BY Jean Lotus

Staff Reporter

Bernice “Bee” Falk Haydu on the wing of a PT17 Stearman. (Photo courtesy of Bernice “Bee” Falk Haydu)

News that Arlington National Cemetery would no longer accept for burial World War II veterans from the special Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) stirred up a hornet’s nest among veterans in her district, said  District 84 State Rep. Stephanie Kifowit, D-Oswego.

“It came to my attention being a veteran,” said Kifowit, who served as a U.S. Marine. “This decision really upset the veteran community in my district, they’ve been calling and emailing me about this issue.”

Kifowit, in January, introduced a bill in the Illinois legislature urging the U.S. Army to reconsider the decision, and allow the remaining 115 living WASP veterans to choose Arlington, if they wished, for a final resting place.

With Arlington running out of room for burials, then-Secretary of the Army John McHugh in 2015 announced a new policy that 1,000 women pilots who served in World War II as civilian backup so male pilots could go to war were no longer eligible to be buried, or have cremated remains inurned at the national cemetery. According to the cemetery’s website, some members of the female pilots group had previously been buried at Arlington “in error.”

The Arlington website statement says WASP veterans have the right to be buried at a VA cemetery, but Arlington is not a VA cemetery and does not have space.

Since then, a Change.org petition urging the Army to reconsider has gained 142,000 signatures.

“Not that many individuals that fall into this [WASP] category, so to say it was a mistake is just insulting, to be quite honest, as a female veteran,” Kifowit said. “That’s just a copout.”

“There’s always been a bit of a hoopla on where the WASPs fell in military history,” said Denise Neil-Binion, executive director of Oklahoma City’s 99s Museum of Women Pilots which was co-founded in 1929 by Amelia Earhart.

The WASPs weren’t given veteran status until the 1970s, Neil-Binion said.

“There were so few of them, and so many have passed. It seems strange to me [Arlington] would deny interring ashes. It’s frustrating because politicians can be buried there sometimes,” she said.

According to the WASP archive website at the Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, women WASP pilots were assigned to air bases across the country and flew more than 60 million miles. They ferried planes and flew radio-controlled airplanes. They also acted as flight instructors. Thirty-eight WASP pilots died serving their country during the war, the website says.

Some of the early female pilots had more experience than the men they flew with, including Western-Pennsylvania Barnstormer Theresa James and Nancy Harkness Love, the “youngest woman in the U.S. to earn her private pilot’s license [in 1940] and qualify for a commercial license,” according to the website.

In 2010, President Obama presented the then-250 living members of the WASP corps with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Bernice “Bee” Haydu, 95, who now lives in Florida, served as an engineering test pilot and utility pilot in 1944 at bases in Sweetwater and Pecos, Texas. After the war, Haydu had to fight to stay in aviation after the male pilots came home. But she had a long career as a pilot.

“I think the Arlington Cemetery [incident] is just another slap in the face to women pilots,” Haydu said in an email. “We had to fight for the promise that had been made to us when we volunteered to fly in the Army Air Corps — ‘If the experimental program was successful, you will be taken into the Army Air Corps.’”

In 1977, Haydu was among those who earned WASP pilots official veterans recognition.

“Here we are AGAIN fighting for our rights,” Haydu wrote.

Four female members of Congress have drafted legislation urging the Army to change the criteria for WASPs to be buried at Arlington. Rep. Martha McSally of Arizona, and Rep. Susan Davis of California, along with Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa have all introduced legislation to change the policy.

“The women served, they’ve got their rights to be buried [at Arlington],” said Kifowit. “This is just an insult to women veterans and we need to correct these things.”

-Illinois State Rep. seeks burial access for WWII women pilots at Arlington National Cemetery-