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- --across America. Today we're interviewing Lee Dorr. She was a WASC class 44-3. We are in the Courtyard Marriott in Chandler, Arizona.

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Today is the 13th of November, 2001. And Nancy Parrish is the videographer. OK, Lee, if you'll start off by giving us your full name and when and where you were born.

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Any question you don't want to answer, that's fine. - First name is Virginia. Second name is Lee, last name, married name is Dorr, maiden name was Warren. Kelly: When and where you were born?

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Bethe: Oh, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, on December 22, 1923. Kelly: Okay. Tell me about your mom and dad. Bethe: Well, my parents were older when I was born.

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They were of a very independent mind and expected me to grow up very quickly. What did your dad do? My dad owned three businesses, mainly in the jewelry and china area. He came from business in San Francisco to Winnipeg to buy a business there.

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That's how we happened to end up in Canada. My father was born in Ohio. My mother was born in Canada, but to American parents. So we have had one foot on either side of the border all my life, and most of theirs.

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Kelly: As a very young child, where did you live? Did you live in town or out of town? Rothenberg: We were urban people, yes, because of business, of course. and you had no siblings. Who were your playmates?

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School friends mainly. Went to community schools, in other words, schools that were within the community. Later in life, I went to a private Catholic school to begin with so I could take music.

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We were not Catholics, but it was convenient to do it that way. Do you recall your first day of school? No, but I was older and I should remember. One of the reasons I ended up in a Catholic school, private school, was because the area

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elementary school was a pretty tough group and my mother objected to this. But I don't really remember it. I did not go to school until I was almost seven. We traveled a good deal and so on.

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back to California frequently and so on. They really did not think it was too necessary that I start at six years old. Kelly: In those days, what would be considered rough? Lowdermilk Honstein: The same thing that you consider rough today.

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Really not much difference as far as I can remember. Because I was small and my mother would put big ribbons in my hair and patent leather shoes on me, I had a hard time. But it wasn't the drug scene?

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Oh no, nothing like that. Lee, tell me about your grandparents. I had, I think, rather interesting grandparents. On my mother's side, my grandfather was a sea captain and went down at sea.

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My paternal grandfather was in the Civil War twice, the first time at fourteen as a bugle boy and was injured and came back and joined again, was injured the second time and was discharged at sixteen. He had been through the Civil War twice at this point.

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He came from England at twelve years old. We have no knowledge of how he got there, no parents that came with him. Not even sure that he didn't come as a cabin boy or something, but he ended up in Ohio rather than on a coastal area, which has always surprised me.

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Where did they live when you were a young child? Well, of course, my grandfather was dead many years. My grandmother lived to ninety-seven and they lived in Cleveland. Were you able to visit them in the summertime?

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Yes. My father and I made frequent trips there. How did you get there? By car. Driving.

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Do you recall what kind of car you had? Yes, I can. Chryslers mainly. The first car was an Oldsmobile, but I did not drive that, but the Chrysler we did.

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Did your mom not go with you? Sometimes. She was not terribly well. She had a chronic bronchial condition that kept her at home a good deal.

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As a young child growing up in Canada, very cold, what did you learn to do as far as winter sports? When you were young? Well, we went skating.

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We did everything that everybody else does. We just bundled up a little more. It never occurred to me, you know, as a child, you don't think about things like that. You do what you want to do and try to cope with it.

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When you started school and you said you went to that school because of the music program, Where do you think got your love of music? Was it from that uncle that blew that bugle? No, it was sort of to make up for being alone, I think.

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I do not have musical talent. But in what direction did you go? Just piano. Just piano.

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Sang in the choir. Do you recall any of your teachers, were they all nuns? Yes, in those days there were no lay teachers at all. They were all nuns.

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Kelly: Do you recall any teachers in elementary that might have influenced you? Rothenberg: Oh, yes, definitely. I had one English teacher who was a nun, who befriended me in lots of ways and was a wonderful influence on me.

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Kelly: Was that school close enough to walk? Rothenberg: Except in the very, very cold weather, but you stayed there for lunch, so you went in the morning and you came home after school. Kelly: And did you take your lunch?

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Rothenberg: No, it was provided there, a regular dining room. Kelly: When you finished, how many years did you go to that particular school? Rothenberg: Until high school. I went to a public high school after that.

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Kelly: All through junior high? Rothenberg: All through, except for the first two years of schooling, way up to high school. Kelly: And what was your main interest? What subject did you like best?

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I think probably English, but that would be because of interest. I liked languages. I was not a bad student at math. I did not like science.

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Kelly: Lee, tell me, what was Christmas like in your home when you were growing up? In a retail business, Christmas was something that you celebrated either late Christmas Eve or had exhausted parents on Christmas Day. (Laughter)

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Kelly: Would your grandparents ever come to Christmas? Rothenberg: No, they were long gone by that time. It was not possible. Kelly: Did you have other relatives that lived near you?

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Rothenberg: No. So, in a Christmas dinner, what would that be like? Oh, usually turkey with friends. I mean, mother would try and have a few friends in, but it was never any big thing at all.

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It's not like it is in a lot of families. In those early years, did you have outside activities at school other than academics, for example, Girl Scouts? Yes, I was a girl guide briefly, not really too much, but I did a lot of singing in the

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choir, weddings and funerals. I had a very broad religious background. I went to Catholic school during the day and Fridays usually sang in the choir on some occasion that was going on.

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My father was in partnership with a Jewish man and we were in the synagogue on Saturday. We went to our own church on Sunday, so fairly broad, fairly broad. >> And what was your church?

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>> Well, my church when I was growing up was United, but I became an Anglican after that. >> And in the choir, what did you sing? What part did you sing?

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>> What? >> Were you a soprano? >> Yes. >> Okay. Do you recall any Christmas programs

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that you had at your church? >> Not particularly, no. >> Okay. How did they celebrate Christmas? >> Well, it was always a very religious affair,

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and because I was not of that religion, why, of course, you know, it didn't really involve me at all. Other things that we sang at, but I was not involved in Christmas or Easter or those particularly strong religious times I was not involved.

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>> Okay. In school, did they have a glee club or anything in school? >> Not really, no. They had small groups, interest groups really, those that were interested in languages would have a little French club and that kind of thing,

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but nothing organized at all. Our classes were very small. I think the biggest class that I was ever in was 20 and probably a lot less than that most of the time.

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In elementary school, what kind of student were you? Not terribly interested. I did not have any trouble at school, let's put it that way, but I really had no desire to be an A student. My parents did not encourage it at all. They high priority in their lives.

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And in the summertime for vacations when you and your dad would go see your grandparents, did they live on a farm? No, no. Or did they live in town?

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They lived in the city. Did you ever have occasion to visit people on a farm? Yes, yes, several times. I actually went out one summer and pitched hay in a small community near us.

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We had a neighbor who moved into the city so that their children could go to school, but they still maintained a farm, so I spent a couple of summers out there. Afterwards while I was a WASP stationed in Greenville, Mississippi, we became friends with people who owned a plantation, so I saw a lot of cotton being picked.

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Kelly: Okay. As a young child, were you especially fond of pets or things on the farm? Reese: No. No.

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When you finished elementary school and started to high school, how far then was high school from home and how did you get to school? I went to a public high school and it was actually closer, but it was a very small high school.

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The whole high school only had about 600 students, so it was not big. Consequently I could be in anything I wanted to and do a lot of that. What adjustments did you have to make going from a Catholic school to a high school? Kelly: The biggest adjustment was going from an all-girls school to where there were boys.

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Kelly: Oh, tell me about that. It was very enjoyable. Tell me what you think the difference is as far as your education. Was there a difference between being in a parochial school and a public school?

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Were they more strict in the parochial? No, I would not say so. I do not think that there was that much difference except for the social life, which is not really academic at all.

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I had no problem going from parochial school to public high school. There were none of the problems of today. There is something that you have to realize. Canada went to war in 1939.

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I was not even sixteen yet. My first year of high school, I was dating a couple of young men who were getting ready to graduate, and they were dead in a year. I grew up pretty quickly with realities like that.

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Did Canada have a draft? They said no, but in essence yes. And of course the enthusiasm to do something like this was tremendous. It was Britain that was at war and of course they are still very British.

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How did that affect your family? Not really at all. We had a lot of Australian and New Zealand young men who were training in Canada and And that gave us a very broad viewpoint of other parts of the world.

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A lot of British pilots came over when the war got a little more advanced and training was almost impossible in England. Why they came to Canada to train, just as they came to Sweetwater. We met all kinds and did a lot of that kind of thing.

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I can't imagine that I ever knitted a scarf for anybody, but we did throw our home open to a lot of young men, Sunday dinners, that kind of thing. Kelly: As you were in high school, did you have some outside activities, aside from academics? For example, speech, drama, music?

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Rothenberg: All of it, including being a cheerleader, which back in those days was mainly male and not too many females. In fact, our high school, for the first year that I went there, decided to have cheerleaders. They had not even had any before.

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I got involved with a lot of sports that way, by being a "rah-rah-rah" girl, as I used to say. Did the school vote, or were you just selected by teachers? I do not know how I was, probably eagerness maybe.

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I am not quite sure. What was your little cheerleading costume like? Very demure. Not the skimpy bikini?

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No, nothing like that. When you would be going to a game, did you have games between the schools or competitions? Yes, we did. But our particular small high school, because we were not really much of a threat to anybody

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the city, used to go out into the farming and rural areas and we would all go by bus, lots of times having to stay overnight if it worked out that way, not too often but on occasion. But we would be taken by bus there, including us.

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The team and we would ride in the same vehicle. There was never any worry about supervision or anything. That was not anything that even teachers worried about at that point in time. And it was loads of fun.

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Kelly: Was your mom and dad involved in your school? Lowdermilk Honstein No, not at all. Kelly: Tell me about some of your social activities. How large was your town?

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Lowdermilk Honstein About 400,000. Kelly: So you had more than one theater. Do you recall some of the things that you enjoyed as a social outlet? Let me ask you, did you belong to organizations at the church, youth groups?

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McMillan: No. No. I have never in my life been a joiner, so that is something that just I did not do. I joined the Brownies first, actually, because I was young and that was very different, why

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I enjoyed it. But once I became a guide, I was no longer interested in it. Just different, that's all. Kelly: When you were a Brownie, did you go on little camping trips?

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McKenna: No, never. Kelly: Nor with your family? McKenna: No. Kelly: When did you stop music lessons?

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McKenna: When I left parochial school. We never had a piano, so I did all my practicing, I did everything there. I didn't have any talent, nor did I really have a sincere interest, so it was never a question about it.

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I went into a lot of dancing. I really did enjoy that and spent a lot of time on that. Did it in school as well as out of school. That's about the best musical talent that I had was the dancing.

