[Clipping: Woman pilot been flying high for last 47 years] Part: 1 of 4
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Woman pilot been flying
high for last 47 years
By DAVID WESTERFIELDt
Gannett News Service
Bare feet flying across a dusty
field carried tiny Charlyne Creger,
her pigtails flapping in the wind,
to a future few had yet Imagined1
in 1920s Oklahoma.
After a two-mile run, the heart
of the 8-year-old blacksmith's
daughter from Noble, south of
Oklahoma City, soared at the
sight of barnstormer Wiley Post
and his single-winged, open-
cockpit flying machine.
She gave hlm 10 bread wrap-I
pe ~ton tyical I
prs - It was a promotiotyia
of its dayw- and he gave her a
free ride. She hasn't been the
same since.
"It was just 15 minutes over an
old pasture, but I was in heaven.
I'd always watched the clouds and
the birds and it had never dawned
on me that I would be able to fly.
Girls just didn't fly. They were
supposed to be teachers and
"ButIw a dreamer. I didn't
want to miss anything."
Now 71, this Shreveport, La.,
woman - a veteran, a former
pilot, a retired anesthetist and a
world traveler - is . taking flight
on two new missions to honor
female veterans. She's helping
raise funds for a $25 million
women veterans memorial in
Washington, D.C. And she goes to
Moscow next month to honor the
memory of the Soviet "Niht
Witches," pilots' who carriedbombs over enemy lines during
World War I.
That's the kind of thing Cre ger,
a woman who has chenge a
world dominated by men, would
have liked to do.
"I was pretty scrappy," she
says. "One time a boy caled me a
polecat and I pulled him out of a
tree and gave him a concussion. 1
thought I d killed him."
When women pilots joined the
war effort in the 1940s, Creger,
who was working at a defense
plant, had a good reason to spend
the little money she had on flying
lessons. Her first solo, in a mon-
oplane they called "The Grass-
hopper" came in 1943.
'Oh, golly. I told ev body at
the plant that night, woo tee-
dot I rode a bicycle all through the
plant telling people.
"It's an ethereal feeling," she
says of flying an op-cock pltp-
lane. "You feel c to God
Here's all the little people on earth
and you're up there with nothing
to chase but the clouds."
Creger was one of 25,000
women to apply to the the
Women Air Force Service Pilots
program. She was one of 1,830 to
be accepted and one of 1,074 to
graduate. In 1944 she was as-
signed to the Waco Army Airfield
to teach cadets instrument flying.
she, plans to keep travel ig.
working aftd Vl _ j1be tut
trek t. America and
fly to the Canary IslandsDATING IS FO
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4
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[Clipping: Woman pilot been flying high for last 47 years], clipping, Date Unknown; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1164307/m1/1/: accessed June 12, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting National WASP WWII Museum.