Elizabeth Maxine Chambers Cramsey, 44-W-3 May 11, 1961

Reposted from the National Archives

A WASP’s Story

Posted on December 20, 2014 by hilaryparkinsonToday’s post comes from Ashley Mattingly, an archivist at the National Archives in St. Louis.

The year was 1943, and Elizabeth “Betty” Maxine Chambers was a young mother and a widow. Betty’s husband, Army pilot Lt. Robert William Chambers, had died in 1942 when his P-38F Lightening aircraft crashed at Mills Field in San Mateo, California. Undaunted, Betty applied to be among the first female pilots in the newly formed Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program.

A native of Hollywood, California, Betty worked for the Walt Disney Company inking cartoon celluloid cells and for Universal Studios inking cells for “picture process work.” After the death of her husband, Betty and her baby moved in with her parents; she also acquired a more stable job as a telephone operator at Southern California Telephone Company.

Betty wanted more. Like more than 1,000 other women, she took to the skies to find it.

Betty and her comrades applied to an innovative civilian program designed to employ women to ferry wartime aircraft, serve as flight instructors, tow targets for live anti-aircraft practice, transport cargo, and fly experimental aircraft. These female pilots relieved men from domestic duties so they could fight overseas in the war.

The WASP program was created in August 1943 when two other formerly established programs were merged: Jacqueline Cochran’s Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) and Nancy Harkness Love’s Women’s Auxiliary Ferry Squadron (WAFS). The WASP program was directed by Jacqueline Cochran while Nancy Love became the Executive of the Ferry Division of the Air Transport Command.

Women who possessed a pilot’s license and were between the ages of 21 and 35 were welcome to apply. Aviatrixes across the United States fled from their desks and kitchens to climb into cockpits to serve their country.

After an interview process, the women were trained as rigorously as military pilots and were paid at a rate of $1,800 per year. Successful trainees were stationed at one of 120 air bases, paid $3,000 per year, and reclassified as civilian pilots.

Like the majority of her fellow pilots, Betty Chambers received her training at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. After training, Betty was sent to Turner Field in Albany, Georgia then attended the Army Air Force Tactical School in Orlando, Florida. She was later stationed at Greenwood Army Air Field in Greenwood, Mississippi.

As male pilots returned from wartime service, WASP members in service at the end of 1944 were forced to resign. Men wanted to fly domestically, and the country wanted women back at home to take care of their families. Betty Chambers was among the group of women whose service ended when the WASP program was disbanded.

This December 20 marks the 70th anniversary of the deactivation of the WASP program, a program so beloved by the women who served under it that many alumnae continued to fly and attend reunions.

On November 2, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed Public Law 95-202, which granted military veteran status to all who served under the WASP program. In 2009, the highest medal awarded to civilians—the Congressional Gold Medal—was bestowed upon the Women Airforce Service Pilots.

The National Archives at St. Louis maintains the civilian WASP official personnel folders (OPFs). The administrative paperwork in these files reveals story after story of WASP adventures and history. OPFs are open to the public and photocopies of OPFs can be obtained for a fee. Please visit http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/archival-programs/civilian-personnel-archival/ for more information.

Respectfully reposted from THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Marguerite "Sis" Tuffin Bernhardt, 44-W-3 | May 15, 2013

“We all did what they asked us to do… We were just happy doing what we were doing. It was a rarity. We were thrilled to be a part of it.   It was our war, our country and we were able to help.”  /s/Marguerite Sis Tuffin Bernhardt, 44-W-3

WASP Marguerite Tuffin Bernhardt was born in Hartford,  Connecticut on May 27, 1919 to a bookkeeper dad and part-time schoolteacher mom.  She fell in love with flying as a young girl.  At age thirteen, she built her first model airplane with balsa wood, glue,  and tissue paper. 

