To Live and Die a WASP: Womens Airforce Service Pilot Margaret Sanford Oldenburg

WASP trainee Margaret Sanford Oldenburg

First of #The38 to die.

(29 July 1909 – 7 Mar 1943)

(Excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP)

SISTERS BEGIN TO FALL

It had been a relatively quiet Sunday afternoon. A few of the women had taken advantage of the improved weather to fly some training flights. Margy Oldenburg had talked to her husband in California by phone at noon and then checked out a parachute and met Norris Morgan, her civilian instructor, on the flight line. They would fly a Fairchild PT-19, a basic trainer airplane used to introduce pilots to military aircraft before moving them up to more demanding planes.

Margy Oldenburg began her training in Houston, February 16, 1943, just 19 days earlier. At 33 she was one of the older student pilots, and at first, a bit shy. But soon she was entertaining small groups of trainees by singing the Hawaiian songs she had learned while visiting friends on the

WASP Margaret Sanford Oldenburg

islands. “She had a smile for everyone,” one student said. Born Margaret Burrows Sanford near Cleveland, Ohio in 1909, the youngest daughter of Percy and Mary Sanford, her family had moved to New York by 1915. … She married Jacob Oldenburg in late 1940. Jack, as he preferred to be called, was a salesman for a metal works company and had left his home in Ohio just a few years before. He was a member of the United States Naval Reserve.

Norris Morgan, Margy’s instructor, had been flying since 1933. Born and raised in Galva, Illinois, Morgan was a graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with a degree in agricultural engineering. After graduation, he worked with his uncles in Illinois’ first hybrid seed company, known simply as Morgan Brothers. … In late 1942, 41-year-old Norris Morgan

volunteered for wartime duty as a civilian flight instructor. …

Just about 6 in the evening, March 7, 1942, the base siren in Houston began to wail an emergency call. Because it was a Sunday, many of the women trainees had already left the Houston base for home. Those who remained had never heard the siren sound that way before, because now it was announcing an accident, and there hadn’t been an accident at Houston since classes began the previous November. An unexplained spin had suddenly sent Margy’s PT-19 hurling straight down into a pasture seven miles southeast of the Houston Airport. She and Norris smashed into the ground at such speed that both of them died instantly….

The women of the 319th were still in shock. Margy Oldenburg was the first of their sisters to die. They had known the dangers before they signed up, and yet, they never really believed there would ever be any trouble. Now they would try to remember to fly carefully. They would exude confidence in their flying abilities to family and to everyone on the outside. They were sure that this need not happen again, but inside, in their deepest thoughts, they hoped that they’d never make a mistake.

 #RIP 

 

To Live and Die a WASP: The Tragedy of Betty Stine

WASP Betty Pauline Stine 44-W-2

(13 September 1921 - 25 February 1944)

#The38

(Quote from To Live and Die a WASP)

Betty Stine, WASP Class 44-W-2 prepared to leave on her final cross-country flight before graduation. …

Betty graduated from Santa Barbara High School in June 1939 with dreams of becoming an airline

WASP Pilot Betty Stine

stewardess. Her father, Jake, was born in the oil fields of Oklahoma, but when his mother died when Jake was eight years old in 1909, his father sent him to live with Jake’s grandparents, in Castleberry, Texas, near Fort Worth. … There, in late 1920, Jake married Mary Allen.

Betty, their only child, was born the following September. Because Jakes uncle was humorist Will Rogers, he named Betty after Will’s wife, Betty Blake. For his daughter’s middle name he chose Pauline, after Pauline McSpadden, a daughter of one of Will Rogers’ sisters. …

On February 24, 1944, Betty, along with 12 of her classmates, were returning to Avenger Field from their final cross-country training flight. Graduation

was 16 days away. She had just taken off in an AT-6 Texan from Blythe Army Airfield in southeastern California, and had crossed over the Colorado River into Arizona. A little after 4:00 in the afternoon, officials believe an exhaust spark set fire to the fabric-covered portion of the Texan’s tail assembly. With the tail on fire and about to separate from the plane, Betty bailed out over the mountains surrounding Quartzite, Arizona; less than 25 miles from Blythe.

Lewis Aplington, owner of mines around Quartzite, saw the burning plane and Betty’s parachute dropping to the ground. It took over 45 minutes for Aplington and two other miners, riding in a truck, to find her in the rugged terrain. Betty was unconscious, but still alive. The high winds had dragged her chute over sharp rocks and

Plomosa Mountains, Quartzite, Arizona

boulders and her body was beaten, broken, and bloodied. …

Returned to a nearby Army base hospital, she died within hours. The 22-year-old’s body was sent home for burial in the Santa Barbara Cemetery.

 

WASP Betty Stine and Her Instructor

If only Betty Stine had known how to control her parachute on the ground in strong winds, she never would have died. Officers at Avenger Field hadn’t anticipated the need for advanced training in parachute jumps and landings, but Betty’s death had changed all of that almost immediately. …

RIP

History Snoopin': The Short Shorts affair

The short shorts affair

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, February 24th 2020

“Yes!” said the boys.

“No!” said Medford high school officials.

