Nancy Batson Crews: Alabama's First Lady of Flight (review)

T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 298 Nancy Batson Crews: Alabama’s First Lady of Flight. By Sarah Byrn Rickman. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009. xviii, 209 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-8173-5553-1. It is the word “Alabama” that leaps from the title. Sarah Byrn Rickman, the book’s author, must have known how effective it would be in piquing a reader’s curiosity. More than a few are likely to be thinking: Alabama produced a woman pilot? Really? Who is she? What did she do? These are the very same questions that formed in Rickman’s mind when she met Nancy Crews. Her answers inspired Rickman to write an important set of books about the women pilots who served the nation during World War II. NancyElizabethBatsonCrewswasbornonFebruary1,1920,toStephen Radford Batson and Ruth Philips Batson in Birmingham, the third child in a family that included three girls and a boy. “Rad” (as Stephen was known) and Ruth Batson were smart, athletic, strong-willed, disciplined, and they raised their children to be likewise. They were also thought to be liberal-minded and indulgent when it came to child rearing. Nancy was their “different” child, which meant that she was obsessed with an interest—flying—thought more appropriate for boys. Ruth and Rad did not care that Nancy asked for jodhpurs and a white silk scarf in lieu of a proffered pink ballerina dress. As long as Nancy was well behaved, they happily nurtured her interests. Nancy’s parents took her to see Charles Lindbergh and to watch airplanes take off and land at the newly built Birmingham airport. In October 1939, Ruth and Rad gave Nancy permission to enroll in the new Civilian Pilot Training (CPT) program established by the Roosevelt administration .Untilthatmoment,Nancydescribedhermajoras“Southern belle,” although the active University of Alabama junior was president of the Women’s Student Government Association. By June 1940, Nancy had earned her private pilot’s license through the CPT program. That fall her parents bought her an airplane, which she flew regularly during her senior year. After graduation in 1941, Nancy began to pursue a career in aviation in earnest. She earned more ratings but encountered roadblocks, as few would hire a woman pilot. In September 1942, Nancy read that the Air Transport Command was forming a women’s squadron to ferry airplanes. She raced to Delaware where the Women’s Auxiliary Ferry Squadron was forming and quickly joined that elite group of twenty -seven women. The next two years involved ferrying high-performance military aircraft all around the country. Then in December 1944, the O C T O B E R 2 0 1 0 299 Army Air Forces terminated the job that Nancy called “the greatest in the world.” Nine months later World War II was also over and the question Nancy faced was: “what next?” Coming home to Alabama, she knew the options beyond marriage and motherhood would be limited. In February 1946, Nancy Batson married Lt. Col. Paul Crews. Paul was recalled into active duty when the United States Air Force was created in 1947, thus beginning Nancy’s life as a military wife. Three children—two sons and a daughter—were born beginning in 1948. The military moved them around several times but ultimately they ended up in southern California in 1958. Nancy loved her family but by 1960, when she turned forty, she was bored. Paul encouraged her to get back into flying. Following his premature death in 1977, Nancy relocated to California City, where she was now flying fulltime for a living. A short, unhappy stint in local politics led her to return to Birmingham to make a fresh start. Until her death from cancer in 2001, Nancy lived in Alabama, doing some flying but mostly active as a real estate developer, transforming her family’s former farm property into Lake Country Estates. Inspired by a 1937 tract, Think and Grow Rich, Nancy Crews achieved her goal of dying a millionaire. Rickman’s approach to this affectionate biography has been to allow Nancy and her closest friends to tell the story. Though the...