learn to do the commands and say "Hup, two, three, four" and we had to march to all of our classes and march to the meals and to flight line and everywhere. And I thought it was kind of fun. I liked it.

00:36:16.290 - 00:36:36.240

Well, we learned some pretty fancy maneuvers, too. We learned the four winds march. There was a Mr. LaRue who was in charge of athletics and marching. So he taught us all these fancy drills, and we thought they were loads of fun, and we

00:36:36.240 - 00:37:02.800

them pretty good. We did, sometimes we did them when we went to a base where there were enough of us and the cadets would look at us like scornfully and we'd show them we could do these four winds march and come back and get in right line again. And as far as the flight lines go, we flew, well one thing was sort of fun. After we, the PT-19s

00:37:04.100 - 00:37:32.800

didn't last long. Then we went to PT-17, which is a bi-wing stearman, and it's a very maneuverable, stable, wonderful little airplane. And one time our flight was out, after you had soloed, you had to learn all the maneuvers. You had to learn stalls are most important, because you stall to land it. But then you had to get control of the plane. You really need to know the feel of it.

00:37:32.800 - 00:37:53.140

So we went out to the practice field, which is about 30 or 40 miles away, and practiced all the maneuvers that we had learned. We've learned slow rolls, snap rolls, loops, lazy eights, pile on eights, emblemons, chandels, all the maneuvers until, oh, and spins.

00:37:53.840 - 00:38:06.840

Loved those spins. So you climbed up to a real high altitude and did all of your stuff. Well, by the time we got to there, it was December. It was cold by this time, and those were open cockpit planes.

00:38:07.340 - 00:38:30.420

We had been issued fur-lined, well, not really fur-lined, they're fuzzy-lined, whatever, fleece-lined leather outfits, and we had helmets and goggles, but there was an awful lot of exposed anatomy there that was really cold. So by the time the hour was up, you were really glad it was time to go home because you concentrated

00:38:30.620 - 00:38:45.840

so hard. You couldn't lose altitude on any of those maneuvers that you did. And if you were going to do a loop, you did three spins and then you pulled out. You did it exactly the way you were supposed to and you were concentrating like crazy.

00:38:46.360 - 00:39:02.420

And we did it. time when the hour was up, I was so glad and I started to head for home. It had started snowing. It had snowed quite heavily the whole hour that we were out there.

00:39:03.320 - 00:39:14.500

And the railroad track, which is the way that we knew our way back to Sweetwater, was gone, utterly gone under all the white snow. We couldn't find it. I mean, it was not there.

00:39:15.360 - 00:39:31.420

Nothing was there except white. Well the instruments had compasses, there were gyro-compasses, and when you were doing all of your maneuvering they spilled, and so then you didn't have a compass and you didn't know which way was east or west or any way.

00:39:32.520 - 00:39:55.120

So you also knew, you know, no panic, no fear, because you knew that the tower would know you hadn't, the whole class, there'd be about fifteen of us out there, had not come back. they'd send somebody out to rescue us. So we just kind of hovered around and circled and stayed close together, high, low, east,

00:39:55.340 - 00:40:16.800

west, and waited for somebody to come out. Maybe in about 15 or 20 minutes, here comes this beautiful silver bird. And all of us, all of us, immediately tried to get under his wing as fast as we could. And he led us back to safety and we landed safely and all was well, except that he told

00:40:16.840 - 00:40:39.520

his buddies he had 25 combat missions in England and he had never been so frightened in his life as when he saw all of these novice pilots coming right at him from every direction, up, down, east, west, north, south. And he had to use every evasive maneuver he had to avoid all 15 of us and lead us back.

00:40:40.880 - 00:40:58.660

But he did and we did and it was a success. And then after primary we went on to basic and then they upgraded us and put us in the AT-6s, which was a much more powerful airplane. Did anybody wash out during primary?

00:40:59.160 - 00:41:12.140

Practically everybody washed out in primary. There were an awful lot of people in our bay. Lucille Dingley was the first one to go. And she said she just couldn't cope with it.

00:41:12.920 - 00:41:27.020

And some of them just couldn't take the military. But mostly it was flying. Nobody washed out on ground school, but mostly it was flying. And my favorite person of the people I had met was Den Whitty.

00:41:29.300 - 00:41:40.980

Denny was from California and she had been the stand-in for Greer Garson in movies. She was a dancer. And I thought she was a great pilot. You just didn't know.

00:41:41.360 - 00:41:52.540

You didn't know. And I think maybe some of the girls were good pilots who washed out. I think they may have been nervous or something. I don't know.

00:41:52.680 - 00:42:12.480

She seemed to have everything going for her, but then she came back one day and she said, "I've got a check ride tomorrow." And then she came back with tears, and we knew she had to go up for the Army, and so So she got packed the night before because once you, you had to have three pink slips

00:42:12.860 - 00:42:29.680

before you got sent up for an Army check ride. And that was sort of automatic goodbye. So she left. That may have been, no, it's got to have been in primary, but she came home with me at Thanksgiving.

00:42:30.160 - 00:42:41.580

Well that's all right. We started in November. Thanksgiving we had two days off or something like that. So I brought Denny back to Austin with me to meet my family, and we took her up to the

00:42:41.760 - 00:42:54.080

office where Kay and I had worked. There was another Austin girl in there with us, so we had a party. And then we went back, and so it was soon after that that she washed out. How did that affect you when she left?

00:42:54.840 - 00:43:08.700

What? How did that affect you when she left? Just glad it wasn't me. You know, we were so self-centered because we were so focused on what we were doing.

00:43:08.940 - 00:43:26.160

I mean, it was an utter disgrace to wash out. It was a broken heart. And the idea was to get away as quick as you could if you washed out. I mean, you could barely say goodbye because you were so upset about it, which I think

00:43:26.200 - 00:43:38.160

is unfortunate. It still carries on. And when we have these meetings, one of the really good friend who washed out later on on instruments, she wouldn't come to our reunion.

00:43:38.340 - 00:43:51.860

She said, "I was not a WASP. I didn't make it." And she felt less of a person. We got to stop.

00:43:51.860 - 00:43:58.800

I got to cough. Oh, we want to stop you. Do you need something to drink? No.

00:43:59.340 - 00:44:15.460

Okay, well let me know. I will. I will. Did you have other responsibilities besides being a lieutenant or any other responsibilities? Yeah, I had to wake them up every morning to be sure they got there and then did the mail call and that's about it.

00:44:17.440 - 00:44:38.420

Kay had other responsibilities. As a matter of fact, she had to do an inspection sometime or other and found some—no, that's not right. She had other responsibilities, but I'm not sure what they were.

00:44:39.120 - 00:44:53.400

Did you work with anything extracurricular as a WASP, like the paper or the glee club or anything? I helped with our yearbook, yes. That's about all I did.

00:44:53.430 - 00:45:00.660

I mean. Journalism? Yeah, yeah. But other than that, I didn't.

00:45:01.180 - 00:45:16.340

What was it scary? Was there anything that was scary to you? The answer is it wasn't scaring me. Instruments I just literally hated because I felt like I was probably going to wash out.

00:45:16.340 - 00:45:40.080

I was probably going to flunk the whole thing. On instruments, well, you had the link trainer, which is where you practiced your instruments. That was a box-like thing mounted on a pedestal that could do all kinds of maneuvers, and then there was a link trainer manipulator who faked everything that you might encounter.

00:45:41.140 - 00:45:55.880

but you had to find the beam, a steady radio beam. It went zoooooooooooom and then gave the call letters of the station. And if you got off on the right side, there would be some di-di-di-di-dits. And if you got off on the left side, it would be da-da-da-da-das or something.

00:45:57.020 - 00:46:15.740

But there was a really intricate pattern you had to fly once you found the beam. And then if you got lucky and stayed on the beam, then you would find the cone of silence, and that's where you could start let down for the field. We flew buddy system, and I flew with Diffin as my buddy.

