Memorial service for female WWII pilots

ARLINGTON, Va. - Under clear blue skies, beneath the spires of the U.S. Air Force Memorial, military aviators gathered Tuesday to pay homage to the achievements of the first women to fly military aircraft during World War II.

The memorial service and wreath-laying ceremony, with a reception afterward, was a prelude to Wednesday's presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the 1,102 pilots who served as Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II.

Retired U.S. Coast Guard Vice Adm. Vivien Crea, the keynote speaker at the service, told those assembled that by answering America's call to duty in 1942, they gave birth to a fledgling service that would become the WASPs with achievements that would go on to inspire another generation of women in the military.

"As aviators, you possessed an invaluable capability that our nation desperately wanted," Crea said. "You joined not because you were great pioneers, but because of your great sense of duty. You served America in its time of peril."

Nearly 200 of the surviving women pilots attended the ceremonies with family and friends, and family members represented other pilots.

Thirty-eight of those women were honored with roses during the memorial ceremony for having made the ultimate sacrifice for their country during their service, and the 20th Figher Wing from Shaw Air Force Base, Ill., performed a flyover in the "mission man" formation.

The WASPs' service, and their ability to fly every type of aircraft, Crea noted, prompted U.S. Air Force Gen. Henry Harley "Hap" Arnold to declare, " 'We have not been able to build an airplane that you can't handle. It is on the record that women can fly as well as men.' "

Crea herself is an accomplished aviator, inspired by the WASPs' service, serving for 36 years of active duty, most recently as the 25th vice commandant of the Coast Guard. She became the 21st and only female Ancient Albatross, a designation given to the longest serving active duty Coast Guard aviator.

"It has taken over six decades for our nation to recognize the unique service and valor of the WASPs with the Congressional Gold Medal you shall receive tomorrow," Crea said. "But your true legacy is much more vital, enduring and transformational than that honored piece of gold. It is in the young women and men, from your peers and your own children to today's youngest generation that you have inspired with your patriotism."

Crea said that because of the WASPs, there is a new generation of women fighter pilots, lifesavers and warriors "who enjoy the absence of any conception that they can't do something because of a coincident of birth...that women are equal partners in war as they are in peace."

From 1942 to 1944, more than 25,000 women applied to the WASP program, which was an experimental Army Air Corps program to explore the opportunity for women to serve as pilots and relieve men for overseas duty; 1,102 women were accepted. The WASP were not granted military status until 1977.

At a reception at the Womens Memorial at Arlington National Cemetary after the service at Air Force Memorial, Gen. Norton Schwartz, U.S. Air Force chief of staff, said that this week's special events, "takes us back to another era, and not merely to honor the past, but truly in a larger sense, also to correct some of its errors. The well deserved respect for the WASPs is long overdue."

Schwartz said it is important to celebrate the WASPs' contributions, not only in wartime service, but for their pivotal roles as women pioneers blazing a trail to the military cockpit.

"Pioneers like you often had to endure persistent criticism, which made your efforts ever more courageous, and your achievements ever more substantial," Schwartz told the WASPs.

The legacy of the WASPs, he said, is that these accomplished women went on to become leaders in civilian life "continuing their noble efforts to vanquish societal limitations and subtle forms of descrimination" and living the example of what diversity can mean.

"You demonstrated that our great nations beneifts most when it rightly harnesses the abundent energy, the generosity, the talents of all of its citizens, and you proved that far our far greater strengths and vitality lie in inclusiveness," Schwartz said.

For Jan Nicolai, whose late aunt, Helen Jo Severson, was in WASP Class 43-5, the days of celebration of the WASPs' contributions is very special. She carried roses and a photo of her aunt to the memorial servcie.

"When she was inducted into the South Dakota Air Hall of Fame, and in 2007 she received her star on her grave site, we thought that was it," Nicolai said at the start of the memorial service. "But this, this is magnificent."

For many of the women who became WASPs it was their love of flying, as much as love of country, that set them on a course that would change their lives.

"When Lindbergh flew over the ocean I was seven years old, and I thought, 'I want to be a pilot some day,''" recalled Dolores Reed, 92, WASP Class 44-1.