Tag Archive for Women

Womens History Month: Womens Airforce Service Pilots

March 17, 2010 Craig Family History, Genealogy

Adapted and updated from “Memorial Day 2009″ which first appeared simultaneously at GeneaBlogie and The Peripatetic Graveyard Rabbit on May 25, 2009.

If you haven’t been to Arlington, Virginia in the last several years, you may not recognize the two memorials shown above.  The top one is the “Women in Military Service for America” memorial and it stands near the gate of Arlington National Cemetery. The next one is the Air Force Memorial, a short distance away on the grounds of Fort Myer.

The women’s memorial is intended to recall all women who gave their lives in military service.  And the Air Force Memorial is to commemorate “the service and sacrifices of the men and women of the United States Air Force and its predecessor organizations.”  But there’s one group of servicewomen who were nearly forgotten by the Government with respect to recognition.  That group is the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (“WASPs”) of World War II.   These were the first women pilots employed by the United States  military.

The government first used women to fly military airplanes in 1942.  The Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) was formed in September of that year under the command of Nancy Harkness Love at New Castle Army Air Base, Delaware.  This unit ferried aircraft from factories to airfields, freeing the male pilots for combat duty.

Nancy Love, commander, Womens Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, with squadron member Betty Gilles, 1942. Love and Gilles were the first women to fly the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber.

In 1943, the Army activated the 319th Women’s Flying Training Detachment at Ellington Army Air  Field,  near Houston, Texas.  The commander was renowned aviator Jacqueline Cochran.  Later, the two women’s flying units were combined under the name “Women’s Airforce Service Pilots.”   Cochran was given overall command, and training was moved to Avenger Field near Sweetwater, Texas.

The women pilots flew almost every military aircraft in the U.S. inventory.  In addition to ferrying duty, the WASPs towed targets for live-fire antiaircraft exercises, trained male pilots in some of the advanced aircraft, flew simulated bomb and strafing runs for training combat troops, and performed other flying duties when and where necessary to relieve male pilots.

On March 3, 1943, Margaret Sanford Oldenberg of Contra Costa County, California, became the first WASP to die in the line of duty when her plane crashed five miles from the airfield.  Overall, thirty-eight women were killed in the line of duty.

In 1944, General  Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commanding general of the U.S.  Army Air Forces, declared the WASP mission to be over.  On December 7, 1944, Arnold appeared at Avenger Field and said the WASPs had helped move the country “toward the final moment of victory” and that the sacrifices of the thirty-eight who died would be “long remember[ed].”  It would be nearly four decades before women flew U.S. military aircraft again.

The Government did not consider the WASPs to be service veterans.  They were therefore entitled to no medals, and no funeral honors.  That began to change in 1977 when Congress passed a law permitting the Secretary of Defense to recognize the WASPs as having performed military duty.  In 1984, the WASPs were indiviudally awarded the World War II Victory Medal and the American Campaign Medal.

Despite these changes for the WASPs, the Army, which operates Arlington National Cemetery, refused to allow WASP members to be buried there until 2002.

Jacqueline Cochran (center), commander, 319th Women's Flying Training Detachment, surrounded by new trainees, 1942.

In 2002, former WASP Irene Kinne Englund died at age 84.  Her family attempted to have her buried at Arlington based on her WASP service.  They were told that she eligible, but only because her husband was a World War II veteran, not because of her own service.   Her daughter, Judith Englund, took up the cause for her mother and all WASPs. Several months later, the Army changed its mind.

One June 15, 2002, WASP Irene Kinne Englund became the first of her sisters of the air to have a full military funeral at Arlington.

By this year (2010), there are fewer than 300 of the more than 1100 WASPs still alive.   Last week, a number of those living aviation icons laid a wreath at the Air Force Memorial in Arlington, Virginia and then were present in the U.S. Capitol to accept the Congressional Gold Medal, a final and fitting tribute to America’s female military aviation pioneers.

