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16 Enhancing the Legacy In 1979, Sally Van Wagenen Keil, the niece of one of the seventeen women pilots Jackie Cochran sent to Lockbourne Army Airfield for B-17 transition in the fall of 1943, published the first popular history of the WASP, Those Wonderful Women in Their Flying Machines. Well written and full of personal stories told by WASP, the book is the benchmark when it comes to telling the WASP story. A second edition with updated material was released in 1990. In her author’s note, Keil tells of her fascination with her five-foot-eleveninch -tall aunt, Mary Parker Audain (Class 43-5). Cochran sent her tallest, biggest, and best recent Sweetwater graduates to learn to fly the Flying Fortress . Audain had gone on to live a life that enthralled all of her nieces and they all, Keil wrote, wanted to be like her. But it was the fact that she flew the B-17 that thrilled them the most. When Audain died in 1973, Keil and her sisters discovered that the only memorabilia their fifty-five-year-old aunt had saved were photographs from her flying years, her graduation certificate from Avenger Field, and a WASP roster. They also realized they knew little about her WASP experiences because she rarely talked about them. To learn the story and ultimately share it with others, Keil spent five years researching and interviewing many WASP in order to write that book. Nancy Batson Crews was one of the women she talked to.1 Beginning in 1978, the reunions began to happen every two years like clockwork. Getting together regularly, the WASP began to recall and to share their memories of that cherished time long ago. The reunions and Keil’s book opened up the floodgates, after which many WASP books began to appear . In the 1980s, WASP began to write their memoirs. In the 1990s, journalists and scholars began to write about the WASP. The public began, ever so slowly, to learn about them. The fiftieth anniversary of the founding of both the WAFS and the WASP 130 • Chapter 16 fell in 1992. The aviation and military worlds woke up to the realization not only that this small group of female World War II veterans existed, but also that more than half of them were still alive and, just like their male veteran counterparts, they were reaching their seventies and eighties. Also came the realization that the inevitable passage of time was depleting their ranks at the same rate as the men. Now organizations scrambled to recognize these women in their midst. San Antonio, the home of three Air Force bases and within reasonable proximity of the training field at Sweetwater as well as the WASP’s first home, Houston, was the site of the big fiftieth WASP reunion. Yvonne “Pat” Pateman (Class 43-5) was the president. Pat was, by then, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who had served more than twenty years on active duty, including service in Korea and Vietnam. Another 156 WASP, like Pateman, took Reserve commissions when the newly designated U.S. Air Force offered them beginning in 1949 and during the Korean War. Eleven of the WAFS were among that number. Nancy Batson Crews did not opt for a commission , but her friends Teresa James, Barbara London, Helen Mary Clark, and Betty Gillies were among those who did. In January 1992, the International Women’s Air and Space Museum (IWASM), located at that time in Centerville, Ohio, decided to bring in a panel of WASP to do a program at the local cable television station. Seven WASP made up the bulk of the panel. Moderator Nadine Nagle (Class 44-9) was joined by Caro Bayley Bosca and Katherine (Kaddy) Landry Steele (Class 43-7 classmates), Emma Coulter Ware (Class 43-3), Margaret Ray Ringenberg (Class 43-5), Ann Criswell Madden (Class 43-6), and Marty Martin Wyall (Class 44-10). The representative WAFS on the panel was Nancy Batson Crews. Of note: that panel of eight included a past WASP president, Nancy Crews (1972–1975), and two future presidents, Marty Wyall (1994–1996) and Caro Bosca (2004–2007). Kaddy Steele chaired the WASP Future committee . These programs put on jointly by IWASM and the Miami Valley Cable Council (now known as Miami Valley Communications Council) were done live before a studio audience and still are broadcast today. In the process, these women, their voices, and their stories—oral history—were recorded for...

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