WASP Peggy Parker Eccles passed away on May 9, 2009, the day before Mother's Day. She had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and was fighting the good fight. Our prayers go out to her family.Peggy's story is posted below--in her own words.
I was born on February 16, 1921, in Oregon City, Oregon. My inspiration and love of flying came from my father, also a pilot. I was a junior at Mills College when I got my pilot license in 1941. The Civilian Pilot Training program (CPT), was offered at Mills College, in California's San Francisco Bay area. When I began college at 16, I intended to head for medical school. I also wanted to fly to get the feeling of the third dimension.
After I finished the CPT training during my senior year of college, I was interviewed after spring vacation, I was asked to become a WASP right away. I opted to wait until after I graduated from college in June of 1942. I passed the required physical, but somehow my papers got lost somewhere at Randolph Field, San Antonio, Texas. After inquiring about the delay, I got my orders to report to Sweetwater, Texas.
I was upon graduation, assigned to the Air Transport Command in Romulus, Michigan. I mostly ferried the B-24 anf B-17 to point of embarkations, which included Great Falls, Montanna, the San Francisco Bay area and Newark, New Jersey. I also flew several Norsemen to Montreal, Canda, which were crated and sent to England. Then I was sent to the Second Air Force Training Command, and assigned to a B-29 base near Alamogordo New Mexico, where I acted as a taxi service for four physicists at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. I would fly the men from New Mexico to Edwards Air Force Base in California, on to Washington, DC. The entire project was very hush-hush! I even had to carry a gun while I transported those men.
After deactivation, I continued in aviation one year with other WASP at the Palm Springs Airport in California for awhile. I also taught flying and continued to ferry planes. I married Julian Eccles. We have three children: Ted Eccles, Ralph Eccles and Jill Frodsham. All of whom presented me with seventeen grandchildren.
I continue to fly whenever I get the opportunity. I sold my Klamath Falls residence and now spend part of the year in Palm Desert, California, and part of the year at Lake of the Woods in Oregon, which I believe is the best of all worlds at this point.
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Peggy's story reprinted from WASP Betty Turner's "Out of the Blue and Into History"
More will be posted as information changes.
God bless you all,
nancy
