Norman — As a young Nebraska pilot, Helen Turner Holland answered her country’s wartime call for women to fly military aircraft, freeing up male pilots for the front. The thank-you note from her government came more than 65 years after she and hundreds of other WASP pilots were summarily dismissed.
The Norman woman, who died in 1995, was posthumously honored earlier this month along with hundreds of other female pilots. Her children, Martin Holland and Catherine “Kit” Holland Petersen of Norman and Bets Lundeen of Loveland, Colo., accepted the Congressional Gold Medal on their mother’s behalf.
“It was nothing short of amazing,” Martin Holland said. “It’s the highest non-military award that the government can give.”
The ceremony was to be held in the Capitol but overflow crowds pushed it to the visitor center. Dignitaries like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others welcomed the pilots and their families. About 180 former WASP fliers — including many of Mrs. Holland’s friends — were in the audience.
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“They did everything that the men did but engage in combat,” Holland said of his mother and the other WASPs.
Much of his mother’s flying time was delivering airplanes from factories to bases. “Really, they were the test pilots for every military plane made,” he said. “If something is going to go wrong, it’ll happen in the first few hours.”
Holland was one of about 25,000 women to apply for the Women Airforce Service Pilots, a civilian branch of the Army Air Force. She had a pilot’s license and met the height requirement. About 1,800 were accepted and 1,074 completed the 21 to 27 weeks of training at a Sweetwater, Texas, airfield.
Holland flew a P-51, P-39, P-40, P-47, P-63, C-45, C-47, PT-19, BG-13 and AT-6. Thirty-eight pilots died in the line of duty. They had to pay their own funeral expenses. None of the women were given veteran status until 1977.
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Nearing the end of the war with more trained pilots, WASPs were sent home, some having to pay their own bus fare home from the bases where they were assigned. Records of the non-military unit were sealed. Researchers speculate military men didn’t want the competition or the unit to be celebrated.
“They had been flying the hottest machines in the world and a lot of people just didn’t want women flying airplanes,” Holland said. “Lots of people were not pleased when a P51 landed and a little 5-foot, 4-inch lady got out of it.”
His mother was in New York when she got the word the unit was disbanded. Not to be discouraged she signed on with a Red Cross hospital ship and circled the globe before heading to Norman and the University of Oklahoma to study professional writing. It was there she met John H. Holland, another young pilot also from Nebraska. Their paths crossed earlier but they didn’t know it.
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Born in tiny Cairo, Neb., Holland was determined to get out of town. She attended Hastings College and traveled through Europe on a bicycle. She saved enough money to take pilot’s lessons.
“She was a perfect lady,” recalls her training classmate and fellow WASP Marion Stegeman Hodgson. “She was a wonderful pilot and she was one of my best friends.”
The two kept in touch over the years. The Holland children called her “Aunt Scarlett,” from her Southern upbringing and accent.
Hodgson’s book, “Winning My Wings,” includes a photo snapped by a Navy pilot flying alongside Holland in a new P-51 picked up from the North American Factory and delivered to an Air Corps base.
“She was very intelligent. Very capable and a wonder in the kitchen,” Hodgson recalls. “You usually didn’t get all three of those.”
Andy Rieger 366-3543 editor@normantranscript.com