At age sixteen , Marguerite  applied for a ground school program for boys who wanted to learn how to fly.  Although the school didn’t actually teach flying, her classes were in Physics Of Flight, Navigation and Airplane Engines.  She was the only girl in a class of thirty.  When asked how the boys felt about having a female classmate, she later said, "Some of the boys didn't take to it, but I didn't care.  The course was three or four months,  and only two boys and I finished it."

After graduating from high school, Marguerite worked as a clerk with an insurance company and, every two weeks, she was able to take one week’s salary and pay for a flying lesson. "I didn't always get my lesson. They would take men first. So I’d say, 'OK, I'll wait’,  but just doing it, just being up there. I wasn't disappointed."

In order to keep flying and learn more about airplanes, Marguerite took a job working on airplane electrical systems at Bradley Field, Connecticut. While there, her mother told her about the military training program for women pilots.   She applied and, after completing the personal interview, tests,  and Army physical, she was accepted as a member of class 44-W-3.

Marguerite  paid her way from Conneticut to Sweetwater, Texas,  which was not an easy trip during World War II.   Of the 100 young women pilots who entered her training class, she was one of only fifty-seven who graduated.  On April 14, 1944, Marguerite proudly donned her Santiago Blue uniform and received her silver WASP wings.

After graduation, she was assigned to Perrin Army Air Base in Sherman, Texas, where she flew AT-6’s, AT-17’s and BT-13’s.  While at Perrin, she was given a temporary assignment to Bryan Army Air Base in Bryan, Texas. 

While stationed at Bryan, Marguerite completed Instrument Instructor’s School and received her Green Instrument Card, qualifying her to instruct on instruments and to make decisions about fly/don’t fly when the weather called for instrument flying.  She instructed Army Air Force cadets in instrument flying until the WASP were disbanded on December 20, 1944. 

She then returned to her home in Connecticut and married.  Eventually,  the couple had one son, Robin.   

Marguerite was living in the Ocala, Florida area when the news about the WASP being awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honour our nation can award a civilian, was first released.   Although she was not able to travel to Washington, she instantly became a local celebrity with the aviation community and the local newspapers.  In May, 2010, she was awarded her replica Congressional Gold Medal by Congressman Cliff Stearns.

Over the last several years, Marguerite found joy in attending local air shows and other aviation related events, making new friends and sharing her story with a new generation of Americans.   

Friend Connie McConnell shared her thoughts about Marguerite: 

       “What a privilege to know such a wonderful lady.   My husband said she was the best of the best. She was just one of a kind. She was feisty and strong-willed, but she was the most gentle person that you would ever know, and always gracious about everything,"

Marguerite recently told her friend that, with the exception of the birth of her son, being part of the WASP was the best experience of her life.  Because of this patriotic American and her WASP peers, today  women are flying as military pilots in every uniformed service. 

  

Marguerite Bernhardt took her last flight on May 15, in Ocala, FLorida at Hospice of Marion County’s Estelle’s House.   She was ninety-three.

She is survived by her brother,  George Tuffin;  granddaughter, Renate Bernhardt;  and great granddaughters Kiley and McKenzie. She was preceded in death by her only son, Robin.

A military memorial service will be held June 12, 2013 at the Florida National Cemetery.

God bless this American patriot and trailblazer and all of those whose lives she touched.

Respectfully posted by Nancy Parrish

Resources:

Ocala Star Banner    March9,2010   

Veterans Project of Marion County 

Ocala Star Banner, March 28, 2010

Juliette "Julie" Jenner Stege: 1912-2009

Chorus girl turned test pilot in WWIIAdded real estate as a career after raising family

July 05, 2009|By Bob Goldsborough, Special to the Tribune

Juliette "Julie" Jenner Stege's journey through life took her from the vaudeville stage in the 1920s and 1930s to serving as a test pilot in World War II to later careers as a stage actress and TV extra. Well into her 80s, Mrs. Stege remained active and vibrant, taking acting roles while also maintaining a thriving real-estate practice.

