With men flying combat missions, WASPs ascended to key role

WASHINGTON - They flew planes during World War II but weren’t considered “real” military pilots. No flags were draped over their coffins when they died while on duty. And when their service ended, they had to pay their own bus fare home.

These aviators — all women — got long-overdue recognition Wednesday. They received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor given by Congress, in a ceremony on Capitol Hill. Ten of the nearly 300 women honored are from Colorado, including Millicent Young, of Colorado Springs, according to Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo.

About 200 women who served as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, were on hand to receive the award. Now mostly in their late 80s and early 90s, some came in wheelchairs, many sported dark-blue uniforms, and one, June Bent, of Westboro, Mass., clutched a framed photograph of a comrade who had died.

As a military band played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” one of the women who had been sitting in a wheelchair stood and saluted through the entire song.

“Women Airforce Service Pilots, we are all your daughters. You taught us how to fly,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to serve in that capacity. She said the pilots went unrecognized for too long, even though their service blazed a trail for other women in the U.S. military.

In accepting the award, WASP pilot Deanie Parrish, 88, of Waco, Texas, said the women had volunteered without expectation of thanks. Their mission was to fly noncombat missions in order to free up male pilots to fly overseas.

“We did it because our country needed us,” Parrish said.

WASP Ty Hughes Killen, 85, of Lancaster, Calif., put it more simply: “We’re a bunch of tough old ladies.”

Thirty-eight WASPS were killed while serving in World War II, but they were long considered civilians, not members of the military, and thus weren’t entitled to the pay and benefits given to men.

They were only afforded veterans’ status in 1977 after a long fight. It’s estimated that about 300 of the more than 1,000 WASPs are still alive.

A day earlier, the women participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Memorial with the knowledge that it may be one of the last times so many of them see one another. Killen said it was the “gals who are watching from upstairs” of whom she’s been thinking.

Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., along with Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and Susan Davis, D-Calif., led the push to get the women recognized.

Hutchison noted at the ceremony that, when the unit was disbanded in 1944, many of the women had to pay for the bus fare home from an airfield in Sweetwater, Texas. When some died on duty, it was fellow female aviators who helped pay their funeral expenses.

Despite the danger and obstacles they faced, the women fondly recalled the camaraderie they shared.

“It was fun coming into a strange airport and having the mechanics say, ‘Where’s the pilot?’” said Dorothy Eppstein, 92, of Kalamazoo, Mich.