00:46:16.740 - 00:46:34.940

And I don't think I ever found that cone of silence until it was time for the check ride, or my instructor told me to do it. And then I found the cone of silence, and I got on the thing, and I swore I'd never, never, never, never go out in bad weather again, where I had to depend on the instruments.

00:46:35.000 - 00:46:45.860

I just didn't like it. It was so complicated, and I felt I was not very good at it. So I felt kind of lucky that I made it. There's an interesting thing.

00:46:47.180 - 00:47:06.340

In our ground school, we had an awful lot of—I've forgotten all the stuff we had. We had engines, and we had physics, and we had weather, and we had—Mars Code is the one I'm trying to get around to remembering again. And Morse code, they taught it like they taught it to the men before us.

00:47:07.040 - 00:47:23.160

And the only ones that I can remember are the ones that they gave us the clues for, like da-da-da-dit. That's an L. The reason I know that is because it's to hell with it. And the D was da-da-da-da.

00:47:23.940 - 00:47:43.460

I'll be god damn. And I don't remember any of the others because they didn't have any very good clues for them. But that's the sort of thing that you had to know upside down and backwards. You had a manual that told you what the station was if you got on the beam and heard the call

00:47:43.620 - 00:48:02.020

letters. Later I learned to work, I learned to do instruments, but that first time through I wasn't sure I ever would. And then after instruments we went into advanced training and there we had, oh, I guess I stayed

00:48:02.020 - 00:48:30.900

pretty much the same three people. We made it all the way through. I soloed first in -- Jane Dunbar soloed first in one, and either PTs or AT6s, I forget which, and I soloed first in the other. So I guess we were pretty comfortable with it. They threw you in a wishing wheel the first one to solo, and then I won a jackpot from our class because I won the

00:48:30.900 - 00:48:46.740

first solo and whether it was, I still don't remember and Jane and I argue about it all time still. She thinks she soloed first in 86s and I think I did, but one of us soloed first in 86s and the other one soloed first in the primaries.

00:48:48.460 - 00:49:11.480

So she got thrown in the wishing well and I won the money. After we got into advanced flying, then we had learned to handle an airplane. And the AT-6, we had flown in instruments, so we were pretty comfortable with it. So we had to learn night flying and navigation long cross countries.

00:49:13.100 - 00:49:38.700

And the night flying and the long cross countries were sort of ticklish, but fun. And this way we got to go into other bases where we were kind of an oddity, and we strutted our stuff and loved it, and RON'd at some of the places. And on one of my long cross-countries, the last one as a matter of fact, I was flying

00:49:38.800 - 00:49:57.580

out west, and when I came back, Austin and Llano—well, Austin was on my route. I was going to get gas in Austin. And then Llano was not too far off my route, so I came into Austin and had my mother meet me at the airport while I got gas and we visited.

00:49:58.200 - 00:50:12.460

And then I told her I was going to fly over the ranch. I was supposed to go over Fredericksburg, which is about thirty miles away. But if she would call my grandparents and my uncles that lived out there, I'd be by to see them shortly.

00:50:13.400 - 00:50:29.260

So she did, and I followed the Colorado River, and then when it hit Sandy Creek, I turned south and went towards the ranch, because Sandy Creek runs through my grandfather's ranch. And after I got there, I could easily see their house, because there's a great big

00:50:29.520 - 00:50:50.600

granite dome that's adjacent to their house, and then the other side was this big pond, stock pond that he had built. And they were outside just waving and waving and waving at me, and I was flying rather low but not too low and circling and waggling my wings and going up and down and so I circled

00:50:50.680 - 00:51:08.060

for a while and I resisted doing a roll and I resisted doing all of the show off things. I knew they were pretty proud whatever I did. And after circling them then I went on down Sandy Creek where my uncle and aunt lived. My whole clan lives on that Sandy Creek and on that area of the county.

00:51:08.940 - 00:51:28.560

So they were outside waiting for me too, so I circled them and waggled and waggled and they wiggled and they waved and waved. Then I had another uncle that lived a little bit further up, so I circled his house. But anyway, I was only maybe 15 to 20 minutes off my ETA, and I headed for Sweetwater.

00:51:29.360 - 00:51:59.780

And when I got to Sweetwater and landed at Avenger, I was surprised to see out on the And as soon as I had taxied in and landed, I landed and taxied in and got, parked the car, parked the plane. Kay came running out and climbed on the wing of my plane and gave me a hug. And I thought, "Ew, yuck." She said, "I am so glad to see you." And I said, "Well, what's up? What's happened?"

00:51:59.840 - 00:52:19.440

She said, "They've had a bad crash and there are only two AT6s still out." and the other was in the new student that was on her first solo and the other AT-6 that was missing was Mary Housen and that plane has crashed

00:52:19.780 - 00:52:34.540

and she didn't make it. She jumped out. They knew that she had jumped out but they hadn't gotten to the site yet and Mary was too low, her parachute didn't open.

00:52:35.660 - 00:53:03.620

So, I was deeply grieved for Mary, but wondering, did the fact that I flew over the ranch, did that save my life? Would I have been the one that was in the pattern when it happened? And the other girl was on her very first solo and was just too intent on her altitude and

00:53:03.620 - 00:53:22.600

her patterns and stuff, and she didn't see Mary, and she just crashed into her, and both girls were killed. Later they recovered them, and the Army, I was also apprehensive about flying again, but the Army has a precedent for that.

00:53:22.720 - 00:53:40.840

They sent us up the next day. We all went up. We flew regular times, but they didn't have any precedent for civilians being killed. So we took our class took up a collection of money to send Mary's body back to her mother

00:53:41.040 - 00:53:56.240

in Illinois. The Mary the other girl was Barbara Erickson and her class took up money to send her body back. Fortunately, one of our classmates, Mickey Carmichael, had washed back because she'd

00:53:56.240 - 00:54:13.800

been ill and she could go back with Mary's body. So she did. Many years later, Mary's mother came down here to Austin, Texas for a memorial ceremony at the university for the 38 wasps who were killed.

00:54:14.280 - 00:54:32.100

And I was her hostess when she was down here. And she said she was so grateful for Mickey to come up there, but she felt so deprived because she never got any communication at all from the army about her daughter being killed.

00:54:32.840 - 00:54:50.240

She didn't get a flag. She couldn't put a gold star in her window. She said she never heard another word, and she always wondered what would have Mary's life have been if she had gotten to stay, what it was like.

00:54:50.340 - 00:55:12.980

So when she was down here and she met a lot of WASPs and they told her all of their stories of where they had been, she said it was such a relief to her to get to know what Mary missed or could have experienced. So that part of it was sort of an epilogue and then I also, at one reunion we had, I

00:55:13.000 - 00:55:41.960

wrote to my primary instructor, Mr. Hunt, and invited him to our reunion and I got a long letter back from him. He said that he got out of the training program, that that Mary Barbara Erickson was his student. He felt so responsible for that crash because he thought maybe I shouldn't have soloed her,

00:55:42.080 - 00:56:02.100

maybe she wasn't ready, maybe I hadn't told her to look out enough or something. So when I wrote back I tried to reassure him that it sticks in my mind of all the things he did for us and he was a good instructor. The one, the mantra he had was, "Keep your damn heads on a swivel.

00:56:02.460 - 00:56:17.040

Look, look, keep your damn heads on a swivel." And I'm sure that he did that for Barbara too, but she was just too intent. But he said he got out of the program because it had haunted him all of his life. He didn't come to the reunion.

00:56:19.280 - 00:56:41.980

Anyway, I graduated. What was graduation like? My grandfather came and Bill's parents came and I had asked, I had gotten the message that Bill would not, that he had some medals coming and he was, having been a year, he

00:56:42.040 - 00:57:04.820

was now declared, presumed dead. So I asked that they wait until my graduation to give me his medals at the same time because I knew his parents would be there with me. So they came and my grandparents and my mother all came for graduation and then my grandfather

00:57:04.860 - 00:57:29.260

put my wings on me and I was very proud of that because he was instrumental in my flying all the time. And then we got a brief leave and came back to Austin, and I was assigned with one other WASP, Eloise Huffhines, who had not been a particular friend of mine in training.