A resident of the unincorporated Glen Ellyn Woods area south of Glen Ellyn, Mrs. Stege, 97, died on Monday, June 22, at her home, said her son Tony Stege. 

Born in New York City and raised in Brooklyn's Bensonhurst section, Mrs. Stege changed her maiden name from Schwartz to Jenner and performed under the name of Julie Jenner. After accompanying a friend to a dance audition in Manhattan in 1928, she wound up getting a job herself as a dancer, Tony Stege said. That began a more than decade-long career on the stage, during which she performed with the Ziegfeld Follies and various vaudeville acts.

"I was very much in demand because I was such a good dancer," she told the Tribune in 2006. "I still think I'm on the stage." During those years, Mrs. Stege hobnobbed with the rich and famous, getting to know big stars such as Cary Grant, dating director Vincente Minnelli and frequently appearing in the influential gossip columns of Ed Sullivan and Walter Winchell.

While still a dancer, Mrs. Stege befriended an influential man who offered to pay for flying lessons at Mitchel Air Force Base on Long Island. She eventually earned a solo pilot's license and decided to put it to use once World War II broke out and family members of hers in Eastern Europe were sent to concentration camps. "She wanted to kill Hitler," her son said.

Mrs. Stege did not see combat, because female pilots were not permitted to fly missions overseas. But she did enlist in 1943 in the Women Airforce Service Pilots program, which performed test flights inside the U.S. on military equipment, moved aircraft around the country and towed targets for male pilots to shoot.

"Nobody knows there were any women pilots in WW II," she told the Tribune in 2003. "And back then, the men hated us because we were ruining their macho image. They tried to get us stopped." Mrs. Stege's cohorts in New York were very surprised that she was willing to exchange her dancing shoes for pilot's garb, her son said. "Ed Sullivan said to her, 'Julie, why are you joining the Air Force? Don't you know you're just a dumb chorus girl?'" Tony Stege said. "She always wanted to prove people wrong."

For her part, Mrs. Stege attributed some of her dramatic career change to her adventurous nature. "I was just very daring, and it was the most daring thing I could think of," Mrs. Stege told the Tribune in 2006.

While stationed in California during the war, Mrs. Stege met a fellow pilot six years her junior, Wallace Stege, whom she married in 1945. He died in 1995. After the war, Mrs. Stege and her husband moved to the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles, where she settled into her role as a wife and mother, her son said. She later took acting classes in the late 1960s at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in West Hollywood, Calif., her son said.

In 1971, the family moved to unincorporated Glen Ellyn. Mrs. Stege decided to plunge into two fields: acting in summer productions in Wisconsin, Illinois and Texas, and, in the late 1970s, starting a career selling residential real estate, Tony Stege said. She eventually also took up part-time residence in Burbank, Calif., and spent time in Hollywood acting in the 1990s as an uncredited extra on a variety of popular TV programs such as "Just Shoot Me," "The Drew Carey Show" and "Third Rock From the Sun," her son said. Mrs. Stege acted and sold real estate until she was close to 90, pulling back only after an auto accident injury.

In 2006, Mrs. Stege flew in a World War II-era aircraft for the first time in 62 years, riding with her son on a short flight from Kankakee to Wheeling in a plane owned by a foundation that aims to educate Americans with their flying classrooms and pieces of history.

In addition to her son, Mrs. Stege is survived by a daughter, Lisa; a son, Randy; three grandchildren; and a sister, Evelyn Stefansson Nef. 

respectfully reposted as originally written in the Chicago Tribune  July 5, 2009
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* Note: Julie Jenner was one of 96 young women pilots who entered Army Air Force flight training at Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas.  On April 15, 1944. only 57 members of class 43-W-3 graduated.  Julie was stationed at Minter Field, Bakersfield, California at the 3008th BU.  She flew an an engineering test pilot, utility and administrative pilot, flying AT-6's and UC-78's.  In 2010, Julie, along with her sister WASP, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for her groundbreaking service to her country during  WWII.  Because of the WASP and their service, many young male pilots were able to leave their stateside flying jobs and fly combat missions.  