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I continued that into the middle of high school, but stopped that after that. What particular kind of dancing did you enjoy? Everything, ballet, everything. And I asked you about drama and speech.

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Did that too. Do you recall any plays that you might have done? Mainly Shakespeare, and they did one a year. I always managed to either dance or do something in it.

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That is a Gilbert and Sullivan, that kind of thing. Recall for me your high school prom. Did you have a prom? It was held at the high school, which they do not do much of that anymore.

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There was just a very small buffet, because we were a small school. I think our whole graduating class was maybe forty, and that would be three different classes that had to make up that forty. you don't go to a big hotel.

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Things like that. As you were growing up, who were your role models? Now at what stage? What stage of my life?

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Very young or in the middle or later? Just give me all of them. As a very young child, we'll start there. Probably, I had two very much older cousins in Cleveland that I thought were pretty nice

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people and I suppose if you want somebody that is close, why that would be the family portion of it. As life went on, why there would be others that I would respect and so on. I don't think I ever really tried to emulate anybody, but everybody has somebody that they

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think. I never put a picture up on a wall or did anything like that. And later, after I started flying, why, of course, anybody who flew became of special interest to me.

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When you were in high school, what were your dreams? Well, my first dream was to get the war over with, which I thought was only going to last for about a year. It was unbelievable to me that people that I knew were actually—nobody died at seventeen or eighteen years old, I thought.

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Kelly: When Canada entered the war, did that affect your dad's business? Not particularly, other than financially, but not really. He had always imported a lot of jewelry from Europe, so of course that became harder and harder to do, so he was affected that way, but not really.

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No, I cannot say that. What year did you graduate from high school? 1940, '39, '40, '41, and probably the spring of '42. Do you recall?

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I'm sorry, that would have to be '41. Do you recall where you were or how Pearl Harbor affected you and your family? Shock, because of course we were all mainly Americans. I grew up feeling American all my life.

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My family definitely were always American, even though they lived in Canada for over forty years, but they were still Americans. I'm sorry, I'm losing my voice. Kelly: Can we get you some water?

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We need you some water. That is his whole life, his computers. That is why he works at home for Pearl Harbor, in fact probably a lot more. But nevertheless, I felt less involved in it because I did not know anybody in it.

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So I was, I should not say less concerned, because I definitely was very concerned. But it seemed more remote. I think maybe that's the best way to put it. At fifteen I was more concerned, or sixteen, I was more concerned about the people that

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I knew who had already gone, some of them even been killed, and that seemed the closer to me at that point. Kelly: As far as life-changing things, what happened when Canada entered the war? Was there rationing?

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Or how did it— Steele: Not immediately. Not immediately. I cannot really remember when it came in, but I know that Mother had stamps while I

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was still living at home. It probably was, say, a year and a half to two years after the war started. But basically, it's an agricultural country, so other than gasoline and of course natural resources in Canada are abundant.

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So I don't think that they sacrificed anything or felt deprived in any way for the first couple of years. Certain things that perhaps were a little harder to come by, but even the rationing was more than generous.

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I can't ever remember my mother complaining about not being able to get anything. But then on the other hand, we were a small family too. Kelly: Tell me the first time or when you remember seeing an airplane and how that influenced you from the very beginning.

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Not really too much. We were in Florida and I think maybe I was getting ready to go up and the wind came up and we didn't ever take it, but I was about ten or eleven at the time. And of course I was very impressed because it was pretty unusual to be at an airfield.

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Of course we saw loads and loads of planes flying overhead, but as far as actually being close to one. What were you doing in Florida? We had relatives there.

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My father's, some of my father's family lived in Florida. So that was a summer vacation? No, no, that was wintertime. They thought nothing of taking me out of school for a couple of months, any year that they

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wanted to go. And did you drive? Oh yes, oh yes, yes. Do you recall where you stayed?

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Kelly: In Florida, you mean? Rothfeldt-Davis, Jr. As you drove to Florida, were there motels? What did they have?

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Kelly: Yes, although there were less in the way of motels than hotels. My father liked to stay in smaller communities rather than big cities because of the traffic of getting in and out, even in those days. There are very few small cities that do not have at least one hotel there, and that is

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usually, because there wasn't really much in motels. They were tourist courts kind of things, which my mother said, "No way." We made it kind of a fun trip whenever we went. The one exception to the big cities was to stay in Minneapolis, which of course is the

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first major city south of Winnipeg. And in later life, even after I was married, we went down twice a year and spent four or five days in the Minneapolis area with my mother and father. Kelly: After that initial thing of seeing an airplane, when was the first time that

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you became interested in flying? Rothenberg: Well, this is going to be just a little involved, but I'll try and make it as brief as possible. I went to university for one year because my mother thought I was a little too young

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to start flying at that point. My father wasn't so sure about that, but nevertheless, I went to university for a year, which was no more than just time-consuming. I wasn't interested in anything.

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I should go back just slightly on this. You may want to delete some of this, Nancy, but I had decided that I wanted to become a lawyer during school. Because we had friends who had graduated from Stanford and I was a foreign student, I was

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accepted at Stanford University. The war came along and that finished that because Canadians could take $25 a year out of Canada and I couldn't see how I could go to Stanford for $25 a year. Once I could no longer pursue becoming a lawyer, then I decided that I had to find something else.

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I could not go to law school in Manitoba. They would not accept women in law school. I think this is kind of interesting. That's the only reason that I mention it. At that At that point, the one year that I did go and put in time, a friend of mine was in the same school and her father owned a gold mine.

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The gold mine was not accessible by road. As the war continued, he was having more and more trouble getting aircraft, pilots, everything to fly personnel and equipment in. So he propositioned the two of us that if we got our licenses, why we in essence would

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become bush pilots. And if there were two of us, and it was probably an hour and a half to two hour flight at the most, so either in and out. And he would buy an aircraft and we would get what they called limited commercial licenses.

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Three days after we soloed, she was killed in an aircraft at the field by an Icelandic student who didn't see her, and they were both killed on the same day coming into land. She was not to blame in any way. It was one of those tragedies that happened.

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And then, of course, it took me a long time to finally decide what I wanted to do. My father was very encouraging, as he always was. He felt that if she had been killed in an automobile accident, would I never drive a car and if she was killed by a bus crossing the street, would I never get on a bus nor

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would I cross the street again. So he said, "That's no excuse. You may not want to go on, but that's up to you, but not for those reasons." So he made me go out and fly again, and I did.

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Of course, didn't look back after that. What was the first airplane you flew? A Taylorcraft. Do you recall your solo?

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Yes, quite well. I kept telling the instructor, "I'm not ready." Did you know any other girls who were flying? There was only one other woman who had ever flown in Winnipeg at the time that we started,

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and she was a physician. At that point, she was, I would think, well into her fifties. She had started probably in her late thirties, but she had given it up when the war came along.

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She had decided that it was a waste of gasoline for her to do this. She was not going to do anything with it at her age and with her profession. So I ended up being the only one at the field who was female, who was actually taking training there.

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But at the time, I was too young for Jacqueline Cochran, so she kept saying no. So I contacted the ATA in England, and they did not care how old I was, as long as I could get some higher horsepower time. So I went to, first of all, Minneapolis and stayed in a sorority house on the campus there

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and tried to find somebody with higher horsepower type aircraft that would give me some time, but that didn't work out. But I did find an instructor in Superior, Wisconsin, and went and lived with a family in Duluth and flew in Superior.

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He had a Piper Cub that he had souped up supposedly to 100 horsepower. I'm sure that he didn't tell the story right and I had a lot of fun avoiding him under most other contacts, but I did struggle. During that period of time, Jacqueline Cochran put through a waiver on age at that point,

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so I went in. Kelly: When you first started flying up in Canada, did you fly for your friend's father? Rothenberg: No, we never got that far. Never got that far.

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Kelly: Did anything unusual happen during any of that early flying? Probably all kinds of mischief. Buzzing farmer's fields and things like that, but no, it was very straightforward and costly. I got all the flying time I could that was going to do me any good.

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Then finally, there was nothing that they could really teach me beyond that, because I had nothing to graduate into. So that's when I took a certain amount of ground school at the same time while I was doing this.

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But I was working full-time for my father as well. And then we were both working on getting me into something. He was not terribly keen on my going to England, but as much as we wrote and phoned and did everything with the WASP organization, why I just couldn't break the rules there.

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Kelly: When you were flying in Milwaukee or Minneapolis? McMillan: Superior, Wisconsin. Kelly: Okay. Were you going to school there at the same time?

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McMillan: No. Kelly: Were they just being kind to let you stay in the sorority house? McMillan: Oh, yes, definitely. Was that a big adjustment to you to leave home?

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Lane: I don't really think so, no. I didn't feel that way about it. The only time I really missed home was when I was flying down to Dallas. When I was going to go in, it was the first time I had ever been on a commercial airline.

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I was airsick the whole way down and I thought, "I'm not sure this is something I should be doing." I want to back up just a minute and ask you, if on those trips to Florida, if anything unusual ever happened on those trips?

00:33:49.340 - 00:34:08.340

Kelly: Yeah, Huey Lawn was shot in Louisiana while we were there. That stood out in my mind. For the first time, we had a radio in the car and we listened to the Lindbergh trial, or actually the Hoffman trial, all the way down.

00:34:09.240 - 00:34:30.300

I can identify what year it was that way. Once you were notified that you had been accepted for training, then what did you do? Because I missed the previous class—I should have been 44W2—and I could not get the physical done and get down there in time.

00:34:30.400 - 00:34:43.460

I would miss it by ten days. The mail went all over the place trying to follow me, so it was delayed a good deal in reaching me. But I went home for two weeks, went down to Minneapolis, took the physical down there,

00:34:43.480 - 00:34:53.640

came back home again, and then within about ten days left for Dallas. Where did you take the physical? Was it an Army? No, at Wold Chamberlain Field.

00:34:54.700 - 00:35:05.780

It was a young Navy. I have no idea what his rank was. It was very low. It was the first time he had ever done a physical.

00:35:08.760 - 00:35:21.820

So I think as long as I did not have two heads and four feet, I think I would have gotten through it all right. Kelly: And then did you have to have a personal interview with anyone? Dyson: I had no interviews whatsoever.

00:35:23.140 - 00:35:37.640

Kelly: What did your mom and dad think about your going to Texas? Dyson: Oh, my father thought it was wonderful. I was not going to England, so he was quite happy that it was going to be Texas. Kelly: Had your dad flown with you ever?

00:35:37.720 - 00:35:51.840

No, never, and never did in his life, unfortunately. Did your mom ever watch you fly? No, no interest whatsoever. So you packed your bags and went on the train?

