WASHINGTON — They flew planes during World War II but weren’t considered real military pilots.
When their service ended, they had to pay their own bus fare home.
Alta Thomas of Sequim was among the Women Airforce Service Pilots — or WASPs — who got long-overdue recognition Wednesday.
They received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor given by Congress, in a ceremony on Capitol Hill.
Thomas attended the ceremony with her two daughters, Deborah and Kelly; her 11-year-old grandson, Noah; and Kelly’s partner, Sherri Lewis.
“She was very moved,” Kelly Thomas said late Wednesday night by phone.
“She told me, ‘So many have given so much, I’m just so humbled to receive it.'”
The group plans to return to Washington state tonight.
About 200 women were on hand to receive the award.
Now mostly in their late 80s and early 90s, some came in wheelchairs, many sported dark blue uniforms, and one, June Bent of Westboro, Mass., clutched a framed photograph of a comrade who had died.
As a military band played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” one of the women who had been sitting in a wheelchair stood up and saluted through the entire song as a relative gently supported her back.
Thomas, now 91, became a WASP at age 25.
The WASPs, the first women in history to fly U.S. military aircraft, took on risky training missions over U.S. bases to prepare male troops for battle overseas during 1943 and 1944, but received no military benefits.
‘A privilege, adventure’
In an interview at her Sequim home last month, Thomas remembered flying as a pure thrill.
“It was such an absolute privilege,” she said. “It was an adventure.”
Of the more than 1,000 women who received their wings through the WASP program, 11 are known to be living in Washington state.
Joining Thomas in the Washington state coalition for the ceremony were Mary Call of Mount Vernon, Nancy Dunnam of Bellevue, Dorothy Olsen of University Place, Mary Jean Sturdevant of Tacoma, Josephine Swift from Seattle, and a relative on behalf of Margaret Martin of Oak Harbor, said U.S. Sen. Marie Cantwell, D-Mountlake Terrace, in a prepared statement.
Members of the Washington state congressional delegation are working with the Women’s Memorial Foundation to ensure the remaining four women — Elizabeth Munoz of Pomeroy, Enid Fisher of Olympia, Elizabeth Dybbro of Des Moines and Lois Auchterlonie of Anacortes — who could not travel to the nation’s capital for today’s ceremony receive their medals, Cantwell said.
‘All your daughters’
“Women Airforce Service Pilots, we are all your daughters; you taught us how to fly,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives., during the ceremony in Emancipation Hall of the U.S. Capitol building.
In accepting the award, WASP pilot Deanie Parrish, 88, of Waco, Texas, said the women had volunteered without expectation of thanks.
Their mission was to fly noncombat missions to free up male pilots to fly overseas.
“We did it because our country needed us,” Parrish said.
WASP Ty Hughes Killen, 85, of Lancaster, Calif., put it more simply: “We’re a bunch of tough old ladies,” she said in an interview.
Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, noted at the ceremony that when the unit was disbanded in 1944, many of the women had to pay from their own bus fare home from an airfield in Sweetwater, Texas.
Thirty-eight WASPS were killed in service in World War II. But they were long considered civilians, not members of the military, and thus were not entitled to the pay and benefits given to men.
They were afforded veteran status in 1977 after a long fight. It’s estimated that about 300 of the more than 1,000 WASPs are still alive.
Each of the WASPs was given a bronze duplicate of the original Congressional Gold Medal, which will be donated to the Smithsonian Institution in honor of the WASPs.
Cantwell called the Women Airforce Service Pilots “unsung members of ‘the Greatest Generation’ . . . trailblazers who had a tremendous impact on the role of women in the military today.”
