Into the Wild Blue Yonder

The year was 1942 and a war was raging. After surviving the Great Depression and waiting for loved ones who would never return home, America had begun her difficult march forward. Like so much, the landscape had changed and soon the skies would, too. For the men were becoming scarce and the women were finding their wings.

Among those taking flight was a pilot named “Tex” Amanda Brown Meacham, who had graduated four years earlier from the Florida State College for Women. Standing at a mere 5’4, she barely reached the height requirement needed to join the group of women aviators assembled to assist with the war effort. As a member of this exclusive organization of Women Airforce Service Pilots or WASP, Meacham was to become one of the first women to fly an American military aircraft. At the time though, this fact never crossed her mind. “We had no plans to be heroes,” she says. “We just wanted to do our part.”

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

If you ask Meacham if she always wanted to fly, chances are she would laugh and say no. “Unlike so many other pilots, I was never one to look to the skies and say, ‘I want to fly,’” she confides. That is until it became practical. “I just wanted to find a quicker way to get to the beach,” says Meacham. “Driving from Gainesville to Daytona took three hours. Flying there took just 30 minutes.” Little did she know this decision would lead to her receiving a Congressional Gold Medal nearly more than 60 years later. 

In her quest to earn her wings, Meacham joined the Civil Air Patrol. “If you paid your dues of $25 annually, you could rent planes at half the cost,” she says. “To save even more money, I would tie down the planes instead of putting them in a hanger.” Meacham’s affiliation with the Civil Air Patrol grew when she decided to take a job with the organization in Sarasota as their bookkeeper. “I had graduated with an economics degree and a minor in accounting. I told them I would be delighted to keep their books, but only on one condition: they had to let me fly.

Climbing High

While working for the Civil Air Patrol, Meacham soon learned about another opportunity to serve her country—the WASP program. “It was very hush-hush at first because it was strictly an experiment,” says Meacham. 

The “experiment” was to allow women pilots to fly military planes stateside, while the men were sent to fly abroad. “It was decided that if they trained the girls the same as the boys, we could take over the domestic chores,” she says. “I joined the seventh class and we trained exactly as the boys did, except we were not required to do chin ups and only very minor push ups.” According to Meacham, her class was told they when they signed on that they would become part of the service. “But at the time we were considered civilians and paid our own way out there,” she recalls. “When someone died, and they eventually did, we did not receive a military escort. Instead, we took up a collection to buy a flag and one of us took time off to present it to the family.”

Here They Come

After a long battle in Congress to commission the WASP into military service failed, the program was terminated on December 10, 1944. “We didn’t know why at the time. We were too busy doing our jobs to know what had happened,” says Meacham. “We were pilots, not legislators.” 

With her feet firmly planted on the ground, she went forward with her life, marrying John Meacham, a navigation instructor she had met at an airbase in Hondo. The two had three children together. “Once the youngest was old enough to go to school, I decided to get out of the house and get my master’s degree from Syracuse University in Library Sciences,” says Meacham. “I took a summer class in government and we were going over the history of the military so I decided to do a project about the WASP. That’s when I learned we were never considered enlisted and that our records were sealed. After discovering that, I was in orbit for most of that summer.”

Zooming to Meet the Thunder

Since they were disbanded, the WASP members had remained largely silent. However in the mid 1970s, the hive began to buzz. “The Air Force came out with a big campaign announcing they were going to let women enlist and for the first time ever, a woman could fly a military plane,” says Meacham. “Boy did we come out of the woodwork on that.” In what was later called the “Battle of Congress,” the WASP fought to obtain recognition as veterans of WWII. “We raised merry Cain and President Carter decided to give us a certificate of honorable discharge and two awards: the American Theater Ribbon and a WWII Victory Medal,” says Meacham. “There was no fanfare or ceremony. It arrived in the mail in a brown envelope.” 

At ‘Em Boys, Give ‘Er What’s Due

On July 1, 2009 President Obama and Congress awarded the WASP the Congressional Gold Medal—more than 60 years after their service. During the ceremony, President Obama said, “The Women Airforce Service Pilots courageously answered their country’s call in a time of need while blazing a trail for the brave women who have given and continue to give so much in service to this nation since. 

Every American should be grateful for their service, and I am honored to sign this bill to finally give them some of the hard-earned recognition they deserve.” In March 2010, the WASP members were presented the Congressional Gold Medal from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “The process for creating the medal takes a long time because each medal is designed to fit the recipient. On our medal one side shows three female pilots with planes in the back ground and the other side says we were the first women to fly military planes,” she says. “On July 1, 2009 we had nine people left in our class. In March three had died before receiving the medal. Fortunately, they knew it was coming. They would have been so proud.”

Still Soaring

Three quarters of a century after her first flight, at age 93, Meacham fulfilled a wish to take another flight in her beloved AT-6 Texan. On a spring morning at Ft. Lauderdale Executive Airport, not far from where she lives in a Pompano Beach retirement village, Meacham strapped herself into a refurbished, two-seater version of the aircraft and took a ride down memory lane. The City Mayor, a men’s choir and a team of friends from Meacham’s chapter of the Red Hat Society were on hand to cheer. “Receiving the medal has made me famous on campus and everyone knows me now,” she says with wonder. “People know my name and I don’t remember meeting them. It’s been a good time.”