00:35:51.980 - 00:35:56.640

No, you flew to Dallas. No, flew. Then how did you get from Dallas to Sweetwater? By bus.

00:35:58.260 - 00:36:09.780

At the time you got to Dallas, had you met any of the girls who were flying? None. So you went out to Sweetwater? Everyone slept in the hotel lobby overnight until the bus came.

00:36:11.600 - 00:36:28.920

Kelly: Give me your first impressions of Texas. McKenna: Well, of course, I had been through Texas a couple of times prior to that, so it was what I expected. I did not quite realize that Sweetwater would be quite so desolate, but other than that,

00:36:29.080 - 00:36:42.780

why? I mean, it was not a particular surprise to me what I was going to find. Had you been told what to expect, what would happen if you got through the training program, what you would be doing?

00:36:43.770 - 00:37:06.720

Lane: Only from that Life magazine article and other things. By this time, as you know, there was a lot of publicity about it, because every once Once in a while, somebody would come up with some pretty good-sized articles in well-known magazines and so on.

00:37:09.180 - 00:37:23.520

I knew that Ferry Command, of course, was one of the big things. I did not know anything about towing targets or many of the other things that the women did. I think that developed more as time went on.

00:37:24.260 - 00:37:37.000

Certainly the ferrying was the first thing that I think any of them did. When you arrived out at Avenger Field and saw all those airplanes, do you recall how much you felt? What beat?

00:37:37.900 - 00:38:03.880

[Laughter] And then when you went into the mess hall or wherever to congregate, to be given all the rules and regulations. Do you recall anything about the rules that you were concerned about?

00:38:05.310 - 00:38:29.900

As far as the pink slips or washing out? Certainly, it was explained and I am sure that I anticipated it. I think anybody who goes to school at all, if you do not make it, you do not stay. It did not seem unusually harsh or difficult at all.

00:38:32.160 - 00:39:02.820

just a little bit surprised at the fact that these women, girls, all had previous training in up—some very little and some a great deal more—that they would not make it. Because it just didn't seem to me that if you had done it, if you were not adept at flying or had no talent in that direction, you should not have been there in the first

00:39:02.940 - 00:39:16.240

place. That was naive, I fully realize. It did not frighten me. It was not that I was so confident, it was just that it did not seem logical to me to

00:39:16.280 - 00:39:32.920

spend all this money and so on and have the need for these girls to do anything as dramatic as washing them out for minor things. It would certainly have to be something fairly major. I didn't plan on doing anything major wrong.

00:39:35.130 - 00:39:48.980

Kelly: When you arrived at Sweetwater, what did you think the purpose of the training program was? Rothenberg: Oh, to replace a lot of males who were not available to do the jobs that needed to be done.

00:39:50.720 - 00:40:19.120

Take us through your training period, what you would like children and future generations to know about flight training and ground school training to become a military pilot. Well, it follows the mail program so closely that I don't think that it should be any different and it wasn't other than we didn't have gunnery.

00:40:19.320 - 00:40:40.080

That was really the only difference between what my husband took and what I took down there. I don't know whether you remember or not, but 44W3 was the first class that they experimented with going from primary to advanced.

00:40:41.120 - 00:41:00.540

We had no basic. After we had finished with the AT-6, we went back to the BT in order to do instrument flying and that kind of thing. But really all of our training of any consequence was in primary and then in advanced.

00:41:01.340 - 00:41:07.280

Did you do that after? Did the classes afterwards do that? I wasn't sure. I think we were the first class to do that.

00:41:07.280 - 00:41:11.980

We're going to stop and change tape. Good. Moving right along here. Okay.

00:41:12.580 - 00:41:15.860

How are you doing? Good. Fine. I need a little more water.

00:41:16.040 - 00:41:35.140

You can hear the voice going. Before you put that back on, what was the biggest adjustment you had to make when you got sweeped to Avenger? I think it was five different shots.

00:41:35.280 - 00:41:51.340

They had forgotten to give flu shots, and they gave us five different shots within the first two weeks we were there on one day. It was like fourteen or sixteen days after we arrived, they all of a sudden discovered that this is October and the flu season is starting and so on.

00:41:51.840 - 00:42:01.320

They did that, and they did the tetanus, and they did every shot that we had all in one day. We just made a circle and just kept having them. Some of us became very ill.

00:42:03.200 - 00:42:22.280

Two of them had to be flown out to Big Springs Hospital because they were so ill, 105 temperatures. One of them never came back. I mean, she did not die, but I meant she was far too ill to ever come back again. My arm would not even fit through a uniform sleeve.

00:42:25.720 - 00:42:36.620

Kelly: Okay, we are fine. We are rolling. You lost flying time because your arm was so sore. Well, it was so badly swollen, I was running a temperature like all the rest of them were.

00:42:39.100 - 00:42:54.640

I finally got out of the hospital. I'm not quite sure how long it was, but it was over a week. I had an instructor who was—I'm sure he should not have been there and certainly did not like women and didn't think we had much future in this anyway.

00:42:57.540 - 00:43:16.180

He later left, I might add. He took me up and did acrobatics, and I went completely and totally deaf. One ear came back in about twenty-four hours, but the other one was three or four days before I could hear anything.

00:43:18.300 - 00:43:29.400

I was in a lot of trouble there. Kelly: What kind of airplane? That was in a Stearman. We were still in primary at that time.

00:43:30.760 - 00:43:43.380

I was so upset about it that I went to the head of—I cannot even remember the doctor's name, but I can see him right now. He had a black mustache. I went in and told him my tale of woe.

00:43:44.820 - 00:43:56.700

He said, "Well, you should not have been released for flying, much less for acrobatics." I said, "I have to get time in. I've already lost so much time with this." And he said, "Well, there are always more classes."

00:43:56.700 - 00:44:13.660

And I said, "No, there's not." I had made up my mind at that point that I was not going to—it was sink or swim. We were going to do it or we weren't going to do it. So the option was to go up for an Army checkride.

00:44:13.780 - 00:44:32.640

When I refused to wash back a class, then I had to go up for an Army checkride. So I did and passed it and got a new instructor. It was Ken Eckley, who is still a friend and who is to this day why we greet each other like old friends the few times that we have met since then.

00:44:33.860 - 00:44:57.160

But he decided that I was worth working with, so we went out and did some extra stuff and so on as my hearing came back and of course health came back, it was a lot easier. What I got through in the regulation time and went on from there. To answer your question, the highlight of my primary portion of it was the fact that

00:44:57.220 - 00:45:12.140

I staked a lot on being able to do it, and just not being fair, and I did not want to do that. Three of the other girls washed back. They decided to do it, and they would be in your class.

00:45:12.300 - 00:45:31.720

There was Mary and Robey. I'm trying to think who was the one that went to—she stayed in flying for years afterwards. Anyway, it doesn't make any difference, but they elected to go back, and I said no. Tell me about your bay mates.

00:45:36.020 - 00:45:51.200

Well Mary Waters, Mary Holden, has been a friend ever since. We see each other whenever we can. She is in the state of Washington and for several years we lived in British Columbia, so I saw her fairly regularly, but we still correspond.

00:45:52.200 - 00:46:12.960

Corresponding meaning two or three times a year, always a note at Christmas time and so on, that kind of thing. She was the one that was closest to me. Wagner was another one, and she was from Illinois and she died at a very young age.

00:46:13.340 - 00:46:32.880

Not in the service she went on, but she had four children and she developed cancer and died. I think she was still in her thirties at the time. My family visited her in Illinois a couple of times, and she died after that.

00:46:35.280 - 00:46:55.760

Another one was—I am trying to think now of all of the ones that are there. Give me a few minutes and I will come back to it. Kelly: I was going to ask you, since you were an only child, living with that many girls in that close quarters, was that a big adjustment for you?

00:46:55.990 - 00:47:06.140

Rothenberg: It was a way of keeping warm. It was cold. No, that is being silly, I realize. No, I did not have any trouble with that at all.

00:47:06.510 - 00:47:28.900

You are so busy that it is not like you are spending every hour of every day with them. There is a lot of aloneness there, even with five other people in the same room with you. Kelly: Discuss ground school. What did you enjoy about ground school and what did you really dislike about it?

00:47:31.360 - 00:47:47.320

Well, it seemed rather pointless in lots of ways, meaning that they would not let you do any repair on your aircraft anyway. And I am not sure I would have wanted to, even if they had, but that was not offered so it was not even an option.

00:47:48.960 - 00:48:06.740

But to spend that many hours on the mechanical end of it seemed to me to be pretty much a waste. know about the instruments and what they should and shouldn't do and what they should tell you and what you might need to know very definitely.

00:48:07.740 - 00:48:25.740

But I think a lot of that particular course was a waste. I'm positive the instructor felt exactly the same way because he slid over a lot of that. He never really tested us on anything because he said, "I hope you'll never need this and you're probably never going to need this."

00:48:25.740 - 00:48:44.060

And that's very, very true. The Morse code, of course, was absolutely essential, and that was just like another language. I enjoyed that very much, and I really enjoyed all kinds of weather type of thing.

00:48:44.260 - 00:48:55.840

I found that a lot of that is still with me, and I haven't ever used it since then, but I found it very, very interesting. Tell us about the auxiliary fields. What were they used for?

00:49:00.860 - 00:49:18.900

We were one of the larger classes, it was necessary to split us up into different groups, not only just morning and afternoon, but also into areas. Some of us doing low work and some of us doing higher work.

00:49:19.000 - 00:49:45.640

So, being taken out to the auxiliary fields was the rational way, I suppose, to do it. Thank you very much. This is all of them. The person next to me was a San Diego girl who did not graduate.

00:49:47.200 - 00:50:18.300

She was older, well, I guess she wasn't that much older, but she seemed more mature. Her name was Yakovich, and her family owned a grocery store in San Diego. This is a story that you hear many, many times today, but was terribly startling at the time. A robber came in and shot both her mother and father in the grocery store, and she resigned

00:50:18.440 - 00:50:36.480

and went back to San Diego. We never did hear the end of the story, as Paul Harvey would say, but it was such a shocker to have anything like that happen. The next is Mary, of course, Mary Holden, Mary Waters, as she was then.

00:50:47.600 - 00:50:57.720

But you were all from different backgrounds. Oh, very different, very different. And the last one, of course, is Wagner here, who was the one who died at quite a young age.

00:50:58.000 - 00:51:05.140

Isn't that funny? I can't think of this girl's name. I never saw her again after we graduated. I'm not even sure she finished the course.

00:51:05.620 - 00:51:16.140

I really am not. While you were in training, were any of the trainees killed that you recall? Yes, yes. How did that make you feel?