00:57:29.850 - 00:57:46.840

She was down the way in the bays, and just, we were not that close. How did you, when you took your leave, where did you go? Did you come to Austin? How long did you have to wait?

00:57:48.420 - 00:58:20.400

I don't remember, maybe a week at the most. I suppose it was about three or four days or a week at the most. And Huffy and I decided to drive in my car and we stopped in Monroe, Louisiana. I had a farmer boyfriend who was stationed there, and so I had him get Huffy a date,

00:58:20.460 - 00:58:33.040

and we partied. Then we went on to Montgomery, to Maxwell Field. At Maxwell Field, we were assigned to the nurses' quarters, which was— We're going to stop.

00:58:34.040 - 00:58:37.440

Okay. Okay. We're going to change tapes. Okay.

00:58:37.960 - 00:58:40.380

Okay. This is going right now. Maybe I'll get a drink. Beep-beep-beep-beep.

00:58:42.840 - 00:58:59.340

I forgot where we were. Okay, we're in our car and we're on our way to our first assignment. Okay, and we were in the nurses' quarters and we lived across the street from the officers' clubs, and we had our meals at the officers' club and we assigned operations as utility pilots.

00:59:00.180 - 00:59:19.680

And we were also, in our spare time, supposed to be test-flying B-24s, which was—I didn't believe it. I just didn't believe it. But it turned out that's what we really were supposed to do. Our first assignment was for operations and to do whatever was needed.

00:59:20.080 - 00:59:47.060

Our boss was a Major Thomas, who was the operations officer, who desperately needed pilots. This was the headquarters for Eastern Training Command, which was a separate entity from where we were, but he was to furnish transportation for all of the officers over there who needed to be somewhere else and he didn't have enough pilots to do it and he had to do it himself a

00:59:47.080 - 01:00:16.060

lot so he was delighted to get us and he personally checked us out in every plane that he had available and after that he decided we were safe pilots and that he would be glad to send us anywhere anytime with anybody and so for that reason we got an awful lot of good flying time in a lot of different airplanes. Somebody would call down from headquarters and say, "I have to be in

01:00:16.340 - 01:00:43.700

Washington, anywhere on the eastern coast, and I need to take three people with me, so give me a plane." And so we took whatever was available. Usually it was a C-45, which was my favorite plane to fly. And they would come down to the, and I'd fill out the, look at the weather, fill out the clearance, check out the parachutes, tow the ball to the plane, and then go pick

01:00:43.700 - 01:01:06.900

them up at the operations office and let them stroll out there. And all the time that I was flying all these people, I never had a single person seem the least bit apprehensive about flying with a woman, which is really good. Some of them were pilots themselves who'd been kicked up to desk jobs, and they would

01:01:06.960 - 01:01:22.120

very nicely ask me, "May I fly the plane a little bit?" And I would condescend to let them hold the controls, but I wouldn't let them land it. That was my business. And then after we got to wherever it was they wanted to go, which was frequently Washington,

01:01:22.290 - 01:01:42.720

D.C., I would ask them if they knew how long they would be there, if it was a meeting just for the day or if it was overnight, and they'd say they were overnight. So then I would have to, if there were any quarters available, I would have to stay at the base, and if there weren't, I'd have to go into town, which I did.

01:01:44.740 - 01:02:02.960

Then be on call for them to leave immediately whenever it was, which was sometimes an awful lot of sitting time. But it was a pleasant task, and they were very nice people. Then there were other jobs, like if they had a B-24 that had a problem somewhere, well

01:02:02.960 - 01:02:17.500

then I'd have to take a part to them. And one time I flew a doctor on an emergency mission, and once a month I had to take a whiskey run. Down in Mobile, they apparently could buy lots of cheap booze, I don't know.

01:02:17.720 - 01:02:39.500

But I know that once a month I was sent down to Mobile to bring cases and cases of booze back and I landed the plane very smoothly. I also did, well later we did some, well now wait a minute, let's get back over to the B-24s.

01:02:40.220 - 01:03:01.920

They checked us out as co-pilots. I don't know who checked us out, but Huffy and I got checked out as co-pilots on the B-24 after flying with some officer for three or four hours. And then, because Major Thomas was proud of us and wanted us to have it, he said, "Okay,

01:03:02.060 - 01:03:20.240

now I want you girls to get a first pilot rating. So you all, you two, are going to take the B-24 and you're going to fly it for about an hour. I want you both to fly first pilot, log it that way, and then land it."

01:03:20.240 - 01:03:50.220

did. So we were qualified first pilot on four-engine bombers, but they were much too heavy for us. It was all of I could, all the strength that I had to be able to land that plane and where we were, oh it's Major Beveridge, I remember now who checked me out, because he cut a, he cut an engine and on the right side and, and

01:03:50.220 - 01:04:12.880

trimmed up. It just went flop. And then I got it trimmed up and I was safe. And he said, "Okay, I'm going to cut another one." And I said, "You better make it on the other side." Because I could not possibly have held that thing if both engines on one side went out. I don't know whether a man could or not, but that was irrelevant. So he didn't. He cut

01:04:12.900 - 01:04:25.760

another one on the left side, but that's okay. I could handle that. And it was high enough so that he could take over if necessary. But Huffy and I flew the B-24. We flew a B-17.

01:04:26.560 - 01:04:48.200

We flew a C-45, and we had another twin engine, a Cessna. I forgot the numbers on it that we had a lot of. And then we had the AT-6, the BT. And any plane that came in, Major Thomas would say, "Could my girls check out in that plane?"

01:04:48.200 - 01:05:00.520

And pilots always said yes. Now Huffy flew, she was a daredevil. I was not. Her background is very interesting.

01:05:01.320 - 01:05:25.580

There is, her father had eight or nine kids, and they lived in Richardson, Texas. And she had many, over a hundred hours when she came in. And the rumor was that he bought stuff out of Mexico and used all of his kids to fly

01:05:25.700 - 01:05:38.240

airplanes to bring the stuff in. I don't know that that's true, but Huffy was pretty nearly illiterate. And every time we had to fill out the form, she had to sign all these brothers and sisters and stuff.

01:05:39.280 - 01:06:01.340

And it took her forever to do it. And she was a—I absolutely adored her, but we were certainly different types of people. When a pilot came in on a plane and you couldn't get any duel on it, she didn't hesitate. "Can I check out in it?

01:06:01.420 - 01:06:12.920

Can I check out in it?" Sure. So she took anything that came in, she took it up and wrung it out and brought it back. She was a much better pilot than I.

01:06:13.640 - 01:06:27.580

How many other WASPs were stationed? Well actually, we were the only two. The last month we were there, they brought another girl in, Ruth Groves, I think that's her name, who came in at the last.

01:06:29.000 - 01:06:51.360

But the three of us were assigned two operations. There were two other WASPs who were assigned to Maxwell Field headquarters, and they were the executives in the WASP hierarchy. So they were not on duty as pilots as we were, but they could commandeer a plane for their

01:06:51.440 - 01:07:14.300

own use to go to inspections they had to go to. They were Clara Jo Marsh, who started the Order of Fief and Ella, and Kit McKeithen, who was an earlier class than ours too. And they were the ones who helped run the WASP organization pretty far down in the chain

01:07:14.340 - 01:07:42.640

of command from Cochran, but they did follow her directions and do what she had to. Kay Dusak was another one in that chain of command, and one time when she came to see Kitty, Kit and Clara, she left us and on the next leg of her flight Christen died. But she was a level above them, so she was inspecting for them.

01:07:47.480 - 01:08:14.500

One other, well there were two other, two interesting events in that. First of all, I'll tell you, B-24s, the demolition depot, was in Ogden, Utah. When you were taking a bunch of B-24s up for scrap, then one B-24 flew you all back when you had something like that.

