News Updates From Sarah
International Forest of Friendship
Posted July 14 on Facebook
The Forest is proud to welcome Sarah Byrn Rickman of Colorado Springs, CO, as the 15th honoree to be inducted in 2019. Sarah has written nine books about the WAFS/WASP — the women pilots who flew for the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II. Her latest two books are WASP biographies written for younger readers, 10 to 14.
Sarah received the Combs Gates Award from the National Aviation Hall of Fame (based on her first five books) to write her sixth, WASP of the Ferry Command: Women Pilots, Uncommon Deeds. The Combs Gates Award is given annually for “creative projects that reflect an emphasis on the individual pioneers – the people – who defined America’s aerospace horizons.”
Sarah also produced a short documentary “Five WAFS Up Close and Personal.” She used film she shot in 1999 when she interviewed five of the original 28 WAFS, the women ferry pilots recruited by Nancy Love for the Air Transport Command in fall 1942.
Writing about the WASP, Sarah was inspired to fulfill her longtime dream to learn to fly. She earned her Sport Pilot certificate in 2011, flying an Aeronca Champ — “a sweet little taildragger similar to the small aircraft the WASP learned on in the early 1940s.”
Sarah now serves as editor of the WASP News for the WASP Archive at Texas Woman’s University, Denton.
She is sponsored by Becky Howell, Nancy Miller-Borg, Erin Recke, Terry Rinehart, Lucy Young, and the “Aviatrix Aerogram” (women’s aviation ezine) community.
The International Forest of Friendship was a gift to America for her 200th birthday — a living memorial to the world history of aviation and aerospace. Three distinctly unalike organizations joined hands to make that gift possible: the City of Atchison, The Ninety-Nines (Organization of Women Pilots), and the Kansas State University Forestry Extension. The grand opening took place on the 79th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s birth — July 24, 1976. The famed aviatrix was born in Atchison.
WASP of the Ferry Command
IS NOW AVAILABLE AS AN AUDIBLE BOOK
Click here to view and purchase.
OF NOTE:
WASP of the Ferry Command was awarded FIRST PLACE, NONFICTION 2018 in the Marjorie Davis Roller Nonfiction Award. The National League of American Pen Women, Inc., Published by the University of North Texas Press.
Nancy Love: WASP Pilot
AVAILABLE MAY 25th, 2019
AVAILABLE MAY 25th, 2019
“With publication of her new YA book, Nancy Love: WASP Pilot, Sarah enhances her well-established reputation for bringing the stories of the WASP of WWII to life. If the subject is WASP, Sarah is THE expert.”
–TRISH BECKMAN Commander, US Navy (retired)
“Sarah has a gift for telling compelling stories about the WASP, the women pilots of World War II. Young readers will enthusiastically absorb her love for and fascination for this area of U.S. history.”
–ERIN MILLER, author of Final Flight Final Fight, chronicling the fight to have her, WASP grandmother buried at Arlington Cemetery
BJ Erickson: WASP Pilot
BJ and Nancy Love flew Genevieve, a much-patched-up, war-weary B-17, to the graveyard — with loving care. She had to be flown at a greatly reduced airspeed because of a large red sign on the instrument panel that read, DO NOT RETRACT LANDING GEAR.
“Along the entire route, we tried to ignore intruders that flew by us and signaled — in a superior manner — that we’d forgotten to pull the landing gear up,” Nancy wrote. “We strongly suspected that the epithet ‘women drivers’ was being directed at us along with their hand signals.”
Finding Dorothy Scott
“Oh, Pop, we made a nighttime formation take off between smudge pots lining the runways. I’ll never in all my life forget that ride! We were nearly touching the other plane, guided only by small lights and the flare of the exhaust. The rapidly fading field looked like a million small fires.”
Dorothy’s letters put you in the aircraft with her. Her voice transcends the years.
WASP of the Ferry Command
Personal stories from 40 daring women who lived the story that IS the legacy of the Ferrying Division, Air Transport Command: Decades ahead of their time, these women ferried the Army’s newest aircraft to the docks to be shipped abroad to the battlefront — or wherever else in the U.S. they might be needed.
Flight to Destiny
Fiction
Fiction
Fly the skies over America with three fictional heroines, Annie, Clare and Midge, who become WASP ferry pilots. Meet them on December 7, 1941, and live WWII with them into summer 1945. Through them, you will get to know real-life WASP leaders Nancy Love and Jackie Cochran.
Nancy Batson Crews
“Nancy’s story comes straight from my heart. We were best friends her final year. She flew P-47s, P-51s, heroic stuff to this child of WWII! Nancy chose me to write the story of her beloved WAFS. THE ORIGINALS is as much her book as it is mine. Then I chose to write her story — the sometimes painful but inspirational portrait of a patriot.” – Sarah Byrn Rickman, 2017
Nancy Love and the WASP
Nancy Love, with General William H. Tunner, created THE workable concept for women pilots to ferry aircraft for the US military and successfully led her WASP to do just that. By September 1944, she had 134 civilian women pilots delivering three-fifths of all single-engine pursuit aircraft coming off factory assembly lines.
How? Read her story and find out.
Flight from Fear
Fiction
Fiction
Lacy Stearns swallows her fear of flying to become a WASP and fly in place of her husband who dies in a B-24 crash early in the war. She and her friends fly, live, love and, because it is wartime, lose loved ones. World War II tested the mettle of a generation — men and women. The WASP were not found wanting.
The Originals
Twenty-eight women with at least 500 flying hours, commercial licenses and 200-horsepower ratings, answered their country’s call and joined the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron. Founder Nancy Love led them from flying trainers to ferrying fighters to U.S. ports for shipment to combat. Personal stories and history blend in this first book about the WAFS.
CLICK BELOW TO VIEW SARAH’S SCHEDULED APPEARANCES!
Air Transport Command
World War II
Click on the ATC patch to read Sarah’s thumbnail history of the WAFS/WASP
