Women in Aviation International will be #HonoringTheWASP over Memorial Day weekend 2018 by visiting their graves and leaving an appropriate decoration, such as flowers or other remembrances.
Texas Woman’s University, the repository of the Women Airforce Service Pilots Archive, has provided WAI with a database of WASP gravesites which may be downloaded at WAI.org.
Pilots and aviation enthusiasts are urged to check the database for WASP graves in their local area and visit and decorate the grave as part of Memorial Day activities.
“We invite everyone in the aviation community to join us in this effort,” says WAI President Dr. Peggy Chabrian. “You don’t have to be a WAI member to participate — you just have to feel as we do about the WASP — that they are aviation pioneers who used their love of flying to aid the war effort while opening the door for future women military aviators.”
Participants are asked to photograph the decorated grave, along with information on who and where, and tweet it using the hashtag #HonoringTheWASP. WAI will retweet all of them to its thousands of Twitter followers, officials said.
“Of course, we are an international organization so we encourage WAI members and others outside of the United States to honor their own country’s women aviation military heroes and veterans,” adds Chabrian. “We have a contingent of WAI members ready to decorate all WASP graves in Arlington National Cemetery.”
The database of WASP graves was sent to WAI with this message from the WASP Archive: “Our hearts smile with the love that WAI and its members have for these amazing women. On behalf of all us at the WASP Archive, it is with gratitude and appreciation for this wonderful project that honors these women and their service this Memorial Day.”
Note: Please send any updates to missing information in this database to Kelly Murphy, WAI Director of Communications.