01:08:16.120 - 01:08:29.860

We would fly the B-24s up there. The problem is that Ogden was at the foot of a steep bunch of mountains, and then you had to take off into the wind right into that mountain. Well, we never had to take off.

01:08:33.060 - 01:08:51.840

So we took several of them up as co-pilots to the demolition depot up there. Then the other thing we did on the B-24s was when they came back from combat, they had to be—new engines put on them, and they had to be reconditioned all over, and so we You had to take them up and put slow time on them, which you just took off and you flew

01:08:52.060 - 01:09:11.640

and you flew and you flew in a circle all over the country, and then came back and landed six or eight hours later at the same place you left, having put slow time on the engine. The problem being that the relief tombs on the B-24s were built for male anatomy, not female anatomy.

01:09:13.580 - 01:09:26.540

So we didn't drink coffee when we knew we were going to work in the B-24s. We did not drink anything. I wonder what the bomber pilots do now, but I'm sure that they've made a better accommodation than we had.

01:09:29.040 - 01:09:48.260

We had really good-looking, snazzy uniforms by then. Jacqueline Cochran had used her pizzazz and influence. And was it Schiaparelli? I forgot who designed them, but somebody great designed them, and they were called Santiago

01:09:48.520 - 01:10:01.340

Blue. And we had a battle jacket and slacks and a light blue shirt and a black tie, and we had our wings. And then we had a skirt.

01:10:02.260 - 01:10:24.840

We had a black over-the-shoulder, and we could wear a bag, purse, and then black pumps. And fortunately, Huffy and I wore what we wanted to. You were supposed to wear the battle jacket with slacks and the dress blouse with the skirt.

01:10:28.020 - 01:10:41.680

But we wore, if we were going to go looking somewhere elegant, we wanted to wear the dress blouse with our slacks, because we wanted to fly in the slacks and we wanted to look good in the others. So we just wore what we wanted to.

01:10:42.240 - 01:10:55.440

And as far as this black tie, that was not our cup of tea at all. We had all these pretty decorations up here. So we wore the open-collared blue shirt with all of our decorations and the blouse, and and she wore boots.

01:10:58.200 - 01:11:14.780

And nobody ever reprimanded us. I guess Clara and Kit could have, but they didn't. They were always beautifully, immaculately dressed in high heels and skirts and blouses, but they were sitting over there with the brass, and we didn't have to do that.

01:11:17.700 - 01:11:40.000

On one—okay. Most of them were sort of mundane flights. Took somebody somewhere and picked him up and brought him back. But on one occasion, they called over from Gunter Field, which was also at Montgomery,

01:11:41.400 - 01:11:58.280

and was a cadet. They taught French cadets over there. That they had a French cadet who wanted to go to New Orleans, and they suspected that he was a spy, and they wanted him to be able to get a ride down to New Orleans so they

01:11:58.360 - 01:12:13.960

could find out who he was contacting down there. And they wanted somebody to set up a flight to go down there. Well, the OD that day wasn't Major Thomas. And Huffy had already taken a flight up to Washington, so I was the only WASP available.

01:12:14.580 - 01:12:27.840

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. The O.D. said, "Mildred, we've got a request here, and I'm going to leave it up to you whether or not you want to do it. We've got a French cadet who may or may not be a spy.

01:12:27.940 - 01:12:40.720

They don't know, but he wants a ride to New Orleans." Every time we went anywhere, if there was extra room in the plane, we always went into the ready room and saying, "I'm going to Baton Rouge. I'm going wherever I'm going.

01:12:41.000 - 01:12:52.620

You want a ride?" And they'd say, "If anybody wanted to go there, stand up." And we always took as many as we could. So he told me what it was and that he wanted to go to New Orleans, and I said, "Okay.

01:12:54.140 - 01:13:13.740

I'd love it." So I went into the—well, first of all, they said he'd be over shortly, and he did come over so I went over and I filled out a sort of a clearance and looked at the weather and did all that kind of stuff and then looked at the time and decided, "Well, maybe I better

01:13:13.800 - 01:13:36.480

break my date for tonight." We had the best of all possible living situations over there. I would say there were about five women and maybe ten nurses at the most and several thousand men and dances every Saturday night and we could wear civilian clothes.

01:13:37.280 - 01:14:01.100

So we danced, we played tennis, and we swam at the officers club. And we had dates as often as we wanted them. So I broke my date and then went back to the nurses' quarters. We always learned not to go anywhere without the essentials that you had to have.

01:14:01.200 - 01:14:15.740

So I got my toothbrush and I changed the lingerie and stuff and went back to the ready room. By that time, the guy was there. So I went into the ready room and I said, "Is there anybody wanting to go to New Orleans? I've got a flight going down there."

01:14:16.180 - 01:14:31.880

This one fellow stood up, and he was tall and a little bit older than most cadets you think of. He had on a blue, different-looking uniform, and he said he would like to go. And I said, "Okay, come on, give me your name."

01:14:31.880 - 01:14:47.960

And I only remember the first, I think it was Etienne, because I think he told me that was Steve in French, but I don't remember his last name. So I had to put him in on my clearance and had to check a parachute out for him, and I had hoped somebody else would want to go, but they didn't.

01:14:49.140 - 01:15:03.560

And meanwhile, I had to ask what airplane was available, but all that was available was this Cessna, which I didn't like much, and it hadn't flown much. It was kind of a lightweight airplane, in my opinion, as opposed to the C-45, which I just loved.

01:15:04.260 - 01:15:21.600

But it was twin-engine. And so I could have taken two more people, but nobody else stood up. So we taxied out and took off. I started quizzing him because I was just dying to crack this case all by myself.

01:15:24.380 - 01:15:38.200

He told me he had joined the Free French, he had gotten out of through Spain and joined the Free French and then got sent over here to learn pilot training and that he'd be going back. He hadn't gotten very far, I think he was just about primary now.

01:15:39.300 - 01:15:55.420

So I let him fly a little bit and I asked him about his family. We chatted and chatted and I didn't learn anything. But as we got nearer to New Orleans, I got to thinking about, "You know, I think maybe I better check my landing lights because it's getting dark."

01:15:55.420 - 01:16:20.940

So I turned the lights on and they went on and then they went off. And then I thought, "Uh-oh, I've done something." So I looked, and sure enough, it says, "Don't lower these lights below 120 miles an hour." The C-45 I'd been flying had beams that went straight out from the wings, and apparently

01:16:21.040 - 01:16:45.320

these dropped down from the wings, and so I had blown the electrical system. And then I began to learn that everything in that plane was electrical. So as the radio faded out and various and sundry things started happening, I got this piff out, which I should have read in the first place, "Pilot's Information File."

01:16:45.320 - 01:17:08.080

And I started reading, and I found there was an auxiliary pump down here that you could pump, which would give you some electricity, I mean some power. So I told him, because the brakes and the flaps and the gear, the whole bit was electrical. So I told Ed Tin he better start pumping that pump as hard as he could, because I was also

01:17:08.160 - 01:17:23.700

a little bit worried about landing on a Navy field, because the Army made a rectangular pattern. You had a downwind, you had a base leg, and then you had an approach line. But the Navy just did kind of a tight little circle and landed in a hurry.

01:17:24.960 - 01:17:40.240

And I wasn't very comfortable about that thought either. So as we got nearer down there and I could see the lake and see the light for the field, I saw New Orleans, and then I knew the field was near the base, near the Gulf. As a matter of fact, it was right on the Gulf.

01:17:42.160 - 01:17:50.400

And I couldn't reach the tower. The radio was gone. I couldn't reach the tower, and as he was pumping, all the lights were going blickety, blickety, blickety.

01:17:51.540 - 01:18:07.020

So I circled the tower to be sure that they knew I had a bit of a problem. They didn't know how big a problem. Then I made an approach, and I figured, "I wonder which way the wind is blowing, but probably off of the Gulf, so I should be aiming at the Gulf."

