Dawn Seymour - The Boundless Sky

 

In 1939, I was 22 years old, straight as an arrow. [audience laughter] I was newly graduated from Cornell University. Did many things, but I was part of an experiment, I was a research subject. And one day, our leader said to me-- His name was Dr. Richard Parmenter. He said, “I am going to be the New Director of Flight Research at Cornell under the CPT, the civilian pilot training course, under the CAA, a federal program, and 1 in 10 can be a girl.” He said, “And you can learn to fly.” And I said to him, “Dr. Rick, I've never been in an airplane.” [audience laughter].  He said, “Well, let's go, try.” [audience laughter] 

 

Down to the Ithaca airport in a yellow Piper Cub on a beautiful October Day, October 16th, he took me up into this absolutely wonderful new world of sky and land below. The air was full of sunbeams. The land below was clean and the borderless. And the lake, the blue lake of Cayuga water which extended to the north and on beyond was this circle of land meeting sky. I was just overwhelmed with the beauty of the earth, and the sky, and signed up right away. [audience laughter] It was chosen. I spent the next few months learning how to the fundamentals of flight. And that is important. [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

In May 1940, I received my private pilot certificate, and that would allow me to take up passengers. I only had about 40 hours. I don't know how they dared go up with me. [audience laughter] But they did. [audience laughter] And so, I lived with this wonderful new experience. 

 

Now, 1941 December came along quickly. After Congress declared war, everyone able bodied was needed in the war effort, and everybody needed training. There was a flurry in America, an excitement, a determination to fight this new enemy. We knew the enemy was there, but I mean to fight and to produce aircraft and to train men. 

 

Jacqueline Cochran, who was a famous American woman pilot, had a program in mind that she sold to General Hap Arnold. And in the program, she would train women pilots the same exact way that the male pilots were trained, and have a supply of women who could then go out and do the housekeeping jobs in America, the training and the ferrying and so forth. She sold this, because we were very short of pilots, and they were needed desperately as the planes were being produced in the factories. I wanted to be near as I could to the fighting war. I applied for her program and was accepted, and I found my way to Sweetwater, Texas, 200 miles west of Fort Worth. 

 

And here met my classmates. I was a class of 43, 5. There were 18 classes altogether. So, I was an early bird. And learned to fly primary, basic and advanced. In our last few months of training, 10 days before I graduated, my best friend, my buddy Peggy Seip, was killed with her instructor and a fellow WASP pilot, Pell, Jo Seberson. And no reason was given for the accident. There was no ceremony held. They just disappeared. And it was a heart wrenching event. Peggy had left a garden, the only garden any WASP had ever grown, and had in Sweetwater, Texas. She planted seeds in the hard Texas soil, in the hot Texas sun, and it bloomed on our graduation day. 

 

Jacqueline Cochran came to give us our wings, and presented them to me, thanked me, and wished me well. I was pleased, because I had won my wings. [audience laughter] More training came into the picture. I was sent to the Lockbourne Army Air Base in Columbus, Ohio. And here, to my astonishment, there were over 180 B17s, Boeing B17s, Flying Fortresses, the big four engine plane that was flying raids over Germany with the 8th Air Force. 

 

And the new CO of our squadron, Major Freddy Wilson, had received a telegram only two days before and said, “Expect 17 women pilots for training.” And he said, “My God, what am I going to do with these? I'm a bachelor.” He said, “I don't know anything about women.” [audience laughter] And so, it was. My very first ride in the B17, I'm in the left seat and the instructor is in the right seat. This is Lieutenant Logue Mitchell, later became good friends. Number three engine caught on fire. And before we knew it, he'd given me orders. I knew enough with the two of us, the fire was out. And I said, “Oh my goodness, this is the plane for me.” [audience laughter] It was an exciting time, because the pilots were returning up from their 25 missions in Germany, and they came back and they would tell us about the real war. And the real war was tough. 

 

Then my orders sent me down to Florida, Buckingham Army Airfield. And here we were asked, ordered to fly the plane, the B17 again with student gunners and their instructor on board. The mission was to train the gunners to fire at a moving target from a moving platform. This was a routine that we did day after day, mornings this day and afternoons the next day. It was glorious, because some days the sky, the clouds, and the sea itself would melt and there'd be no horizon. And this is when you had to trust your instruments to fly straight and level. This lasted for the rest of the time I was in the service. 

 

And in December, 44, while the Battle of the Bulge was going on and the war in Japan was not over. Hardly started, we had a letter from Hap Arnold, General Hap Arnold, saying that our program was going to be canceled, terminated. Congress had not appropriated the funds. It was a blow. Here we thought we were doing a good job. We felt the war wasn't over and the message we received was, “Girls, go home. We don't need you anymore.” So, we packed up. No ceremonies. Just farewells to our friends in the base, and off we went to new lives. 

 

30 years later, after all of the Civil Rights Acts and so forth, there were women military pilots, and they were allowed in the Navy and the Army reserves. Women entered the Academy in 1976 for the very first time. I thought of Peggy Seip’s garden and seeds that were planted. I think perhaps that took 30 years, but yet, women had persevered and were accepted now as military women pilots. We were volunteers coming in and we were volunteers going out. And our motto was, “"We live in the wind and the sand, and our eyes are on the stars.”