00:51:18.960 - 00:51:44.060

Well, because it didn't happen at the base, it was on a cross-country. And they were not in our flight, they were in the A-flight, the A to M flight. It was not quite the same thing as losing somebody in your own flight. I don't mean that in an unkind way at all, it was just that it wasn't quite as close

00:51:44.060 - 00:52:02.680

If it happened to your bay mate, why, it would have been probably more startling. Kelly: I meant to ask you, when you arrived at Avenger, were you required to take the oath of office that all the other military people took? Do you recall?

00:52:04.500 - 00:52:13.580

Steele: I think so. I cannot answer that. I am sorry, I really do not remember. Where did you eat?

00:52:15.240 - 00:52:20.920

In the mess. In the mess. And how was the food? Okay.

00:52:23.540 - 00:52:34.920

Okay. When you finished primary and went into basic instruments, or you didn't? We went into A-D-6s. We went into A-D-6s, yes.

00:52:35.630 - 00:52:46.440

Okay. Who was your instructor? Do you recall how that phase of training was? McMillan: No, I do not, I am sorry.

00:52:46.600 - 00:52:53.980

Kelly: By that time, it was really winter. McMillan: Yes. Kelly: Do you recall what Christmas was like at Avenger? McMillan: Cold.

00:52:54.740 - 00:53:18.940

We had snow, and there are pictures there that I have given you with the snow banked up against the bays there. And we are in the men's fleece-lined winter garb there. Size 42 is the smallest, and so it was kind of funny, I guess.

00:53:20.460 - 00:53:37.840

But we really found it terribly cold in those bays with the concrete floors. I thought we were going to burn the place down several times with those little hot-bellied stoves that were in the middle of the room. And we've actually chipped the ice out of the bottom of the shower stalls.

00:53:38.740 - 00:53:49.520

There's been lots written about it about winter in Texas. When you finished primary, did you get some time off? Yes, we did. That was the first time off.

00:53:49.620 - 00:54:08.320

In fact, that was only the second time that we were off the base from October until we finished primary, and that was only into Sweetwater. What we did, we took – I think we had a three-day leave and we went to Dallas. Did you drive?

00:54:08.780 - 00:54:20.440

Somebody have a car? Yes. I'm trying to think who had a car, but we did, yes. Then you went on into the second phase of training.

00:54:21.120 - 00:54:43.880

Anything unusual happen in that phase? Had a fire at night on takeoff. That was a little unusual, and thank goodness it was very unusual. If you want more explanation of that, the whole story really took off and all of a sudden

00:54:44.320 - 00:55:03.160

you cannot see anything out of the windshield. But it is nighttime and it took me a few seconds to realize that something was very wrong. The tower started screaming at me to bail out, and I finally was so annoyed at them that I said, "I am still in the traffic pattern.

00:55:03.320 - 00:55:13.980

I'm not bailing out." Made a 360-degree approach. I flipped everything off. I did not know what the fire was.

00:55:14.060 - 00:55:32.300

I had no idea, but I have a small fear of electricity anyway. That was an unconscious thing that I did. I just flipped everything off and came around and dropped the landing gear, but had no idea whether it was really down or not.

00:55:32.480 - 00:55:51.740

Because of course by flipping everything off, I did not have anything but just the force of the wheels coming down. And managed to land with fire trucks and everything roaring out to the plane. Turned out to be an electrical fire, and I was questioned over and over again.

00:55:51.900 - 00:55:59.360

How did I know it was an electrical fire? I did not know it was an electrical fire. Why did you switch everything off? Because I don't like electricity.

00:56:00.240 - 00:56:17.480

It sounds kind of childish, but nevertheless, I got down all right and so on. But I couldn't get the canopy open because the heat had been so intense. So I came in with the canopy only about an inch open, because that's as far as it would go.

00:56:18.220 - 00:56:41.040

So when they poured water on the plane and got it cooled down enough, somebody came up on the wing and did it from the outside. Remember there was a latch that they could release there. They dragged me out of there and I left my parachute in there and it was still there.

00:56:41.840 - 00:56:59.880

It never did become a fire even though it was on takeoff. I was the third person to go up that night, so there was not that much gas in it. So, it was not a problem that way. Did you have to go before the board?

00:57:03.370 - 00:57:23.120

Do you recall that? Well, they just questioned over and over and over again, "Why did I do certain things?" was the only thing I could tell them. Switching it off was just an unconscious, automatic reaction to an unknown problem.

00:57:25.080 - 00:57:44.700

When you were in training, were you aware of what the girls were doing who had already graduated? Oh, yes. I'm sure that we all knew that some went to Dallas, some went to Long Beach, Some went to Wilmington, some went to Romulus, and then a number of them in the class prior

00:57:44.820 - 00:58:04.140

went to B-26 and B-25s. Some of them towed targets and others did other type work. That was, I think, some of the first classes who did a much wider range of activities than the girls before us.

00:58:04.920 - 00:58:25.440

What were your expectations when you finished? When I graduated? My first choice was to go, because I love California, my first choice was to go to California. Second choice was Dallas, Texas, and third was Romulus.

00:58:26.400 - 00:58:46.360

And I got third choice, so I was quite satisfied. I really did want to ferry rather than do other things. Although the reason, of course, that I wanted to go to either Dallas or Long Beach with my size, I really wanted to fly fighters rather than larger aircraft.

00:58:47.140 - 00:59:06.820

And of course, instead of that, they parked me right across from the B-24 plant at Romulus, so I ended up flying B-24s, which was not what I had planned. Let me go back and ask you about your advanced training in cross-country. Recall one of those cross-country trips.

00:59:07.820 - 00:59:42.500

Well, again, we ran into a little problem. They closed the airport at Albuquerque, which was the stop on the way to Arizona. Consequently, we flew from Sweetwater to Hondo, Texas, and from Hondo, Texas up to New Mexico, and then across to Tucson, and then just did a turnaround at Phoenix.

00:59:42.500 - 01:00:04.160

We flew to the base on the west side of Phoenix and stopped for lunch, got back in the plane, Blue Block to Tucson, so we actually spent two nights in Tucson, which was not what they normally did at all, because Albuquerque was closed, why we could not do the normal western cross country.

01:00:06.280 - 01:00:34.280

The short cross country was to Oklahoma City and Tulsa, I believe, and then back to Sweetwater. On the way back, we ran into a terrible dust storm, and we were in a stearman at the time. So we were battered all over the place. Mary was flying on my wing, and she disappeared.

01:00:36.440 - 01:01:01.120

She decided to go one way, and the dust was so strong we could not see each other at times. I chose to fly to the left around a small hill there and she went to the right. We arrived back at the base. Many of the girls did not, but we arrived and all of the fire trucks and all of the

01:01:01.300 - 01:01:15.820

emergency vehicles were all parked along the sides of the runway with all the lights on so that we had a path to come in because even the landing lights were not working. And of course, we had no landing lights on the plane, so that was kind of an adventure too.

01:01:17.660 - 01:01:33.820

Did any of your baymates wash out? I believe this one girl and one girl resigned for personal reasons, yes. How did that affect you? Well, of course, in the one case, why it was understandable.

01:01:33.980 - 01:01:55.360

I mean, she resigned and went home. The other girl, I really believe in essence she resigned too. I really think she had a private life problem and I think she kind of gave up on the program. So neither one were too startling.

01:01:55.780 - 01:02:15.040

It was not as though they did something terribly wrong or just weren't good enough. By the time you got to that stage, it was very rarely that anybody washed out. It was mainly in primary. The biggest loss always was in primary in our case.

01:02:16.600 - 01:02:32.040

Did Ms. Cochran ever come to visit? Yes. Do you recall your impressions of her when she came? She came within probably weeks of the time that we arrived there.

01:02:32.060 - 01:02:53.580

I can't tell you the first time exactly what the date was. But she came to meet us because we were an extremely large class, and she came to wish us well and so on. Then she came, I believe between Christmas and New Year's, as I remember, sometime in

01:02:53.660 - 01:03:03.980

that period of time. And then we saw her at graduation, but those were the only three times that—oh, no, that's not true. class before us graduated, she was there, and so we saw her then.

01:03:06.200 - 01:03:31.260

Kelly: Tell me about your uniforms. Steele: Well, of course, we were still in the khaki pants and the white shirts and the wedge caps and anything that the military did not want for flying purposes. And then I believe that we were the first class to graduate in our blues, so I know

01:03:31.360 - 01:03:47.160

that it was very exciting to have them send representatives from Neiman Marcus and Dallas and so on to tailor them and tuck them in here and there and so on. We were very excited about all that. But there were so few uniforms available that we had something to graduate in and then who

01:03:47.260 - 01:04:02.200

knows what we would have after that. Some people had their winter stuff in the summertime and others had summer stuff in the wintertime and so on and so on. Kelly: Of the airplanes that you flew in training, what was your favorite?

01:04:02.320 - 01:04:21.060

Rothfeldt: AT-6, without question. Kelly: What was so great about that AT-6? Rothfeldt: Oh, because it was a huge aircraft, very powerful, very modern. How do you feel when you are up in the air?

01:04:25.880 - 01:04:46.680

Aware. I am probably a little more hyper at that time. The exhilaration is tremendous on a good day when you can see forever. The feeling that you are that high and your vision is so expanded than it would be in

01:04:46.760 - 01:05:00.220

an automobile or a train. Wonderful. Tell me about your graduation. Because we were very late, we were almost two weeks late in graduating.

01:05:00.340 - 01:05:16.400

We should have been on the third of April, or second of April, and we did not graduate until the fifteenth. It was kind of a hurry, hurry, hurry thing. Many of the things that were planned in advance were for the second.

01:05:17.260 - 01:05:35.020

By the time it got to the fifteenth, they kind of had a put-together band. It was just not quite what they had planned. But of course, graduation is so wonderful. It took more than not having exactly the program that we had thought we were going to have.

01:05:35.200 - 01:05:44.920

That did not seem terribly important. While you were in training, on the weekends, you said that you only had off just a couple weekends. Yes.

01:05:45.200 - 01:06:10.620

We only had one time away from the base, only once until graduation. The others, you were supposed to get one time until midnight once a month. For months, we had a nine o'clock, sometimes not off the base period. We were pretty confined because of weather.

01:06:10.760 - 01:06:25.700

The weather was really a big factor while we were there. So we did a lot of sitting around, but sitting around waiting for the weather to clear. So we did not get off the base very much. How did your training compare with the training the cadets were getting?

01:06:27.640 - 01:06:43.900

Well, of course, we did not know, because we had not—unless you had a brother or a a husband who had gone through the training, we really did not know. It was not until we had graduated, and actually when I discussed it with my husband, he went through Texas too in his early training.