01:18:07.020 - 01:18:22.300

So I let down as low as I could and as slow as I could and aimed at that runway, which aimed at the Gulf. I thought, "Oh, boy." I put the gear down, and one light showed down and the other didn't show anything.

01:18:23.200 - 01:18:39.000

The gas light was going like this. I hadn't even checked the gas before I left. I was so excited about this trip I was taking. So I landed as far down the runway as I possibly could and tried to put the flaps down, but

01:18:39.040 - 01:18:57.200

I could tell that there wasn't much slowing going on, and we were going pretty doggone fast as we went, "Whoosh," like that. And they had fire trucks and ambulances following right by us, and we went on down and down Passed the tower, kept going, kept going, kept going, and I figured, "Okay, we're either

01:18:57.260 - 01:19:14.600

going to have to swim or I've got to take off again in a hurry, and I think I'm not going to leave this ground." So I stayed on the ground, and we kept off the end of the runway and into some grassy land and kept going and kept going, and then all of a sudden there was a little dip in

01:19:14.640 - 01:19:23.980

there and we nosed over. I thought, "Okay." We lived over it anyway. I'd cut everything off there was to cut off.

01:19:24.800 - 01:19:43.100

So we crawled out, and the ambulances and the fire trucks were there, and there was a follow-me truck. So we followed the follow-me truck, a jeep, back to the operations. And I told them—oh, I looked at my plane, and I could tell I'd broken one prop.

01:19:43.820 - 01:19:50.320

There was one—it was kind of overlapped. So that one prop was broken. No other damage. So I told them that I'd broken a prop.

01:19:50.480 - 01:20:01.880

Could they fix it? And they said, "Not tonight." I said, "Ooh, okay. Do you have any quarters on the base for females?"

01:20:01.880 - 01:20:11.260

And they said, "No." I said, "Well, can you give me a driver and a car and let me take me in—somebody take me in to New Orleans?" And he said, "Yep."

01:20:11.260 - 01:20:32.960

So I said, "Well, would you send Maxwell and R.O. in for me and fix my plane in the morning and I'll go into New Orleans to spend the night?" And I'd forgotten all about this at the end business and the whole thing. And so I said, "Okay, I'll," and he came up and he said, "Could I ride into town with

01:20:32.980 - 01:20:41.240

you?" And I thought, "Whoops. I mean, what else can I say? Sure."

01:20:41.240 - 01:20:49.500

stopped at all of the main hotels in New Orleans. And the driver went in and there was no room. I went in the first one. After that, the driver went in.

01:20:49.840 - 01:21:04.680

There was no room, no room, no room, no room. And then Etienne said, "Well, I have a room. It's in the French Quarter and they may have one for you." I thought, "Ooh, now what I do?"

01:21:04.680 - 01:21:15.920

So I said, "Okay." So we told the driver where we were going. And it was one of those little narrow, lots of iron grill work on the front and all that stuff.

01:21:16.020 - 01:21:24.100

And it was narrow, and it was two or three stories high. I don't remember for sure. And he went in, and he said, "Yeah, they've got a room for you." Okay.

01:21:25.140 - 01:21:38.520

So I told the driver, "Be back at eight o'clock in the morning to pick me up, and I'll be ready." So we went in, and my room was upstairs. And there was no elevator.

01:21:38.720 - 01:21:56.800

We walked upstairs, and I have no idea how much it cost, not much. As we were going up, a ten says, "Well, we have to get something to eat, and I'd like to take you out to dinner." I said, "Okay."

01:21:56.800 - 01:22:11.680

So I said, "Make it about twenty minutes, and I'll join you in the lobby." Well I went in and looked to see if there was a telephone in the room, and there was no telephone in the room. So I did whatever I had to do and came back down and met him in the lobby, and we went

01:22:12.080 - 01:22:25.520

out to eat. I think it was a quarter to two sisters, I'm not real sure. We had a nice meal, and I insisted on going Dutch. We danced, and then we walked back to our hotel.

01:22:26.040 - 01:22:39.480

He went to his room, and I went to my room. I have no idea whether he was a spy or not. I never saw him again at all. The driver picked me up the next morning, and I went back, and they fixed the airplane.

01:22:39.600 - 01:23:04.020

I didn't get reprimanded or anything, and I didn't exactly tell them all the stuff that I had done wrong either. So that was my most exciting experience, and there was one other. But it's always pilot error and that's what I hate to tell people about when they ask

01:23:04.020 - 01:23:26.280

they really want to know what was different, what was exciting. Well the only thing as long as you're doing your job right there's nothing exciting. You're a pilot and you're doing what a pilot should do. It's when you become young and youthful and stupid that you do strange crazy things like

01:23:26.280 - 01:23:41.180

this particular case, I was excited about taking a spy somewhere. I thought that was wonderful, you know, really exciting. And so I did not read the PIF. I did not do any of the stuff that I should have done, and I got in trouble.

01:23:43.080 - 01:24:07.100

Well, the same thing happened to my next experience. We had three PT-19s that were supposed to go to Demolition Depot up at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, which was on the Mississippi. They had been stripped down until there was absolutely nothing in there that was of any

01:24:07.200 - 01:24:23.020

value at all, including a compass, including an airspeed indicator, including an anything. No radio, of course. So we couldn't go unless it was contact. Well, this was December and it was almost the end of the program and it was breaking

01:24:23.100 - 01:24:37.800

our hearts that it was going to be over. And it was also breaking our hearts that we were not getting to fly because we had to wait on the weather to clear between Montgomery, Alabama and Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Both ends had to be contact and all the way up.

01:24:38.860 - 01:25:01.760

So we had wasted two or three days sitting out there either in the operations. One time we got out as far as the plain, filled out our clearances and everything, and then got a red light we couldn't take off because the weather had closed in at Cape Girardeau. So we sat and we sat and we sat, and then finally it looked like the weather was borderline

01:25:02.380 - 01:25:21.120

at Cape Girardeau. It was pretty good at Maxwell, and so they said we could go. So we filled out our clearances and took off, the three of us. And it was contact and we headed west until we hit the Mississippi.

01:25:21.300 - 01:25:35.820

And then all we had to do was follow the Mississippi all the way up to Cape Girardeau and it was on our west and it was a piece of cake. And there were some puffy little clouds up there, here, there, and yonder. And then they got a little thicker.

01:25:36.840 - 01:25:53.380

And so we flew through them, and we flew through some more, and then they got a little bit thicker and we kept flying through them. And then all of a sudden we didn't come out of them. We were close, but not too close.

01:25:54.600 - 01:26:11.200

And it kept getting thicker and thicker, and you know, we didn't know where the other planes were. We couldn't see the other planes at this point, could barely see the prop. So you go up and you hope that you're going to come out on top, which is what I did.

01:26:12.800 - 01:26:29.380

And it was right far up there, but I did come out on top. And then I started looking around for Huffy and Ruth, and sure enough, one by one, they popped up too. There we were, all three of us up there with no communication with each other.

01:26:31.200 - 01:26:49.920

we had probably at about the point of no return. Our gas, they sent, these planes that were going to be demolished, they didn't want excess gas in them either. So at that point, Good Sense should have made us turn around and go back to Maxwell Field.

01:26:51.820 - 01:27:08.080

But having sat on that flat line for three days waiting and not getting any flying time and made our good sense go flying. So we communicated this by... that way, or, "Mmmmm..."

01:27:09.080 - 01:27:23.740

So we looked at our watch to see what the time was and we were kind of figuring our time in the air and figuring, OK, it was clear at Cape Girardeau when we left, so it must be clear there now.

01:27:25.080 - 01:27:35.200

And we will fly over and we'll keep on the same path make it. So we flew and flew until the time was right we should be there. It was solid.

01:27:36.400 - 01:27:50.580

We didn't know what the wind was up here, whether we were going this way or this way, or whether we were headwind or tailwind or what. So we kind of circled and thought about it and circled and tried not to lose our sense of direction.

