Fame finally takes wing for the WASPs

“I was lucky to get into that glider,’’ said Bent, who abandoned her walker on the grass runway at Sterling Airport and hoisted herself in before soaring over Mount Wachusett. “There wasn’t any room at all.’’

It’s been a long time since Bent climbed into a small plane - 33 years since she last flew a glider as a hobby, and 65 years since she piloted a military plane as part of a small corps of little-known and uncelebrated women who flew American military aircraft during World War II.

Now, more than six decades later, the women are being recognized with a Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation’s highest honors for civilians. President Obama signed a bill July 1 granting them the same honor bestowed on such other boundary-pushers as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and the Tuskegee Airmen.

They were the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, and there were about 1,000 of them who volunteered to fly dangerous fighter, bomber, transport, and training aircraft in the United States in order to free up male pilots for combat duty overseas. Thirty-eight of the women were killed, either as trainees or in active service. Only 300 of the WASP are still alive; the youngest is 85.

Their program was abruptly terminated in December 1944, as the war entered its final months, and the WASP, including Bent, were unceremoniously sent home - at their own expense - without military status or benefits. Their records were sealed and marked “classified’’ or “secret’’ for more than 30 years and filed away in government archives, and many of the records were not declassified until the 1980s.

“The WASP story is a missing chapter in the history of the Air Force, the history of aviation, and the history of the United States of America,’’ according to the legislative proposal that went through Congress. “Through their actions, the WASP eventually were the catalyst for revolutionary reform in the integration of women pilots into the Armed Service.’’

It wasn’t until 1977 that they were even recognized as veterans, and the pilots were not even invited to the signing ceremony at the White House.

“It was an honor in name only,’’ said Nancy Parrish, executive director of Texas-based Wings Across America, which promotes the history of the WASP and lobbied Congress for several years to honor them.

“It’s high time,’’ said Bent, who gamely accepted an invitation from the Greater Boston Soaring Club to take a glider ride, as the club’s way of thanking her for her service. She donned her original WASP-issued aviator glasses for a 40-minute flight over Worcester County. The air was rough at first, but she was unfazed. “Once you’ve done it,’’ she said, “you know what to expect.’’

After all these years, she did not expect this honor, she said. “People didn’t know much about us, because there weren’t many of us,’’ said Bent, interviewed in her apartment at a Westborough retirement community.

The WASP got a toehold in the Air Force during that brief wartime interlude in American history when the need for women in the workforce - including the military - eclipsed more conventional expectations about women’s roles in society. More than 25,000 women applied to train as pilots under the WASP program, according to the National Museum of the US Air Force. Only 1,830 were accepted. Of these, 1,074 graduated, and 900 were still in uniform when the program ended.

“Every woman who applied for WASP training had to already have a pilot’s license, so they were already pretty unique,’’ Parrish said.

Stationed at 120 air bases across America, the WASP flew every kind of domestic mission and military plane - light trainers, heavy bombers, cargo planes, even the dreaded B-26 Marauder, a twin-engine bomber nicknamed the “Widowmaker’’ for its occasional tendency to crash during takeoff.

They ferried aircraft across the country, towed targets for gunnery practice, and tested new planes or aircraft that had just been repaired to be sure they were safe for the combat pilots.

“When male cadets cracked up an airplane, my job was to take the aircraft that had been repaired, make sure there were no frayed cables, no loose bolts, and do a test flight,’’ said Sara Payne Hayden, 90, of Methuen, who was stationed at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. “I didn’t get to tow targets and get shot at by live ammunition.’’

“We were guinea pigs,’’ said June Bent, who flew open cockpit, single-engine training planes as well as twin-engine cargo planes.

Bent, who is originally from Des Moines, learned to fly only by chance: Her cousin, who worked at an airport, owed her money and paid her back by giving her flying lessons. While she was a WASP stationed at an Air Force base in California, she met her husband, a fighter pilot.

After the WASP program was disbanded, she never worked as a pilot again. Her apartment is filled with mementos - books about women pilots, magazines about planes and flying, albums full of photos from her WASP days, revealing a petite and spirited young woman with a brunette bob in a leather jacket, goggles, and carefully traced lipstick.

“I knew my mother was an Air Force pilot but nobody made a big deal of it,’’ said her daughter, Betsey Bent, who lives in Asheville, N.C.

It wasn’t until Betsey and her sister began attending WASP reunions with their mother that she started to appreciate the significance of her accomplishment. “Breaking the barriers that they did, these women shared something like what the men did in service - a camaraderie.’’

Part of this camaraderie had to do with knowing “we had a little something to prove,’’ said Sara Hayden. “We were recognized as nothing but a bunch of civilian women pilots with no rank, no nothing, and we didn’t g

et anything when we got out, either. But we didn’t dwell on discrimination, because in those days it was expected.’’

Hayden did keep flying for a while as a flight instructor, and she flew for her own pleasure until 2001 when she needed a hip operation.

Now, after being ignored for so long, she is surprised at the recognition the WASP are getting.

“We knew we had done something, we just didn’t know exactly what,’’ she said. “It was many years before we realized that we were the only group of American women who had been trained as a group of women military pilots. That didn’t particularly dawn on us. And we never would have expected a Congressional Gold Medal for that.’’

No date or location has been announced yet for the awards ceremony, but both Hayden and Bent intend to go. “If I’m still here,’’ Bent added, with a laugh. “They’d better hurry up. So many of us are dying off.’’