01:06:44.040 - 01:07:03.360

He was in before Pearl Harbor. So that training was pretty strenuous and it was surprising how it correlated exactly with what we did except for the gunnery. When you graduated, when did you get your orders?

01:07:08.500 - 01:07:29.380

I would say in anticipation of an April 2nd, I would say just very shortly before that, but of course it was the 15th before we actually graduated. For your graduation, did some generals or something come? I believe Janet Leont was the one who came, or Smith maybe.

01:07:29.680 - 01:07:41.660

Maybe it was Smith, I'm not sure. How did you feel when Jacqueline Cochran handed you those wings? Proud. Then did you have some time off?

01:07:42.200 - 01:07:50.500

Yes, we did. We had ten days. Mary and I went to her home in California. My parents had come down from Winnipeg.

01:07:51.900 - 01:08:06.880

For graduation? And, they went on to California and stayed in Laguna Beach, which was Mary's home. And so, although I stayed with Mary, they stayed in a hotel and we did a lot of things together.

01:08:08.840 - 01:08:27.840

Then, of course, we had to leave and go into L.A. in order to try and hitchhike a flight to Michigan. So, we went into L.A. a day and a half before we really needed to take off. As it turned out, it was just about the right length of time.

01:08:27.920 - 01:08:50.100

It took us about twenty-four hours to get a military aircraft to pick us up and take us. When you got to Romulus, to whom did you report? The person, the individual person, I believe that Barbara Erickson was the person in charge

01:08:50.160 - 01:08:55.540

at that time, as I remember. Kelly: And she was a WAF? Steele: No. Kelly: She was a WAF.

01:08:56.260 - 01:09:07.220

Steele: That was a big base. There must have been maybe as many as twenty at a time on that base. There were quite a few there. Kelly: Were there any WAFs there?

01:09:07.940 - 01:09:18.140

Steele: No. Not that I was aware of. They pretty well stayed in Wilmington, Delaware. They did not really leave there.

01:09:18.140 - 01:09:31.000

I know some of them went to Dallas because they went to fighters, but they were few and far between. And then people like Dorothy Struthers and so on, who went on to do wonderful things with the B-29 and so on.

01:09:31.740 - 01:09:52.440

They were picked up, but generally speaking, I think they stayed. Where did you live at Romulus? McMillan: We lived in townhouses. There were no barracks there, which was very nice, but they had built a number of townhouses

01:09:52.560 - 01:10:12.240

for workers on the field when they were converting the field originally. And then there was no use for the workers there, so they still had—and each one would take five girls. I believe we occupied four of those, so there must have been twenty at least.

01:10:12.680 - 01:10:24.000

But of course, we were there so little. At one period of time, there were three weeks and I never got back to the base. Kelly: Do you recall your first mission? Quintana Newton: Yes, I certainly do, vividly.

01:10:25.840 - 01:10:46.320

We were taken to Pittsburgh, Kansas to pick up thirty-seven Piper Cubs there. Kelly: Were you all wasps that went? Kistiakowsky: No. There were, I think that there were nine wasps and the rest were men.

01:10:47.400 - 01:11:05.820

I think there were about twenty men, as I remember. Several of the planes would not even get off the ground. There may have been more men there, but they did not take off. All the wasps did take off, but it took five days to get them off the ground to fly to

01:11:06.000 - 01:11:28.640

Kansas City, which is like 75 miles away, and that's as far as we got for another four or five days. Then we went from there, just hopping across the country and ended up in Rome, New York. It became, after the first two legs, or the first leg I should say, starting on the second

01:11:28.640 - 01:11:51.220

like why we made a pact that we would get every single one of those aircraft there, and by using wire and hairpins and no instruments. Those aircraft had sat out in an open field in Kansas for eighteen months without any maintenance whatsoever.

01:11:51.500 - 01:12:06.920

Kelly: Were they brand new airplanes, though? They had been used for, I believe, reconnaissance school, low-flying reconnaissance, and then just abandoned there. Why they would move them, I have no idea, but they did.

01:12:07.680 - 01:12:24.660

So it became kind of a party, really. We ended up in Rome, New York, and then I think they junked them when we got them there after we had done all of that. But imagine flying into Chicago air with no instruments, no radios, all of us streaming

01:12:24.760 - 01:12:38.340

in and we made a V formation and came in and took over the field. I don't think Chicago ever forgot it. That was my first ferry trip. Kelly: And then what happened after you landed?

01:12:38.560 - 01:12:57.980

How did you get back to your base? Dornstein: By Army aircraft, where there was any number. Most of our deliveries went to Newark. Those that did not go to Virginia—well, B-24s, of course, went to Virginia, but the

01:12:58.000 - 01:13:18.400

ones that we picked up from around the country mainly went to Newark. And then there were always planes coming out of Newark back west, north and west. So they would pick us up whenever it was possible to do so. Once in a while we flew commercially, not often.

01:13:18.820 - 01:13:33.980

We did from Virginia. We would get into—I have to stop for a moment—equip them again with other things and then take them off. I cannot think of that.

01:13:35.640 - 01:13:58.460

We would fly commercially into Washington and then Washington back to Newark. I'm a little foggy on exactly what they did. When we picked up a B-24 from across the road, as we used to say, from the Ford plant there, we would take that particular aircraft, would have probably three or four hours on each

01:13:58.480 - 01:14:10.760

engine and that's all. Never been in the air other than that. We would take that to St. Paul, Minnesota, and leave that aircraft there for radio equipment and so on.

01:14:14.360 - 01:14:32.720

I am not quite sure what else. I know radio equipment, but I am not quite sure what else they put in there. Then we would pick up the ones that they had finished and continue on from there to Virginia. Most of the time, we would have to stop probably in Pittsburgh, which was about halfway.

01:14:33.870 - 01:14:44.720

Kelly: In Virginia, do you know what happened to those airplanes? Yes, they were flown overseas, most of them. Some of them actually, they took the wings off and transported them, which kind of amazed me.

01:14:45.280 - 01:15:06.640

When you would deliver aircraft to New Jersey, do you know where that was bound for? Mostly the wings were taken off and it was put on a ship and sent out from there. The kind of aircraft that we delivered there in most cases were for reconnaissance work, low, they would all be fairly small aircraft.

01:15:07.280 - 01:15:28.240

Except because of our closeness to Montreal, we picked up a lot of the Canadian equivalent of the AT-6 and flew those down from Montreal to Newark. We did that quite frequently. Kelly: Were you ever able to fly home in Canada?

01:15:28.240 - 01:15:40.380

Reifeltt: No, no. No. Kelly: In order to fly in the B-24s, did you take some extra training? How were you checked out?

01:15:40.860 - 01:15:48.380

Reifeltt: We flew co-pilot. We had manuals. We went through it. We had a full crew when we did it.

01:15:50.100 - 01:16:11.800

I have often wondered how I went from a Piper Cub one day into a B-24 the next day, but somehow you assimilated that kind of thing. You had a lot of crew that went over all of the physical aircraft itself. You had a procedure to follow, just the same way as when you learned to do anything else,

01:16:11.940 - 01:16:28.980

even after you had done it ten times, where you still had that tape on there to remember everything and you checked off with the co-pilot. If you were the pilot, they checked off with you if you were the co-pilot. It didn't seem terribly difficult to do.

01:16:29.480 - 01:16:51.480

They were cumbersome aircraft to fly, very cumbersome. Because of my size and five cushions and a parachute, the men thought that was hilarious and would give me very little help to see what I could do. It became kind of a joke.

01:16:51.760 - 01:17:14.560

Did anything unusual ever happen to you while you were ferrying? I had two lots of sabotage with a Piper Cub, if you can imagine. One had a mechanics flight cap stuffed in the carburetor, which absorbed all the gas. You could get about twenty-five or thirty feet off the ground, and then it would just

01:17:14.780 - 01:17:35.420

quit. I did that three times until the maintenance finally decided to take the aircraft down and see what was wrong, because they wanted me out of there. They pulled out the shreds of fabric, which were identified as one of the flight caps

01:17:35.460 - 01:17:47.080

that the mechanics were. Did that cause you anxiety? I wanted to get out of there, too. The anxiety really was the fact that they wanted me to take off.

01:17:47.220 - 01:18:04.360

I wasn't prepared to fly to New York with the problems I was having. So there was a confrontation really more than anything else. As it turned out, the aircraft was a complete and total failure because it quit just before I got to Newark.

01:18:05.320 - 01:18:26.800

I came in dead stick and I had a young captain who had never flown sitting behind the desk who was threatening me with court-martial and all kinds of things because I disrupted traffic and so on. When I came in, I hit before I got to the concrete, and the concrete blew a tire and

01:18:26.880 - 01:18:46.920

I spun around and injured the only time I ever did anything to an aircraft. One wingtip was damaged. I took all of the books, all of the flight records and everything and let him have it right straight across the desk.

01:18:47.020 - 01:19:07.620

So I guess I was a little uptight by the time I actually got that aircraft out of my hands. What was your social life like at Romulus? Fun when we were there, but you could not plan anything. You went over to the officers club and if something was going on and you had enough

01:19:07.580 - 01:19:24.780

energy to do it. The food was absolutely wonderful there, and unbelievable in the officers club there, probably as good as any country club you could go to. So there was always a lot of people there because the food was so excellent, there was

01:19:24.780 - 01:19:38.420

very little incentive to go into the city or do anything like that. And always had music. It was a big base, a really big base. You always had activities going on if you wanted to join in.

01:19:38.790 - 01:19:44.820

Kelly: And no shortage of dance parks? McMillan: No, no shortage. No shortage. Kelly: Okay.

01:19:45.100 - 01:19:56.980

While you were at Romulus, then you get some temporary orders. Is that where you were when you went to OCS? McMillan: Yes. There's a little preliminary to that.

01:19:57.020 - 01:20:19.380

I was scheduled to go to Texas finally to check out on a P-40 so that I could do what I really wanted to do, which was to fly a fighter. My father was a long-term diabetic, and he was quite ill at the time. At the very last minute, I had to say no and fly home on emergency leave.

01:20:21.480 - 01:20:42.680

He survived, but it was pretty touch and go for a few days. By the time I got back, I didn't really want to go back to what I had done before. I'm not quite sure who I went to and I'm not quite sure who was in charge at that time, but I said, "If there was an opening, I would like to go."

01:20:43.880 - 01:20:54.600

They said, "Well, as a matter of fact, we're picking people to go to Orlando, and so would you like to do that?" I thought, "That's fine. I'm probably better off not flying for a while.