01:27:52.900 - 01:28:12.760

And one of us would stay in and the other two would kind of branch out and look for a cloud. But we also indicated that, "Okay, as a last resort, these planes are stuff anyway, or scrap anyway, so we'll aim it where there's no towns and we'll jump."

01:28:12.880 - 01:28:35.140

This all went by hands. So we decided we'd wait five more minutes, and if we hadn't found a hole in the clouds then we were going to aim it that way and climb up and go bailing out. Well I do not know who saw it first, but there was a little tiny about the size of a teacup.

01:28:35.360 - 01:28:52.980

I could almost see the ground. So I went in it and they went in it, that little bitty hole, and came out just on top of the river. And then we didn't know whether we'd go north or south, whether we were overshining

01:28:53.060 - 01:29:09.080

that, but we headed north. If there'd been a bridge, we'd have been in trouble. There wasn't any bridge. So we got all the way there and found the field and landed safely and swore we would

01:29:09.180 - 01:29:30.020

not tell a soul about it. Taxied over to where they were going to crush the planes right quick and did the little People followed me back and got back there and found that a Maxwell Field pilot in a B-24 had come to pick us up on instruments almost as soon as we had left, because they

01:29:30.060 - 01:29:49.640

had closed in the field up there and they heard about it. So he had tried to find us en route and didn't, and had landed quite a while before and was glad to see us. And of course, yackety, yackety, yackety, told everybody what stupid, lucky girls we

01:29:49.740 - 01:30:06.620

were. And we did get reprimanded, severely reprimanded. But we told them, "We could have crashed those planes and jumped out." Did I talk thirty minutes on that tape?

01:30:08.080 - 01:30:24.360

Oopsie-doo. I thought you'd like that. Sometime while we were at Maxwell, Huffy and I got orders to go to OCS, Officer, OTS, Officer Training School in Orlando, Florida.

01:30:25.280 - 01:30:35.000

We didn't want to go. We didn't care whether we were officers or not. We liked what we were doing, the way we were doing it. We liked wearing formals on Saturday nights, but that's, we had to go.

01:30:35.820 - 01:30:46.260

So we waited until the last minute to pack. We didn't pack. We took our bureau drawers, Chester drawers, out and dumped them in the back of the car. We did not pack at all.

01:30:46.780 - 01:31:06.620

And we started late, about five o'clock, and we were going to drive all the way to Orlando and report for duty the next day. Well, as it turned out, somewhere down in the panhandle of Florida in the swamps and mesquite area, my car broke, quit.

01:31:07.840 - 01:31:24.420

So there we were, stranded on the highway with all of our clothes dumped in the back and the mosquitoes all around and it was hot, hot, hot. I think it was in July. And we couldn't decide whether to roll up the windows and suffocate or let the mosquitoes

01:31:24.460 - 01:31:33.060

in and die of itching. And I don't know which we decided to do, but a truck came along eventually. So we went out and hailed. It stood in the road.

01:31:33.100 - 01:31:47.500

He couldn't get by. And then we couldn't decide whether one or both of us should go to get, but we decided we better both call in that truck driver. So we went to the truck driver, and he looked at the car and he said, "Your fan belt's

01:31:48.160 - 01:32:00.340

broken." So he took us in, got us a new fan belt, brought us back, put the fan belt on for us, and then we went on to Orlando. In Orlando, I was there only three or four days.

01:32:00.980 - 01:32:08.500

It rained every day at noon. I remember that. You go to class in the morning, you took a raincoat because you knew it was going to be raining when you went home for lunch.

01:32:10.040 - 01:32:34.060

And at the end of the third day, I got a telegram from my mother saying my brother, my only brother was missing in action, and please come home. So I told them that I needed to go back to Austin and gave Huffy my car keys and packed my suitcase and went to their ready room and got a ride to Austin.

01:32:35.240 - 01:32:52.040

I'm not sure whether they set it up and I think maybe they did. And I got home and I stayed with Mother for the rest of that three or four or five days till we sort of got under control because I needed to get back. Maybe I stayed longer than that, I don't remember.

01:32:52.760 - 01:33:16.220

But I did not go back to Orlando. I went on back to- I went home to be with my mother and I stayed three, four, five, six days, about a week I think, and helped her get herself together.

01:33:16.650 - 01:33:35.480

She was not a very strong person, and then she went back to Llano to stay with her family up there. And I got another flight back to Montgomery, and then flew there until Huffy got back. And I did not go back to Orlando.

01:33:36.760 - 01:33:48.020

I was glad I didn't have to go back to Orlando. Did you go back to fly? I flew in Montgomery, yeah. So I got quite a few hours, because there was no Huffy there to do it.

01:33:48.140 - 01:34:08.260

She had to go through OTS. When did you find out about deactivation, and how did that affect you? I don't remember. I guess we heard it in late November, and we knew December 20th was the cutoff day.

01:34:08.940 - 01:34:29.520

And that's when we really started trying to build up hours, because we had been very, very fortunate. Many of the, particularly the ferry command people, they had to take commercial liners to the factories where they picked up their planes, flew their planes to the place that

01:34:29.600 - 01:34:46.960

they were to be used, the field that they were to be used. And then they had to take commercial liners back. So they had three legs, but only one of them was log and time. Whereas those of us at Maxwell Field, we logged an awful lot of time when the plane was on

01:34:47.160 - 01:35:07.120

autopilot. So we were getting hours. We got many, many more hours than most of the people who were late in our class. I had over 900 hours, and I think that that's about twice as many as I deserve.

01:35:09.480 - 01:35:21.720

What happened when the WASPs were deactivated? Well, they made a big deal of it. They sent the photographers out and they took pictures of us on the B-29. The B-29 was there at that time.

01:35:22.120 - 01:35:38.820

We were peeking out of the cockpit and they took our picture there and we sat on the wing of the—I think that that was a B-17. I'm not sure what we were sitting on the wing of. And then it was a B-24 we were sitting on the wing of, and they took a lot of pictures

01:35:38.820 - 01:35:55.560

us and they said they were going to miss us. And Major Thomas really was disturbed that we were going to not be there, because the war was not over and he did need pilots still. But that was the end of it.

01:35:56.920 - 01:36:25.320

I drove home, Huffy and I drove home together, and I went to work in an advertising agency. And a friend from home came through to--he had been in combat, and then he came back to tell me what happened to Bill. And he was from Llano, and then he went to South America, and then when he came back

01:36:25.340 - 01:36:40.120

again I married him. And we had been good friends all of our lives. He had been a classmate of Bill Davidson's, and Davidson and Dalrymple were even suite mates, bay mates.

01:36:41.660 - 01:36:52.720

He was in England. He was a fighter pilot. He flew Spitfires in England. Then, when he went to South America, he was with Liaison.

01:36:59.860 - 01:37:18.500

I'd like to hear a little more about this Edwin now, I mean about the relationship, how that all happened. Well, Edwin and I grew up together in Atlanta, Texas, and he was four years older than I was, so that's practically a different generation in a small town.

01:37:19.520 - 01:37:34.080

But we had been friends at the university and I had known him always. When I was in San Antonio, before I moved over there, I always stayed with his mother. She had moved to San Antonio and I always stayed with her when I was visiting Bill over there.

01:37:34.900 - 01:37:58.960

And then when he came to Austin to see his friends, he always stayed with us. So our families were friends and we were friends and I had sort of decided that I was never going to meet another bill, and that this was an awful good guy, and he probably didn't know it, but he would be very lucky if I decided to marry him.

01:38:00.200 - 01:38:11.080

As a matter of fact, I don't think he did know it. I think he was totally surprised when I said, "Where's your next assignment?" And he said, "I'm going to Charleston, South Carolina." This was after he had come back from South America.

01:38:11.800 - 01:38:20.900

And I said, "Do you want me to go with you?" And he said, "Huh?" I said, "Yeah, I'll go with you." He said, "You mean get married?"