Carol Brinton Selfridge, 92 and a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots Class 44-5, and her grandaughter, Lt. Col. Christy Kayser-Cook, share a moment during the reception to honor women pilots who flew with the Women Airforce Service Pilots at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial March 9, 2010, at Arlington National Cemetery, Va. (U.S. Air Force Photo)

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November 30, 2009 Craig Uncategorized

I received a comment on the recent post,  The Florence Crittenton Homes from Jeannette Yeunyul Pai-Espinosa, President of the National Crittenton Foundation:

Thanks Craig for including us here! Today there are 27 Crittenton agencies in 24 states still supporting the empowerment and self sufficiency of young women and their families. Today, Dr. Barrett’s great granddaughter serves on our Board of Trustees and the family legacy lives on. Don’t hesitate to let us know if we can be of support to you in your efforts. You might be interested to know about our Young mothers @ the margin campaign, http://www.AtTheMargin.org, which links digital story telling with a social policy initiative designed to ensure that young mothers have the supports they and their children need to thrive!

In this season, this winter of so much discontent, I would urge you to click on the links, learn about the Foundation’s important work, and consider these young women when you are giving.

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Memorial Day 2009

May 25, 2009 Craig Uncategorized

memorial_women(click for larger image)

If you haven’t been to Arlington Cemetery in the last several years, you may not recognize the memorial shown above.  It is the “Women in Military Service for America” memorial and it stands near the gate of the cemetery.

The women’s memorial is intended to recall all women who gave their lives in military service.   But there’s one group of servicewomen who were nearly forgotten by the Government with respect to recognition.  That group is the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (“WASPs”) of World War II.   These were the first women pilots employed by the United States  military.

The government first used women to fly military airplanes in 1942.  The Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) was formed in September of that year under the command of Nancy Love at New Castle Army Air Base, Delaware.  This unit ferried aircraft from factories to airfields, freeing the male pilots for combat duty.

In 1943, the Army activated the 319th Women’s Flying Training Detahcment at Ellington Army Air  Field,  near Houston, Texas.  The commander was renowned aviator Jacqueline Cochran.  Later, the two women’s flying units were combined under the name “Women’s Airforce Service Pilots.”   Cochran was given overall command, and training was moved to Avenger Field near Sweetwater, Texas.

The women pilots flew almost every military aircraft in the U.S. inventory.  In addition to ferrying duty, the WASPs towed targets for live-fire antiaircraft exercises, trained male pilots in some of the advanced aircraft, flew simulated bomb and strafing runs for training combat troops, and performed other flying duties when and where necessary to relieve male pilots.

On March 3, 1943, Margaret Sanford Oldenberg of Contra Costa County, California, became the first WASP to die in the line of duty when her plane crashed five miles from the airfield.  Overall, thirty-eight women were killed in the line of duty.

But the Government did not consider the WASPs to be service veterans.  They were therefore entitled to no medals, and no funeral honors.  That changed somewhat in 1977 when Congress passed a law permitting the Secretary of Dfense to recognize the WASPs as having performed military duty.  Despite this change in status, the Army, which operates Arlington National Cemetery, refused to allow WASP members to be buried there until 2002.

In 2002, former WASP Irene Kinne Englund died at age 84.  Her family attempted to have her buried at Arlington based on her WASP service.  They were told that she eligible, but onl;y because her husband was a World War II veteran, not because of her own service.   Her daughter, Judith Englund, took up the cause for her mother and all WASPs. Several months later, the Army changed its mind.

One June 15, 2002, WASP Irene Kinne Englund became the first of her sisters of the air to have a full military funeral at Arlington.

Cross-posted at The Peripatetic Graveyard Rabbit along with up-to-the minute graveyard and cemetery news!

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Carnival of Genealogy: A Tribute to Women

March 18, 2009 Craig Uncategorized

The Carnival is now posted at Jasia’s Creative Gene.  There are 31 outstanding selections from both veteran and nedwcomer genea-bloggers.

Mary Elizabeth Bowser (1840- ??)