01:20:54.820 - 01:21:25.120

I had been doing a lot of it, so that break down there was kind of good. Kelly: Describe what you studied or what that school was all about. McIntire: Well, it was mainly a military type, what to anticipate if we were taken into the regular Air Force, what we would have to know and what it would mean.

01:21:25.280 - 01:21:45.860

We did a lot of survival. We had to eat all of the survival food that we would find on some Pacific island somewhere. Kelly: Was this a school just for WASPs? I think they did it three times.

01:21:46.020 - 01:22:02.220

I think there were, as far as I can remember, I think there was a class before us that had gone through and then we went through and I'm sure there was at least one class after us. But it was at the end of July in Orlando and all we could think about was there was no

01:22:02.280 - 01:22:20.060

air conditioning. The barracks were typically island-type barracks with openings. I mean, there were no windows on it or anything like that, but hotter than you can imagine. We would send the laundry out and they would send the shirts back, those blue flying shirts

01:22:20.180 - 01:22:36.980

back, and they would be starched so that they just stood by themselves. They did not even need a hanger. Within an hour, they were just limp. How are we doing for time?

01:22:39.580 - 01:23:01.260

Two hours. When you finished OCS, how did you get back to Romulus? My military hitchhiking had one kind of interesting experience. No, that wasn't at that time.

01:23:01.260 - 01:23:14.640

I went directly back to Romulus. Did some more ferrying briefly. I didn't do very much. I'm not quite sure whether it was weeks or maybe a month.

01:23:16.360 - 01:23:42.420

Then they knew that I would like a change, and they printed a little list of things that were available to do. One of them was to test aircraft at a training base. I chose that and left the directions, what area of the country up to whatever was available.

01:23:44.240 - 01:24:08.240

Greenville, Mississippi was available at that time, and that's where I went. On the way down, I got as far as Terre Haute, Indiana by hitching a ride and couldn't seem to get out of there. There was a Colonel there with an AT-10, and I had always thought that was a pretty nice

01:24:08.300 - 01:24:22.080

looking aircraft. So I went out to look at it, not really expecting to get a ride or anything, I just wanted to take a look at it. He came up behind me and said, "Have you ever flown one of these?"

01:24:22.080 - 01:24:32.000

I said, "No." I said, "I think it's such a nice looking aircraft." He said, "What direction are you going?" I said, "I'm trying to get to Greenville, Mississippi."

01:24:32.220 - 01:24:40.740

He said, "Well, it's only a hundred miles out of my way. Do you want to fly down?" So I said, "That would be wonderful. I would love to."

01:24:40.740 - 01:24:58.400

So I went and got my gear and stowed it on there. And so he said, "You better sit in the left seat, because you can tell better how it flies." I said, "Gee, that's very nice." And I got in, and he got into the other side and promptly fell asleep.

01:25:02.180 - 01:25:18.980

I hadn't filed a flight plan, I hadn't done anything, so I was really scrambling you know, for radio stuff and all that kind of thing. I do not know, he may have been chuckling to himself. I do not think he would have let me get too far off or do any particular amount of damage.

01:25:21.140 - 01:25:40.300

We took off and flew down. I could almost fly the railroad because it was almost due south of there that I was going. So I really could not, unless weather interfered or something happened. I could check in to each point as we went past, and of course it would fly that far.

01:25:43.320 - 01:25:54.780

I did not have any conversation. It was a rather lonely flight, but it was a lovely flight. It was just great. I got down to Greenville and started in.

01:25:57.540 - 01:26:12.800

They had had girls there before. In fact, at any one time, there would be at least eight of us. There was no space on the base for myself or, as it turned out, a fellow classmate, Louise Prine.

01:26:14.380 - 01:26:32.160

We arrived at the same time. We stayed in Greenville rather than on the base for the first week or ten days with an officer and his wife and small child in one of their bedrooms. As girls left, we moved out.

01:26:32.160 - 01:26:44.860

It was in the nurses' quarters. There was not really any specific building for us. It was just wherever we could. Then we moved to the base.

01:26:47.780 - 01:27:09.360

When we first got there, the PLM, the Production Line Maintenance Building, was very well set up. They gave us fairly simple things to begin with, to take up and test. Of course, we had a little booklet on when they did any specific thing, what tests did

01:27:09.380 - 01:27:26.700

we have to put it through. So it was not like reading a little manual. There was really nothing that they needed to do. Unfortunately, about ten days after I moved on the base, it was very, very hot in September

01:27:26.700 - 01:27:52.160

in Mississippi, and humid. They had a nice big swimming pool there that was attached to the officers' quarters there. At noon one day, I had made a flight that was particularly trying. All I could think about was I wanted to go in for a swim, so I grabbed my suit and went

01:27:52.160 - 01:28:09.080

to try out the pool. I had not been there up to that time. And there are seventy-five percent officers sitting around the outside of the pool as I come out of the dressing area, which was unisex and was kind of different too.

01:28:09.700 - 01:28:28.040

And you come out into the middle of the pool, and it was an oval pool, which I had never seen before, nor have I seen one since then. And big signs at either end, nine feet deep. So I just assumed that the whole pool was only for adults and those that could swim,

01:28:28.820 - 01:28:50.520

and did not want to parade down to the end to the staircases and so on. So I just went to the first point there and took a dive in, and it was two feet from the sides. So I landed rather ungracefully, had quite long hair, and had it all piled up inside

01:28:50.520 - 01:29:08.800

of one of those old rubber caps that everybody had. I split that from front to back, took most of the concussion in my hands, but fortunately I dived this way rather than this way, where I could have scraped my face and so on. But it played havoc with my back.

01:29:10.760 - 01:29:29.620

So I moved the main vertebrae in the middle of my back, where it hooks to the hip there, I moved it about five-eighths of an inch apart. I didn't break anything, but I just tore all the tendons and everything that surrounds that that holds it together.

01:29:31.760 - 01:29:45.820

So then I went through a whole procedure. The only thing they could do for me was to use that wide tension tape. They did it diagonally across this way and then diagonally across this way to hold my back rigid.

01:29:46.480 - 01:30:02.120

And every three days they pulled that off and gave me physiotherapy and then re-taped it again. So I had some pretty raw meat back there for quite a while. So carrying a parachute or carrying anything was—all the manuals that went with the aircraft

01:30:02.280 - 01:30:22.280

was a little tough. And I had found that I was having a little bit of difficulty coming out of spins and things like that because of the violence of the movement that you make. I always had a mechanic who wanted to go up and fly.

01:30:22.700 - 01:30:36.560

Most of them really would have loved to have been pilots for one reason or another. I would go around and say, "Who worked on this particular aircraft?" Somebody would put up their hand and I would say, "Do you want to fly with me?" "Oh, sure."

01:30:37.500 - 01:30:56.400

They would come along. I felt that I had some security, number one, that the mechanic who worked on that plane was going to be willing to fly in it. The second thing was that if I really needed him to jam his foot into a right—as we walked

01:30:56.440 - 01:31:07.920

out to the plane, I would explain to him what I was doing and so on. It was just a precaution. And then I would let him do a little bit of flying up there, and then we would do whatever we had to do and come down.

01:31:08.080 - 01:31:20.720

But that went all over the base, that you cannot fly with Lee Dorr unless you are willing to. Use your muscle. Kelly: Were you grounded at all in the very beginning?

01:31:20.730 - 01:31:30.860

Dornstein: Just the first three days. The first three days, until they could see what I could do. Really I was left entirely to my own discretion. No one told me not to do it.

01:31:31.910 - 01:31:45.260

I just felt that I could hardly move, and I had to get used to that tape and in the heat and so on. It was pretty trying. How was your social life at Greenville?

01:31:45.340 - 01:31:57.160

That's where I met my husband. How did you meet your husband? During this period of time, he had written all the safety rules for the whole Southeast Command.

01:31:59.080 - 01:32:12.940

He had been an instructor and then he had been a squadron leader, and now he was doing more executive work than he was flying. One of the manuals that he issued was that you always take off and land with your canopy open.

01:32:13.860 - 01:32:31.620

Of course, after my fire experience and so on, I did not land with my canopy open. After two warnings from the tower, I had to present myself to him, so I was on the carpet. Had you met him before? No.

01:32:32.840 - 01:32:47.560

I thought he was pretty cute though. So he said, "You know, this is part of the manual." I said, "Yes, I fully understand that. I have read it thoroughly and I agree with 99% of it, but I will not land with the canopy

01:32:48.140 - 01:32:59.800

open." I said, "You will have to do whatever you feel you need to do." I explained why I would not do it. I said, "There are two reasons, actually."

01:32:59.800 - 01:33:10.840

I said, "First of all," and he said, "Well, if you don't have an emergency, wouldn't you do it?" I said, "No." I said, "We wear these peak caps and the headphones on top of it."

01:33:10.840 - 01:33:31.480

I said, "I'm not too tall, as you can plainly see, and in order to see over the nose of the aircraft when I come in to land, I'm almost blind. I need to be able to stick my head out both sides in order to clear myself." I said, "The wind comes and just takes that cap off.

01:33:31.480 - 01:33:41.000

I have no headphones. I have anything." I said, "I think that's far more dangerous than what might happen to me if I were to land with the fan closed."

01:33:41.900 - 01:33:55.860

He said, "In other words, you really will not fly with it?" I said, "No." He said, "Okay." I said, "I realize I have very little jurisdiction over that, and it's really a safety feature

01:33:56.120 - 01:34:05.980

more than anything." So he said, "I'm not going to say anything about it." I said, "Fine, thank you very much, and hope we meet again," and went out the door. That was the end of the first meeting.

01:34:07.260 - 01:34:26.060

Next time we met was in the bar in the officers club, and I had missed lunch because the plane I was testing threw oil all over the place. It was just—I was a mess and so on. I managed to clean my face and hands, but I was oil from stem to stern here.

01:34:27.000 - 01:34:39.660

I was also hungry. It was about two o'clock. The dining room had been closed forever, so I can always get a sandwich in the bar. So I went in and had a glass of milk or a milkshake or something and a sandwich.

01:34:39.740 - 01:34:55.360

I'm standing at the bar, I'm disreputable, I have pigtails, and I'm covered in pretty messy clothes. And three officers are sitting in a booth there saying, "What has this service come to?"

01:34:55.360 - 01:35:12.220

And I can hear these remarks and couldn't care less. And looked over and there's Lou sitting as one of the people who were there. Anyway, I left. I had my sandwich and left and go back and take a shower and change clothes and so on.

01:35:12.880 - 01:35:28.640

The next time we met was that Saturday night and it was a dance and I'm in a white formal with my hair all down and all dressed up. He cut in on the person that I was dancing with, and he had had several drinks. So he wanted to introduce me.

