Books and Broomsticks: *Guest Post & GIVEAWAY* FINDING DOROTHY SCOTT by Sarah Byrn Rickman

FINDING DOROTHY SCOTT

Letters of a WASP Pilot

Sarah Byrn Rickman

Genre: Military History / Biography

Publisher: Texas Tech University Press

Date of Publication: May 30, 2016

Number of Pages: 288

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More than eleven hundred women pilots flew military aircraft for the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. These pioneering female aviators were known first as WAFS (Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron) and eventually as WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots). Thirty-eight of them died while serving their country.

Dorothy Scott was one of the thirty-eight. She died in a mid-air crash at the age of twenty-three.

Born in 1920, Scott was a member of the first group of women selected to fly as ferry pilots for the Army Air Forces. Her story would have been lost had her twin brother not donated her wartime letters home to the WASP Archives. Dorothy's extraordinary voice, as heard through her lively letters, tells of her initial decision to serve, and then of her training and service, first as a part of the WAFS and then the WASP. The letters offer a window into the mind of a young, patriotic, funny, and ambitious young woman who was determined to use her piloting skills to help the US war effort. The letters also offer archival records of the day-to-day barracks life for the first women to fly military aircraft. The WASP received some long overdue recognition in 2010 when they were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal-the highest honor that Congress can bestow on civilians.

PURCHASE FROM TEXAS TECH PRESS:

http://www.ttupress.org/

email: ttup@ttu.edu

phone: 800.742.2982

Following is Sarah Byrn Rickman’s Artist’s Statement for the first Vinnie Ream Award in Letters: The National League of American Pen Women, 2015. Hers was the winning entry.

The Divine call to art …

To the writer it is about story and voice.

A young woman earns her wings and flies — this is what she loves. Her country is at war. She joins the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) and flies military aircraft for her country. She dies in a fiery crash. She is 23.

By the time the war is over, few will remember her. Lives go on. Years pass. Memories fade. Her story is lost.

Her twin brother, always devoted but who must go on without her, lives his life — a wife, two sons, grandchildren. His wish — to have her story told. He has saved her letters home, written to family during her year of patriotic service. As he approaches his final days, he donates her letters to the WASP Archives.

A writer has contacted the Archives about this WASP. They have so little information. But the director remembers the writer and emails her. “Are you still interested?”

“Yes.”

The letters lie in archival folders, most still in their envelopes. Experiencing the letters is like taking literary communion. They beckon: “take, read.” Paper so very fragile, but intact. The first page bears the wing insignia of the Air Transport Command. The date: Thanksgiving, 1942.

“Dear Mom, To attempt to set down in writing all the events of the past two weeks seems a Herculean task, but here goes.”

A voice, silent for 65 years, speaks across the years to the writer, who listens.

Sarah Byrn Rickman is editor of the official WASP of World War II newsletter, the author of five previous books about the WASP, and an amateur pilot. In addition to her books, Sarah is the author of numerous magazine and journal articles about the WASP. Sarah is a former reporter/columnist for The Detroit News (Michigan) and former editor of the Centerville-Bellbrook Times (Ohio). She earned her B.A. in English from Vanderbilt University and an M.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch University McGregor. Sarah was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and grew up in Denver, Colorado. She now lives in Colorado Springs with her husband, Richard, and their black Lab, Lady.