01:38:20.900 - 01:38:34.520

I said, "Yeah, if you want to." So we got married and I went with him. And that was 54 years ago and we're still married. He came back.

01:38:35.320 - 01:38:57.460

He did not stay in the service. We went from South Carolina over to, he decided to get out, so we went over to San Diego, California and he got out of the service, came back and he had dropped out of law school and he went back to the university to get his degree.

01:38:57.590 - 01:39:27.920

He did not continue in law school because by this time he was married and had to support a family and on $90 a month it's kind of rough. So as soon as he graduated, he went into the FBI, and by this time we had one child. And we went to Newark, New Jersey, which was the end of the world as far as I was concerned.

01:39:28.080 - 01:39:56.440

It was a pretty drab place, and he worked seven days a week with the FBI, and I sat in the top of a, in the middle flat, which we had sublet with a little baby and no car. And I went to the downstairs lady and I said, "I'm Millie Dalrymple from Austin, Texas, and this is Dennis, and I'm awfully glad to know you, meet you."

01:39:56.440 - 01:40:12.020

And she said, "Oh." And that was the end of that conversation. So then I went up to the upstairs lady and I said, "I'm Millie Dalrymple from Austin, Texas, and this is Dennis, and we live in the middle apartment here."

01:40:12.020 - 01:40:24.220

And she said, "You do?" And that was the end of that conversation. And I ordered groceries, and when the grocery boy came I said, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

01:40:33.260 - 01:40:39.520

But we survived Newark. And then we were— Did you play tennis during this time? No.

01:40:40.480 - 01:40:51.660

I couldn't play tennis. I didn't have an opportunity and had a baby. I didn't know where a tennis court was. Nothing.

01:40:52.020 - 01:41:12.720

I had played tennis when I was at Maxwell a lot. Then we were sent to Washington, D.C., and that was better. And he was in the headquarters, well, he was in the field office of Washington, D.C. And we lived first in the district, right close to the White House.

01:41:14.000 - 01:41:26.760

And I strolled around, and it was very pleasant. Then we moved to Springfield, Virginia. We bought a house. No, first we moved out to—they had housing for government employees, and they were pretty

01:41:26.860 - 01:41:49.800

nice accommodations. There were two bedrooms upstairs and this was at Fairlington. And then all the apartments were built around a big playground area for the kids. And so then all the apartments were connected underneath with a long area where you had

01:41:49.800 - 01:42:05.280

a basement and then you went into an open area and a hall. And then you go on further down, there was a washroom, and so that was the gathering place for the wives. All the FBI wives always lived close together because we didn't know when and if we were

01:42:05.340 - 01:42:19.540

going to have husbands at any time ever. So we sort of grouped, ran as a group. We had bridge parties, and I enjoyed the bridge. Can you volunteer?

01:42:20.380 - 01:42:29.220

No, I didn't volunteer. I didn't do anything. Any other organizations? Well, no, there was an FBI Wives group, which I was a member of, but as far as that was

01:42:29.420 - 01:42:39.920

concerned, no, I did not. I had my hands full. We had another child. The first one was Dennis, and then there was Gail, and then there was Tommy.

01:42:41.160 - 01:43:00.520

And then we bought a house in Springfield, which was a community that grew up spontaneously when the integration came in in the district. who could move out did move out. We didn't have any children in school and that was not the reason that we moved out.

01:43:01.240 - 01:43:15.100

But it was an opportunity to get into a house and we were sort of out growing our little two bedroom apartment. So we bought a house in Springfield and it was a nice house and we enjoyed it and the kids went to school there.

01:43:16.180 - 01:43:33.000

But I joined a group called Save Our Schools because they were talking about integration in Virginia and they were talking about making the schools private and paying the teachers out of the funds. It was ridiculous.

01:43:33.600 - 01:43:52.240

The teachers wouldn't have any security or anything. So I joined this group and then Edwin told me that I could not join that group because it was his job to enforce the law. if integration was the law, his feelings should not be known.

01:43:54.120 - 01:44:07.440

Well then my mother got real sick and she came up, I had to go to Texas and take care of her. She got emphysema and then brought her back up there to live with us and it was sort of a crowded, busy time.

01:44:08.580 - 01:44:31.540

So there came a time when Edwin could either continue his rise in the Bureau or go to his office of preference, which would have been Austin, but Austin was the office of preference of too many agents. So we could go to Houston where his mother had lived, then move to with his sister.

01:44:31.720 - 01:44:49.260

So his mother at this point was like eighty years old, and so we thought we better go My mother was not well, his mother was not well, so we moved to Houston, Texas with our three kids. One of them was in third grade, one of them was in first grade, and the other was still

01:44:49.900 - 01:45:09.860

just very, very young. I was carrying Tommy around in my arms still. We lived there for the next ten years, I guess, and our kids grew up there. We lived in Bel Air, which was a small town within the city of Houston, and it was a nice

01:45:10.100 - 01:45:27.920

place for kids to grow up. We had a wonderful, wonderful neighborhood, and all of them are still our friends that we grew up with. But everybody came home one day and he said, "I just found out I can retire."

01:45:27.920 - 01:45:46.700

So I retired. We had one in college and one ready to go to college, and Tommy's still going into junior high school. I thought, "Oh my goodness, what are we going to live on?"

01:45:46.700 - 01:46:01.340

We had always lived from one paycheck to the next. And retired, maybe we could sell our house for enough to live on for a month or two, but that's about it. he wanted to get out of the Bureau.

01:46:01.480 - 01:46:20.620

And he said, "I got a job." So we went to Austin and looked and looked and couldn't find a job that he wanted. He had had many offers for jobs before, but he knew what he wanted. So I said, "Okay, we better move to Austin and see if I can find it."

01:46:20.640 - 01:46:34.560

I had taught school some while we were in Bel Air when my mother was not too bad off. I had substituted and then I taught for a couple of years. What did you teach? Sixth grade.

01:46:35.780 - 01:46:43.760

Loved it. Loved it. Did they know you were a WASP? Practically nobody knew I was a WASP.

01:46:43.800 - 01:46:58.380

That was such a minor part of life and it was such a, you know, it just didn't come up. After we moved to Austin, I got a job. I fell into a job.

01:46:58.700 - 01:47:20.660

Having worked in the legislature, I had many, many friends. And one friend told me about a job over in the, for an insurance company. Now, I had never worked in an office in my life. I could type, and I had a degree in English and journalism, but that's about all the qualifications

01:47:20.660 - 01:47:44.280

I had teaching school. But it turns out I knew somebody who knew the president, and so I went over and did an interview, and he put me in charge of twenty young girls in a communication center that had some fancy new—they were called MTSDs, magnetic tape, electric typewriters, which

01:47:44.320 - 01:48:02.980

I also couldn't work, in which they could. And it was a miracle. They sent me to school, an IBM school, and I learned to work the machines. I could supervise the girls because I let them supervise themselves.

01:48:04.220 - 01:48:19.020

I knew they could do what I couldn't, so I had to be friends with them rather than the dictator type. I stayed there for ten years until I vested. Edwin went to work as an investigator for the State Board of Engineers.

01:48:19.480 - 01:48:55.180

We had finally got the kids all through college and settled into old age, middle age. As the kids got married, one daughter is a lawyer. The other one is my son went to Vietnam, and he had been working for DuPont, but he decided because I had inherited—my mother died—I had inherited with my brother her part of

01:48:55.220 - 01:49:18.060

my grandfather's ranch. And that is something that keeps a family in location. So he decided, working for DuPont, every time that he got rows in rank, he got nearer to Delaware and he didn't want to do that, so he came back to Vietnam and then got a master's

01:49:18.260 - 01:49:29.920

degree and went to work for Ferris and Sons. So he's a chemical engineer. He now works in Austin. He's got two kids, and they've graduated from college, and we are all real close.