01:35:28.740 - 01:35:36.320

I said, "We've already met." "When did we meet?" He said, "I'm sure we haven't met." I said, "Yes, as a matter of fact, we've more or less met twice."

01:35:36.840 - 01:35:50.800

He said, "You aren't the one." I said, "Yes." We started and we had ninety-three dates out of ninety-six nights and got married. Tell me about your wedding.

01:35:52.300 - 01:36:03.460

We had a white wedding. I had a long dress. My father made it down to the wedding to stop it, as a matter of fact. He did not think that I had known him long enough and that he wanted to look this person

01:36:03.520 - 01:36:13.680

over and so on. Madam never said a word, never said one word to me about it. Had you met his parents? No, no.

01:36:13.680 - 01:36:35.160

They arrived too, he has two brothers and his mother and father, and they arrived. I had not met any of them. Was Mary a part of your wedding? One brother was best man and I had several WASPs as attendants.

01:36:37.660 - 01:36:52.740

Well, there were two WASPs and one nurse. And then, did you have some time off for a honeymoon? Yes, we left the same night. We were married in the evening, and we left that night and had three days.

01:36:53.020 - 01:37:08.960

We crashed into the back of a cotton truck on our way back in Arkansas, and that demolished our car. Fortunately, it did very little damage to us, so we had to call the base and say, "Come and get us.

01:37:09.400 - 01:37:27.940

We're stranded here without a vehicle. Kelly: And then when you got back to the base, did you get quarters someplace on the base? Dornstein: No, we stayed in town, in Greenville. Kelly: Then how did you feel when you learned the WASPs were going to be deactivated?

01:37:28.510 - 01:37:44.880

Dornstein: Disappointed. Sad. I thought that it was abrupt. I did not really think our work was finished, from what I could see.

01:37:48.000 - 01:38:02.920

But, I mean, that is the way it was going to be. I certainly did not voice any objection in any kind of an official capacity at all, but I did stay to the end. I was there on the 20th when we did that.

01:38:02.920 - 01:38:13.380

I was going to ask you, because you could have resigned. You were now married. Yes, but we only had two weeks, and I certainly was not going to do that. I was going to stay there anyway.

01:38:14.240 - 01:38:31.240

Actually, that is not quite true. I had planned at this point to take leave, only to fly home. My birthday is three days before Christmas. I had not seen my family for quite some time, and I had a twenty-first birthday.

01:38:32.520 - 01:38:47.280

There was quite a large party and reception, and my best friend's birthday was the same day. We had a lot of things planned. An ice storm hit, and I never got home, so I just stayed in Greenville.

01:38:48.240 - 01:39:03.960

How did you celebrate that Christmas, your first Christmas being married? Well, of course, we were not married at that point. We were not married until the fifth of January. So there were two weeks, and that was the two weeks I was going to take to fly home,

01:39:04.400 - 01:39:24.060

tell my family that I had planned to get married on the 5th of January and then fly back again. I was being flown to St. Louis, and then I had reservations out of St. Louis to get home. We never got to St. Louis. The ice storm almost killed us both in getting it.

01:39:24.180 - 01:39:37.040

We got into Memphis and had to spend the night and turn around and go back. There was nothing, not even buses were moving or trains or anything. It was terrible weather. Kelly: Did the airbase do anything for the WASP when they were disbanded?

01:39:37.040 - 01:39:43.240

Kistiakowsky: No. Kelly: Nothing? Just hung up your parachute? Kistiakowsky: Well, we turned in uniforms and did things like that.

01:39:45.200 - 01:40:11.460

One of the unofficial options that we had was to donate our uniforms, and I donated mine to the San Diego, which was one of the few air museums that were in operation at that point. So I picked San Diego and sent what I had there, mainly just one outfit, and it burnt

01:40:11.520 - 01:40:22.620

in the fire. That particular museum burnt to the ground in San Diego. They built another one, much larger, since then, but the uniform was gone. Did you send your wings?

01:40:23.680 - 01:40:36.840

No, no, no, I did not. So then you stayed on in the Greenville area? Yes, we did. My husband went to Command and General Staff School in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and we

01:40:36.960 - 01:40:50.720

left and he went there. And then what was his next assignment? When he finished Command and General Staff School, they wanted him to go to Washington originally.

01:40:54.460 - 01:41:18.540

I don't know whether you know anything about Command and General Staff School at all, but they had a lot of rank there, but not necessarily all flying. A lot of them were ground people, a lot of them were Marines, regular Army. They had to bring in a three-star general as commanding officer because there was so

01:41:18.380 - 01:41:31.900

much rank on the base. Those people with much higher rank than my husband had the first chance of anything in Washington and there were no flying jobs. He made the mistake of saying that he would like to continue flying.

01:41:32.500 - 01:41:45.740

So they sent him back to Gunter Field, which is right next to Montgomery, Alabama, as an instructor again. He said no, that he wasn't going to do that. He would take discharge rather than that.

01:41:46.460 - 01:42:01.600

So we went to Montgomery while all of this processed, and he went through all of the reasons for his feelings about it and so on. We were there for two months, and then he left. We both left, of course.

01:42:04.640 - 01:42:26.460

By this time, he was a terrible sinus sufferer. He felt going back into the Southeast was the worst thing he could possibly do. He had already had permanent holes made in his cheeks here for sinus drainage and so on, and he just felt going back into that was something he did not want to do.

01:42:26.580 - 01:42:45.180

So he really took a medical discharge and left. We went to Arizona because of the dryness here and so on. His business was advertising and journalism. There was nothing big enough in Phoenix.

01:42:45.940 - 01:43:00.880

Tucson was hopeless and it had 10,000 people. Phoenix had 75,000 people, but one advertising agency. That man said, "There isn't enough work even for my agency here. You better go on to California," and that's what we did.

01:43:02.300 - 01:43:14.780

Where did you end up in California? Los Angeles. Kelly: Then at some point, you had a child. Reifel: Not for five years.

01:43:17.700 - 01:43:36.380

My father, again, was quite ill. I said that we should go up and see what we could do. What we could do is take over the business, and that is what we ended up doing. My husband thought it was a great idea, and so that is what we did.

01:43:36.460 - 01:43:47.420

And our children were born up there, that is why. Kelly: I wanted to ask you, was your husband a fighter pilot, bomber pilot? Reed: No, instructor. Kelly: Instructor.

01:43:47.420 - 01:43:52.680

Reed: Yeah, the whole war. Kelly: In cadet school at that time? Reed: Yes. Kelly: Okay.

01:43:54.240 - 01:44:08.380

Did he ever have the urge to fly again? Reed: No, afterwards, no. He was a civilian when he went in and he was a civilian when he came out. Kelly: As far as you are concerned, did you have an urge to fly again?

01:44:08.380 - 01:44:25.740

Steele: I wanted to go on, yes, I really did. But between the back entry and getting married and going where we went and moving where we did, it was just not feasible, that is all. Kelly: When you went back to Canada, did you move in with your mom and dad?

01:44:25.740 - 01:44:37.320

Steele: No. No. There were two stores at this point, and we took one which was in a resort area, which was mainly China and so on.

01:44:38.740 - 01:44:53.860

Kelly: And then when you had your two children, how were you involved with their school activities? Or were you? Lowdermilk Honstein: I was very much involved in them, yes, but nothing that was spectacular in any way.

01:44:56.360 - 01:45:23.960

The small community, 12,000 people, there really isn't a great deal of challenge there. At ten years old, our son went to boarding school in Winnipeg, and a year later our daughter went to boarding school in Winnipeg. So we were empty nesters again in a very, very short period of time.

01:45:24.080 - 01:45:31.700

We really only had them at home for about eleven years, and then they went to boarding school. How did you spend your time? I worked, too.

01:45:32.420 - 01:45:48.080

In the stores? Uh-huh. Then, eventually, both of your parents died while you were there? My father died when our son was seven years old, so yes.

01:45:50.880 - 01:46:09.900

Tell me about your children now. Well, our son is fifty-one years old and lives in Houston, Texas. He is married to a lawyer who is a partner in a Wall Street law firm, and is computer-immersed completely.

01:46:11.440 - 01:46:29.940

Our daughter is the very opposite. Our daughter stayed in Canada, married a Canadian. She is American passport and went to school down here for several years. She has three children.

01:46:30.560 - 01:46:45.440

Her husband is a scientist. He is a marine biologist and gave it all up to become a pastor, and she is too. Kelly: In a church? That is the only kind of pastor I know, I guess.

01:46:47.080 - 01:47:08.320

Tell me about the grandchildren. Our oldest is a girl and she's 26 and she's just married this past February. She was brain damaged at birth and has some handicaps. She has extreme talents in certain areas and handicaps in others.

01:47:09.280 - 01:47:32.280

Our oldest grandson is a year younger and he's 25. He graduated with a degree in biology and is a graphic artist and is doing extremely well. He lives in Vancouver, now has a small business of his own, and is doing quite well.

01:47:32.580 - 01:47:49.660

He has traveled a great deal because his particular talents seem to be in demand, and so we are very proud of what he does. Our youngest is eight years younger. He just had his seventeenth birthday and is graduating from high school at the end of

01:47:50.320 - 01:48:03.200

next year. He has just finished writing his SAT scores, and I do not know what he is going to do. He is also immersed in computers, so I do not know what that is going to lead to. Kelly: Are you able to have family reunions?

01:48:03.640 - 01:48:20.920

McMillan: We have until fairly recently. We were all together when our granddaughter got married in February. But there are fewer and far between. It's more the children coming to visit us now.

01:48:21.680 - 01:48:39.480

By that I meant particularly our daughter, and she will be here next Monday to take over when our son leaves this Thursday. What made you decide to move to Phoenix? Well, arthritis, sinus problems with my husband, mainly health problems.

01:48:39.640 - 01:49:01.880

And we've been in and out of Phoenix since 19—well, we actually moved here before we went to California, as I mentioned before. After a number of years in Canada, he developed a lot of arthritis, pretty seriously. And so we kept coming back down here.

01:49:02.120 - 01:49:19.800

Then the excuse was that we needed our children in school down here for three years at that time in order to establish their American citizenship, even though both my husband and I are Americans. At that time, the children had to spend three years before the age of twenty-one.

01:49:20.580 - 01:49:33.100

By the time you get to twenty-one, you are pretty involved in other things. We elected to bring them down here for their high school, and so they completed high school down here. down every year.

01:49:33.240 - 01:49:50.460

We would try and run the business, flying back and forth. We had pretty good help, so we managed to get through those years. As I say, one was always an American. Our son can't imagine being anything but an American.

01:49:50.800 - 01:50:20.160

Our daughter feels torn fifty percent either way, but being married in Canada and to a Kelly: Were you involved in anything that in the organization of a FIFA/NLA organization? No, no, no. I know that you've had a lot of good times, but you've also had some sad times.