Mary Elizabeth Bowser (1840- ??)

You won’t find my contribution there; I simply ran out of time.  But had I had the time, I would have written about Mary Elizabeth Bowser.   A Central Intelligence Agency paper tells her story as one of the least-known, but perhaps most valuable, spies in the Civil War:

Union officers got so many valuable pieces of intelligence from slaves that the reports were put in a special category: “Black Dispatches.” Runaway slaves, many of them conscripted to work on Confederate fortifications, gave the Union Army a continually flowing stream of intelligence. So did slaves who volunteered to be stay-in-place agents. Tens of thousands of ex-slaves fought and died for the Union in military units. Less known is the work of other African-Americans who risked their lives in secret, gathering intelligence or while entering enemy territory as scouts.

One of the boldest—and least known—Northern spies of the war was a free African American who went under cover as a slave in what appears to have been a plan to place her in the official residence of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

The residence, called the Richmond White House, served as the Davis home and the President’s executive office. While he conducted Confederacy business there, he would not have seen his slaves as a threat to security. Official papers did not have to be given special protection when slaves were around because, by law, slaves had to be illiterate.

Elizabeth Van Lew well knew this law, and, while running her spy ring in Richmond, realized the espionage value of a slave who was secretly able to read and write. Van Lew had a perfect candidate for such an agent-in-place role:Mary Elizabeth Bowser.

The wealthy Van Lew family, which had 21 slaves in 1850, had only two by 1860—both of them elderly women. Yet, Virginia and Richmond archives show that the Van Lews had not gone through the legal procedures for the freeing of slaves. Freedom meant exile. Under Virginia law, freed slaves had to leave Virginia within a year after winning their freedom. Only by ignoring that law could Van Lew carry out the audacious placement of an agent in the Richmond White House.

Elizabeth Van Lew and her widowed mother Eliza raised the eyebrows of their social acquaintances in Richmond in 1846 by having a slave baptized as Mary Jane Richards in St. John’s Episcopal Church, revered as the site where Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Later, Elizabeth sent Mary Jane off to Philadelphia for an education. In 1855, Mary Jane sailed to Liberia, the African nation founded by Americans as a colony for ex-slaves.

On March 5, 1860, a ship bearing Mary Jane Richards arrived in Baltimore. She went on to Richmond—an illegal act for a freed slave. Five months later, she was arrested for “perambulating the streets and claiming to be a free person of color….” She was briefly jailed and released after Elizabeth Van Lew paid a $10 fine and claimed that Mary Jane was still a slave. This declaration would give her perfect cover as an agent. Mary Jane Richards married and became Mary Elizabeth Bowser. It is under that name that she enters Civil War espionage history.

Information about her is scanty. One good source is Thomas McNiven, who posed as a baker while making daily rounds as a Van Lew agent in Richmond. From him, down the years, came the report that she “had a photographic mind” and “Everything she saw on the Rebel President’s Desk, she could repeat word for word.”

Jefferson Davis’ widow, Varina, responding to an inquiry in 1905, denied that the Richmond White House had harbored a spy. “I had no ‘educated negro’ in my household,” she wrote. She did not mention that her coachman, William A. Jackson, had crossed into Union lines, bringing with him military conversations that he had overheard. In a letter from Major General Irvin McDowell to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, “Jeff Davis’ coachman” is cited as the source of information about Confederate deployments. A butler who served Jefferson Davis also made his way to Union lines.

From Intelligence in the Civil War–Black Dispatches, United States Central Intelligence Agency (2007)

After the war ended, Mary Elizabeth Bowser disappeared from Richmond and nothing is known about her life thereafter.   The 1900 census shows a Mary Bowser of the proper age living in Boston, but it is not clear that this is the same woman.  It is known that Elizabeth Van Lew had friends and acquaintances in Boston, and that she had sent Mary “up North” for an education.

Mary Elizabeth Bowser has been the subject of scholarly examination, as well as popular history, novels, and plays.  In 1995, she became one of just eight women ever admitted to the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.

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