01:49:30.060 - 01:49:53.360

daughter lives in San Antonio, she's got two kids, and the other son lives here and he works for IBM and he has two kids and so all six kids and all the grandkids and the parents, we're all right here together and we have fun, we like each other. And all the grandkids are now, I have, first of all I forgot to tell you, I played tennis,

01:49:53.540 - 01:50:07.500

I started playing tennis again. They came home from college one day, and they had taken tennis at school or something or other. I had not played since I got out of the WASP, since I had not played for thirty-something

01:50:07.620 - 01:50:13.560

years, and they needed a fourth. And they said, "Well, come on." I said, "Well, let me do it." They said, "Okay."

01:50:13.560 - 01:50:30.760

So I went out with them with my antique racket, and I beat the pants off of them with my tennis shoes and long blue jeans. And I was hooked. Oh, I wanted to get back to playing tennis, and for the first time we could afford it.

01:50:31.800 - 01:50:52.480

So I went out and joined a club, and then started working my way up the ladder, because I still was not the tennis-looking person that you expect. But I have been there now for 20 years at that club, and I have a tournament named for me at that club.

01:50:53.020 - 01:51:10.320

On my birthday, on the 14th of February, they have the Millie Dalrymple Mixed Doubles Valentine Tournament. And it's a two-day affair, and it's fun. And I usually get to play with one of my grandchildren, because I've gotten all of them to play tennis,

01:51:10.560 - 01:51:18.320

too. I had to pay for their lessons and pay for their lessons until they got good. But now they all play.

01:51:18.840 - 01:51:29.040

One of them played for Georgetown, and he's already gone, finished A&M, and he's gone. And now the one's playing for Westwood High School out here. And they still like to play with me,

01:51:29.040 - 01:51:36.020

and I just think that's wonderful. And now they cover both alleys and the backcourt, too, if I tell them to. So we have fun together.

01:51:36.720 - 01:51:46.100

And the granddaughter's playing, too. Do any of them fly? Both of the boys have flown. Tommy, the youngest one, is a daredevil.

01:51:46.900 - 01:52:04.960

I don't know where he got that from. He maintains six race cars for rich customers, in addition to his full-time job with IBM. But he also has built two airplanes,

01:52:06.290 - 01:52:23.940

these little bitty ones that-- RD somethings I think they're called. And he soups them up so that they are more powerful than they should be. And I went out with him and you put one leg in and if there's room, if you get in it just

01:52:24.040 - 01:52:34.480

right you can get both legs and sit down. It's a front two seat like this, but it's a real little airplane and it goes right straight up. And it's fun.

01:52:36.840 - 01:52:46.580

He does all the things that he can do. Then I said, "Well, let's do a loop." He said, "Mother, I haven't had loops yet." It was fun flying with him.

01:52:47.340 - 01:53:00.260

We flew up to the ranch several times, and he took my brother up. It's nice to be able to enjoy what they enjoy, too. But he sold the airplane, made a big profit. Then he built another one and made a big profit on it.

01:53:00.520 - 01:53:16.840

Now he's just into racing. You mentioned your brother. Your brother was missing. My brother came back. He was with the Mihaljevic. He bailed out into Yugoslavia and he was with

01:53:16.940 - 01:53:34.320

Mihaljevic who was with the Chetniks who were opposed to the partisans and it was a real civil war so that they couldn't get out even though Mihaljevic was for the U.S. He could not release his prisoners. They weren't prisoners.

01:53:35.360 - 01:53:52.220

They walked all over the Swiss Alps. My brother has written a book about it. It was an interesting and very scary experience, but he survived. And when Roosevelt died, he wrote the sympathy note to Mrs. Roosevelt at Mihaljevic.

01:53:52.780 - 01:54:05.800

And I said, "Why didn't you say, 'I'm alive'?" And he said, "I would like to have." So he didn't get back until after the war was over, but he did get back. When did you find out he was alive?

01:54:10.580 - 01:54:31.340

I guess it was after the war was over. It was before Edmund and I got married because he came home. They sent him home right away as soon as he got back, but we didn't know that he was alive until he was safely in American hands and on his way home.

01:54:32.420 - 01:54:58.660

So it was, he was about a year and a half and unable to contact us. But he came back, he got married, he had two kids and didn't exactly live happily ever after his divorce, but that's all right. Let me ask you about the militarization, the veteran status of the WASP. Did you have anything, did you help make that come about in any way?

01:55:00.060 - 01:55:13.080

Did you know about it when it was going on? We all knew about it and I guess the answer is no, I didn't do anything to help. If they asked me to write letters, I wrote letters to my congressman, that's what I did. But as far as any active part, I did not.

01:55:14.940 - 01:55:34.080

I did join the reserve in Washington and was in the reserve, but never did anything active in the reserve either. I only did that because I wanted to fly free and I wanted to fly with my brother, who at this time was stationed in Tennessee.

01:55:34.600 - 01:55:47.560

He said if I put on my uniform, I could fly with him. I got to fly with him a couple of times too, which was nice. How long were you in the Reserves? I don't know, two or three years.

01:55:48.060 - 01:56:01.220

I never attended a meeting. I never did a thing. I just guess eventually they figured I wasn't worth much, so they kicked me out. We're going to ask wrap-up questions.

01:56:01.620 - 01:56:14.260

Okay. Let me ask you about the WASP. What would you like to be your legacy? For the Ys?

01:56:14.540 - 01:56:28.720

No, just for you. My kids. My kids are great kids. And they were all successful. They're all good, upright, moral kids. And one of them, one grandkid, is handicapped.

01:56:29.560 - 01:56:53.200

And they have handled that very well. And that's my legacy. What would you like for the next generation to know about the WASP? I would like for them to know that we were a group of women who did not actually participate in the war,

01:56:53.320 - 01:57:28.500

but we helped with the war effort, and we did it by releasing the men to fly in combat. And I guess you can say we broke the ice, but I don't really think we did because it was too long later before they let them fly again. So the answer is I want everybody to know that the WASP did an awfully good job and they did some awfully difficult jobs. I think those tow target girls did more dangerous duty than anybody else in the WASP.

01:57:29.820 - 01:57:51.260

And they did it without—well, they did it gladly, I guess, but they were in danger the whole time. Who were your role models, just because I forgot to ask you this growing up? I don't think I had any role models.

01:57:52.440 - 01:58:10.840

If it would be, it would be Nijinsky, who's the dancer. I did acrobatic dancing then. I did it in college, and I toured some. Well anyway, I loved dancing.

01:58:11.060 - 01:58:32.920

I cut most of my classes in college to dance. I was only nineteen when I graduated, for heaven's sake, so I didn't have any sense. So the degree was something that just happened while I had fun. Do you think being a WASP, or how do you think being a WASP affected the rest of your life?

01:58:34.320 - 01:58:48.820

Oh I think it gave me a lot of maturity. Some of the tales I've told you, you may not believe that, but you should have known me before. It did.

01:58:49.080 - 01:59:02.520

It gave you more self-confidence and a sense of pride. I had done something that was pretty unique. I didn't know how unique until later. I thought everybody was doing whatever they could.

01:59:08.260 - 01:59:37.380

>> If you had any advice for your grandchildren, any advice at all, what would it be? >> Oh, I do this when I make the speeches. I was the absolute minimum of everything that you could be to get into the WASP. I thought I could and I applied myself and so I made it.

01:59:37.800 - 01:59:53.540

So I think anybody who really wants to do something very bad, if they work at it and they focus and they concentrate, they can do it. I'm almost 80 years old. I can still play good tennis.

01:59:54.800 - 02:00:16.740

I'm nationally ranked and these people now, they get lessons all the time. I played on those dirt courts in Llano, but I can sure place that ball and if I focus on it, I can beat a lot of kids that are a lot younger. I can beat some of my grandkids until they get to be about 15 and playing number one

02:00:16.800 - 02:00:21.740

on the team. So I think if you really want too bad enough, you can do it.