01:50:20.860 - 01:50:35.560

What has gotten you through those sad times? Probably looking around at people who had more problems than I did. I cannot answer that, I am sorry. With any originality anyway.

01:50:36.500 - 01:50:58.640

What is your personal opinion of Jacqueline Cochran and the WASP program that she is responsible for? I think that we all have to respect what she did. We certainly have to be grateful for opening the door to the chance of doing what we did.

01:50:59.460 - 01:51:22.880

Regardless of what else or for what motives that she may have had, I can't ever imagine anyone not being grateful for the procedure that she went through in order to make that possible. What do you feel the legacy of the WASP will be?

01:51:25.160 - 01:51:59.520

Opening a door that most people couldn't have even imagined. I went to an invitational program that was put on by the women instructors at Williams Air Force Base before it was disbanded a few years ago. The one thing that came through loud and clear was that if there hadn't been a WAF or WASP

01:51:59.780 - 01:52:24.920

program, they would never have reached the status that they did. And so the legacy is, again, opening that door to the possibility of using women, and they've proven themselves ever since. So I do not take any credit for anything except being very fortunate to be involved with a

01:52:24.960 - 01:52:38.640

group who opened that door. Kelly: Of all the things that you have ever done, what is the one thing that you are most proud of? Rothenberg: Oh, there are so many of them.

01:52:38.920 - 01:52:59.840

I would not even know. I could say having two great children, having three great grandchildren, having wonderful opportunities, being born at the right time to do something very exciting and something very memorable.

01:53:01.140 - 01:53:18.820

There's just been so many. I feel very, very fortunate. Good. If you could say something to children, your grandchildren, great-grandchildren, children that you will never know in future generations, that might encourage them to achieve or to

01:53:19.860 - 01:53:39.020

have a dream and to go for it, what would you say to those children? Don't ever shortchange yourself. Second thing is always have respect for yourself. Those are the two, I think, most important things for young people growing up.

01:53:40.880 - 01:54:03.020

In what order you put them, I'm not sure which is the most important, but to me, that's what I personally think is so important. When you look in the mirror, you see somebody that you like. Kelly: Lee, is there anything that I have left out, or anything that you would like

01:54:03.040 - 01:54:16.280

to talk about? Lee: You have brought out things that I did not even know that I was going to say. Kelly: Listen, I thank you. Wings Across America thanks you, and I thank you for Children and Future Generations.

01:54:16.540 - 01:54:29.460

You are an inspiration. Lee: Oh, thank you very much. You are very kind and there are many of us, fortunately, still around, including you. Kelly: Did you have a nickname at Sweetwater?

01:54:29.980 - 01:54:45.880

Kistiakowsky: No, just Lee. It is so short that there really is not any way that you can shorten that. Virginia is more than I can handle. The shortness of shortening that way is not much.

01:54:47.640 - 01:55:05.520

But I was always Lee to my father, and my mother only used Virginia when she was reprimanding me for something that she thought needed reprimanding. As a matter of fact, a little side light is that my husband did not know my first name was Virginia until we were married.

01:55:05.760 - 01:55:24.840

Until we took out a marriage license. Kelly: Oh, that is wonderful. Nancy, it was just so great to meet you both, and I am so proud of you both. Because seriously, I mean that.

01:55:25.520 - 01:56:05.620

I have mentioned it to many, many people, that I think what you are doing is just wonderful. Are we off camera? I'm only being— You know, we as WASPs are concerned about what will happen to the future of whatever

01:56:06.040 - 01:56:19.320

we're leaving behind and so on. And they're worried about where things are going to go and what are you going to do with the money and so on. I guess maybe that's very important, but I really can't get too excited about this at

01:56:19.360 - 01:56:33.540

all. It's just not that important to me. I'm sorry that I just can't take a very active role in whatever they're going to do. But I think what you people are doing is very, very profitable.

01:56:33.860 - 01:56:55.840

Profitable to the future, just as you said. Profitable to those coming along. If we can give them any kind of feeling of what was it like and so on, I think that's That's wonderful because when, as you say, when we're gone, nobody is going to answer

01:56:55.900 - 01:57:16.740

those questions except the multiple books that have been written, all of which I find short of facts and figures. Very disappointing, I think, in lots of ways. But I think having, I mean, the computer is the future, really the future.

01:57:17.700 - 01:57:35.280

And I think that the archives that are held that way are really in many respects much more important than even what's going on up here with us. Because let's face it, there's a lot that we're losing. And I mean it's just natural.

01:57:37.000 - 01:57:55.220

We've done so many other things, there have been so many other important things that have come along and so on that you drop something along the way. And I just feel that having this, if anybody is interested, and I think they should be, and I think they will be, I think what you're doing is just wonderful.

01:57:55.490 - 01:58:02.800

I meant that sincerely when I said that. I think you would have made a great lawyer. Thank you. I wanted to go to law school.

01:58:03.070 - 01:58:10.360

Didn't get to go. Did you really? You are so articulate. Well, not usually.

01:58:10.390 - 01:58:22.340

You brought out the best in me, I can assure you. We hope that's the case. Well, youíd be amazed at the number of walks when they sent their questionnaire back that said to us, ìPlease hurry before itís too late.

01:58:22.410 - 01:58:29.100

I want to tell my own story.î No, I donít think she would be. I think she would. And not have somebody rewrite it for me.

01:58:29.140 - 01:58:45.700

Well, and you know, everybody had different experiences. You know, there are so many organizations and clubs and units and so on. When you talk about what did you miss most with you, you know, notÖ we were so separated. I mean, we were fragmented.

01:58:46.760 - 01:58:54.860

And so our experiences are so very different. Youíre her little man. Yeah, thatís my little man. See now youíre putting this up here.

01:58:54.860 - 01:59:04.000

I was going to get on again. I turned the lights off, but Iím just letting it roll, because youíre saying some interesting things. Oh, well, itís just as I say, I know this sounds like a lot of flattery and so on.

01:59:04.040 - 01:59:14.820

I donít really mean it that way. I believe that she is the reason I put that in. I think sheís the artist who did the FIFA Nella. I think she's the one who worked for Disney.

01:59:16.080 - 01:59:22.300

The one that's in the Life magazine, too. Yeah. Do you really? I really do.

01:59:22.300 - 01:59:26.000

I thought she was in the Machine of Love. I could be wrong. Oh, yes. Could it be Bird Granger?

01:59:26.600 - 01:59:29.240

Oh, no. No, no. Not Bird Granger. No, no.

01:59:30.880 - 01:59:38.300

Bird I knew, because of course she lived in Arizona. Right. And so on. Let me look real quick, because she's in here.

01:59:38.460 - 01:59:56.760

It's in here. That picture's in here. The reason that I was so interested in that was, I'm sure, is because she was killed, of course, but I think in some of the archives where I think they mentioned her name.

01:59:59.120 - 02:00:15.460

She didn't actually design it, but she's the one who knew that it would be available. - A mascot familiar designed by Walt Disney for the girl pilots, Trims Blouse of Anne Armstrong McClelland, 21 year old, and whose young pilot husband has been missing since Bhutan,

02:00:15.880 - 02:00:29.180

majored in aeronautics, college and wants to fly after the war. I don't know. - I think she was an artist in Disney's area. - That's a neat thing I had never heard before.

02:00:29.360 - 02:00:54.360

- Yeah, if you-- - Okay, Lee, tell me about meeting the queen. Shirley Render, who is an author and we have just discussed, who is a very interesting person in herself, was not a WASP, did not fly in any sort of military situation, but

02:00:54.440 - 02:01:15.560

was always interested in women's flying. She became the curator of a Western Aviation Museum in Canada. There's only two in all of Canada, and one of them happens to be in Winnipeg. Because I started flying in Winnipeg and started my training there, Shirley invited me to a

02:01:15.580 - 02:01:38.240

special reception for the Queen and Prince Philip. That was when his uncle, Montbatten, was killed. He did not come, but the Queen continued to take his place and her own business as well. It was to cut the ribbon and open the museum.

02:01:38.620 - 02:01:59.580

She flew in and she wanted arrangements made to speak to a few people as much as time would permit. Shirley gave her a list with a little background of five women that were there. One was the first Canadian pilot to ever have a license in B.C., and she was in her eighties.

02:02:01.080 - 02:02:20.140

Then there was an airline pilot, there was an instructor, a Canadian instructor, and one who went to England, and myself. So I borrowed a uniform from one of the WASPs and had it sent to me. It was a last-minute thing.

02:02:20.320 - 02:02:32.340

I had decided not to go. It's a long trip. I was working at the time, and my husband, as usual, talked me into it. I said, "All right, fine.

02:02:33.280 - 02:02:55.140

I'm not really that interested, but I will go. I can always see the museum later." But I did go, and of the people that she decided, and I did not realize that the Queen only meets and talks to people that she has read about prior to the time of the walkthrough

02:02:55.460 - 02:03:04.720

that they do. It looks very spontaneous. It isn't. Unfortunately, she missed the lady who was older and was the first pilot, because she

02:03:05.000 - 02:03:15.480

wasn't with anybody else. Mind you, I was alone too. I was not with the other three that were in a group. She spoke to the three in the group, started to run out of time, and came and spoke to

02:03:15.540 - 02:03:24.000

me. I was amazed. "What do you do? How do you answer questions?"

02:03:24.000 - 02:03:33.520

"No, no, you don't. I was in a uniform, so I'm supposed to salute, but I didn't have the proper hat on, so I didn't salute. So I just acknowledged.

02:03:33.620 - 02:03:52.760

I nodded my head, which was about all I could do. The questions she asked, unfortunately, were very searching, but would have taken half an hour to have given her any kind of answer. Like, "If I'm Canadian, how come I was in the American service?"

02:03:52.760 - 02:04:07.860

Well, that could go on for quite some time. But anyway, I was very blunt in saying, you know, my parents were Americans and that was my option. And I started to fly in Canada and used that training to go down and join the American

02:04:08.180 - 02:04:20.900

services, and I let it go at that. But she was so knowledgeable, I could not believe she had a specific request for each question that she asked. My husband says that it lasted five minutes.

02:04:21.040 - 02:04:30.800

I think it was probably two to three minutes. It would be much closer to the amount of time. But it was very, very interesting to have met her. She was a lot different than what I had anticipated.

02:04:31.740 - 02:04:44.160

She was all dressed in lavender and she was as pale as you could be and she was completely colorless. And the minute she smiled, her whole face lit up. I just, I could not believe the transformation.

02:04:44.340 - 02:04:47.280

It was just as though she had put on, anyway, she was very gracious.