Meeting a Pilot

Over the years my mom gave thousands of talks about her time as a Women’s Air Force Service Pilot during World War II, in more than thirty states.  Mom always loved telling her story, especially to schools.  I remember many times her eyes would be lit up like searchlights when she would get a package of letters from school children thanking her for a presentation.  Part of the message she gave the students was that their job in life was to follow their dreams, “as long as it isn’t immoral or illegal!”

One of those talks occurred in the mid 1990’s in Little Falls Wisconsin at the High School there.  A young lady that had been to many airshows as a youngster with her father got very excited after hearing mom talk, and decided she can learn to fly and have some kind of a career as a pilot.

In 1997 her father came to Faribault, Minnesota where my mom lived, and knocked on her door.  When mom opened the door, he told her that his daughter was going to the Air Force Academy. Mom dragged  him inside her home and proceeded to tell him her story about learning to fly, and eventually joining the WASP organization, flying heavy bombers and pursuits in the training command.  When she finished, she autographed one of her books for his daughter and gave it to him. 

I retired in 2012, and immediately started to assist mom with her traveling and presentations that she gave.  Earlier she had  received a book that was the history of Nellis Air Force Base, which was originally known as Las Vegas Army Airfield, where she served as a WASP during WWII.  She read the book, and was very disappointed that there was not one word about the ten WASPs that served there during WWII.

While she was trying to figure out how to contact the author, the author called her.  The author apologized, saying that the base had no records about the WASP during WWII, probably because that for years after the war, the WASP records were sealed.  The author then invited mom to Nellis to tell her story about her job at Las Vegas Army Airfield during the war.

Mom meeting Major (now Lt. Colonel) Carolyn Jenson

I brought mom to Las Vegas in September, shortly after I retired.  When we arrived at the Nellis Air Force Base, we parked and were met at the gate by two video teams, photographers, and an entire team of archaeologists. We thought the last group was funny because the last time mom was at this base was 1944!  We all were loaded into a bus, and proceeded onto the base.

We were brought to the hanger where the Thunderbirds Air Demonstration Squadron park their aircraft.  Outside the hanger, a single officer was waiting in front of the hanger for us. She introduced herself to mom, saying she was Major Carolyn Jenson, Thunderbird number three, and a top Air Force Combat pilot.  She had heard mom talk in high school at Little Falls Wisconsin.  She told mom, “I’m here because of you.”

hanger.

Being Burns and Allen

The day after mom passed away I was pretty depressed and just thinking about my 4 years helping her tell her story and traveling.  I realized that I had been mourning her for most of that time.  I recall helping her with her presentations right after she first started, when she was about 72, and how strong and vital her memory was.  The last five years of her life she was forgetting stories, getting lost in her memories while telling them,  and many, many times I had to remind her what she should be saying.

We had a PowerPoint presentation she used, and my response was to not sit off the stage and change slides, but to get up on stage near her so I could more effectively give her voice prompts as to what she forgot. 

One of the problems she had was her hearing – the aircraft she flew, and particularly the bombers she flew, both the B17 and the B26, were quite unforgiving with the volume of the huge engines, and all of the pilots from that era now need hearing aids, and mom was no different.  The problem I had however, is she did not like wearing the hearing aids, so I ended up hollering at her for her voice prompts.  I always felt so badly for her, thinking the audience was bothered by her missteps in her memory, as I made it quite obvious with my very loud reminders.

The last presentation she gave was for the Veteran’s Day Breakfast at the Bloomington City Hall building.  During the presentation, she completely forgot an entire story – one of her best, and one that was really funny.  She looked at the slide, looked at me, and I could see she did not remember anything.  I told her (loudly, again) if she remembered the time when she had to sign a piece of paper that said she would not fly below five hundred feet, but she thought it was fifty?  She looked at me and said, “No, tell me!”  The audience was howling with laughter, I told the story but was close to tears.  I felt it wasn’t my story, but hers.  The audience, however, loved the story (they always did). 

When I was thinking about this the day after she passed, I realized all those times she forgot and I had to help her remember, it was actually okay. All that time we were doing Burns and Allen, and that made it okay.  The audiences loved it.