It began with a fad sweeping the nation in the mid 1950s. The sight of men’s knees was suddenly appearing on the main streets of America. It was mostly the young; however, the Bermuda shorts invasion had even snuck into business board rooms from New York to San Francisco.

One poll noted that only 1 in 5 Americans said they would ever wear Bermuda shorts, yet some major retailers reported selling one pair of men’s shorts for every three pairs of slacks.

The shorts had become a fashion statement for men and an inspiration for women’s fashion designers. The introduction of the Bermuda skirt was sweeping college campuses. The skirt was one-inch longer than the Bermuda shorts worn beneath it. My female sources tell me this sounds somewhat like the beginnings of the divided skirt or culottes.

By 1956, the fad was most popular with college and high school males, leading to school boards all over the country banning Bermudas and shutting down student protests.

On April 6, 1956, just before the morning bell, 30 young men arrived at Medford High wearing Bermuda shorts. It didn’t take long for school officials to confront the boys and, after a very brief discussion, tell them to go home and return in more conventional and appropriate attire.

While officials huddled together in conferences with the school board to decide an acceptable dress code, the boys took their protest to the streets. Strolling down Main Street in temperatures rising from an early morning freeze, there wasn’t even a shiver as they laughed and hooted at each other for the next few hours, including a slight diversion to the Mail Tribune newsroom on Fir Street, where they presented their case to reporters.

Leonard Mayfield, school superintendent, laughed when told the students were parading through downtown.

“Yes, the boys have a legal right to wear what they want,” he said, “as long as it is within the limitation of decency.”

He explained the school’s efforts were aimed at educating the students to “commonly accepted proprieties and customs,” including attempts to discourage girls from wearing shorts or slacks to school.

Just before noon, when the boys returned to school, they told officials they had planned the demonstration earlier that week and admitted it might not have been the best way to approach the situation.

Officials explained that they didn’t want to make any hard and fast rules about clothing, and they halfway sympathized with the boys but said extreme and unconventional dress were “distracting to the educational process.”

An agreement was quickly reached. The boys could wear shorts as long as they came within an inch of the knee. In addition, there would be no other extremes allowed in the length of shorts or in other clothing.

A member of the school board, Bill Barker, admitted he had a lighthearted conflict in the controversy. Barker owned a men’s clothing store in the city.

“I wear them myself,” Barker said. “I like to wear them and to sell them. From a strictly non-school board and biased viewpoint, I vote for ‘em!”

In less than a few hours it was all over, and the girls had won too. Occasional Wednesdays were designated “Slack Day,” where some of the young ladies were also allowed to wear Bermuda skirts or shorts, and even that newest of newfangled fads — pedal pushers.

The “educational process” would never be the same again.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

To Live and Die a WASP: Mary Ann “Marian” Toevs

WASP Mary Ann “Marian” Toevs

#The38

Class 43-W-8

 13 May 1917 – 18 February 1944)

Marian Toevs’ parents, John and Nelle, were at their daughter’s graduation, proudly pinning on Marian’s silver wings. After the ceremony, they

returned to Aberdeen, Idaho, where Marian had a week to relax in her girlhood home. On January 1, 1944, she reported to LeMoore Army Airfield, an

BT-13

Army flight training school in California’s Central

Valley. Her primary assignment was to test fly BT-13 and BT-15 airplanes, recently repaired by the field’s maintenance crew. …

Marian was born May 13, 1917, in Aberdeen, Idaho, where her father, John, owned a grocery store and ran a successful wholesale dry goods business. For a number of years he was also the superintendant of Aberdeen’s Agricultural Experiment Station. Marian had four brothers and

WASP Marian Toevs

was her parent’s only daughter. Marian graduated from high school in 1935, and that fall began studies at Albion State Normal School, a small teachers college in Albion, Idaho. Two years later, with a teaching certificate in hand, Marian spent the next three years teaching. …

Early in the morning, Friday, February 18, 1944, Marian checked out a parachute, walked to the flight line, and climbed into a BT-13. She fired up the engine, completed her preflight check, then taxied out to the runway. Sources say she was

BT-13s

flying to Fresno, California, and perhaps that was her ultimate destination, but Fresno is barely 30 air miles from LeMoore, hardly enough time in the air to fully checkout a previously damaged or faulty airplane. Add the fact that Marian’s BT-13 finally wound up nearly 125 miles northwest away from Fresno, in the eastern foothills of San Jose, California, and a simple flight to Fresno just doesn’t make any sense. If Fresno was her ultimate destination, she was first flying a much longer cross-country flight.

Twenty-six-year old Marian crashed just a block away from where her Uncle Otto Toevs lived in a San Jose, California neighborhood. 

She had visited with Otto and his wife just two weeks before and it was Uncle Otto who ultimately identified her body for authorities. “The motor was still going when it hit,” Anthony Gullo said. He had been only 75 feet from the crash. …

After Marian’s crash, Marian’s body was returned to Aberdeen for her funeral. 

As she was laid to rest, Edgar Toevs, Marian’s cousin, was one of the speakers.

 

 “She had given everything she had,” Edgar said, “and she did all she could.”

 RIP