Remembering WASP
By: Liz Gonzales
Updated: November 11, 2012
Proceeds benefited the WASP museum or the women air service pilots. These were the courageous women who flew military planes across the US during WWII.
"It was at the end of the summer, in September, I was graduated and sent to Moore Field in Mission, Texes. And I told targets for aerial gunnery," recalls Mrs. Vandeventer.
Her journey all began with a simple thought.
"I wanted to fly."
From there she did what any young lady would have done.
"I asked my father if I could, " she says. "He kinda liked the idea because he liked to go fishing up in New Mexico and that's a long drive from west Texas."
So she flew. And she lived her dream until the government put a stop to her fairytale.
"Congress was suppose to vote to accept us into the military and they turned it down and so we were dispensed."
Although their time was cut short, the impressions left still live today.
"She was an actress, a teacher," says her great- granddaughter Kaitlin Bone. "I mean she did a lot of things, that makes me want to fulfill my dreams, because I know she did hers."
And to Mrs. Vandeventer, the friendships she made still linger in her heart.
"They're all over," she says. "There was a girl that was a, she was an Indian, who grew up in one of those northern states and uh, Rex Rold. She called herself Sexy Rexy!"
Today and every day we salute women like Mrs. Vandeventer, who quietly paved the way for all women in this country.