WASP Marjorie Redding Christiansen, 44-W-3

*I was born in January 10, 1920, in a homestead shack out on the Powder River, eight miles out of Broadus, Montana. Dad was trying to get the doctor, but it turned out he was out on call, delivering another baby. When dad got back, I was there.

We moved to South Dakota, where mom was born, and from there to Mystic, South Dakota, a little sawmill town up in the Black Hills, where I grew up.  I went to school at the Black Hills Teacher's College at Spearfish, South Dakota. During my last year we had the Civilian Pilot's Training, government sponsored to train pilots for the military. One girl to nine boys were allowed into the program. They had a ground school, and we were told the ones who got the best grades would get the chance to fly. They taught weather, aerodynamics, navigation, all classes that fit right in with my math and science.  I was the lucky girl.

I taught school at a small high school, not far from Spearfish. One of the fellows I flew with would fly over in his Cub and take me for a ride at noon or after school, landing in a hay field.  As soon as school was out, I headed for Wichita to work in the aircraft factories. I was a final inspector for the Beechcraft Biplane, and getting in what flying I could in the Civil Air Patrol.

Jacqueline Cochran was going to the larger cities getting names of women who wished to enroll in the WASP. Meriam Roby and I, from the Civil Air Patrol, decided to go to Texas, and get to see Jackie.  We enlisted and were assigned to class 44-3.  My assignment was Dodge City, Kansas to train on B-26's, but orders were changed. Doris Duren and I were sent to Independence Army Air Force Basic Training School for Air Force Cadets. We flew the North American BT-14s that were repaired, and flew non-flying officers on administrative duty.

After deactivation, we were encouraged to apply for jobs with the Civil Service as Aircraft Communicators. We took training in Pacific Palisades, California. I was sent to Salt Lake City, Utah and then to Fairfield, Utah Radio. There I married my boss, Raymond J. Christiansen. I could not work under my husband, so I resigned. I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormon Church, became active in doing genealogy work, and helping others to do it. I trained others to be teachers at the Family History Center, and am still involved in this work, mostly by internet now.

Ray and I have six children. I was involved in Scouting for about 15 years where we started Cub Scouts in the Enoch-Parawon utah area. I was Area Director over the Cubbing for years. I recieved the 'Second Miler' award on April 9, 1973, another 'Second Miler' award on April 29, 1975, and the 'Silver Beaver' on May 11, 1976.

All our children are happily married and we have 28 grandchildren, and **four great-grandchildren.  

*IN HER OWN WORDS--FROM WASP BETTY TURNER'S "OUT OF THE BLUE AND INTO HISTORY" p. 348

**written in 2001

________________

In 2005, Marjorie was honored by the Arnold Air Society/Silver Wings Joint National Project with Wings Across America.  Several cadets were given the opportunity to visit her in  her home and to ask about her service and her life.  They will remember this petite, gentle patriot-- as will all who were blessed to meet her.    

by np

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From the official notice:

Marjorie Redding Christiansen passed away on September 13, 2008 at the age of 88 due to causes coincident with age.

After the passing of her husband, Marjorie lived in Goshen, Utah with her daughter and at the time of death was living in Blanding, Utah with her son. Marjorie is survived by her brother Victor Redding, of Wiamanilo, HI, her six children, Cindy (Orville) Gerow of Goshen; Utah, Frank (Jane) Christiansen of Copperton, Utah; Mark (Debbie) Christiansen, Blanding, Utah; Teena (Bob) Taylor, of Taylorsville, Utah; Dave (Connie) Christiansen of West Valley City, Utah; and Lee (Ginger) Christiansen of Rhododendron, OR, 28 grandchildren, and 18 great grandchildren. A viewing will be held at the Enoch First Ward on Saturday, September 27, at 9:30 a.m. followed by funeral services at 11:00 a.m. Interment will be at the Enoch Cemetery