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February 26

02-26 TABLE of CONTENTS: Women in the Air Force DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTES by Carol Hymowitze and Michaele Weissman, and Voltaraine de Cleyre. Women in the Air Force       In 1944, Liberty Field, Camp Stewart, the Women of the Air Service Pilots (WASPS) who flew military aircraft during World War II, were ordered out on ground maneuvers with the regular male Army troops. Although the women were not military (without military benefits such as insurance, housing, free meals, health care, or uniforms, etc.), they were often ordered by misogynistic C.O.'s to perform as if they were military personnel.       Out in the field without military equipment (the women often didn't even get shoe rations!) the men were busily showing the women up when the officers rang an alarm. The WASPs had no idea what the alarm meant until GI's whipped out gas masks and put them on. Not the WASPs. They had no gas masks! As the acrid smoke drifts over everyone, the women gag and cough while the men laughed and the officers smirked.       From Byrd Howell Granger's On Final Approach, The Women Airforce Service Pilots of W.W.II. Scottsdate, AZ.: Falconer Publishing Company, 1991. ISBN: 0-9626267-0-8. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | 02-26 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS B. 02-26-1599, Mary of the Incarnation (Marie De L'Incarnation), French mystic. In Canada she is known not only as a mystic but also for establishing the Ursuline Order in New France whose responsibilities included the education of girls in the colony. B. 02-26-1858, Lavinia Lloyd Dock, nurse, settlement house worker, suffragist. LLD trained as a nurse at Bellevue Hospital, the first American school to follow Florence Nightingale's principles of patient care and nurse self-reliance. LLD nursed during a yellow fever epidemic in Jacksonville, FL, and at the Johnstown, PA flood.       She wrote Materia Medical for Nurses (1890), the standard nursing text for a generation. Moved to the Henry Street Settlement house Lillian Wald had created, became a member of Wald's inner circle, and lived there for 20 years. She also wrote A History of Nursing (1907 with Adelaide Nutting which explored the glorious historical past of women's involvement in nursing, until men took over to bring "general contempt" to nurses and "misery" to patients, "until Florence Nightingale came to the rescue." She had to move out of the Henry Street Settlement because of her actions - including arrests - in connection with the radical American Woman's movement. B. 02-26-1858, Alice Mabel Bacon, traveled in Japan where she both studied and later taught daughters of nobility at the Peeresses' School in Tokyo. She authored Japanese Girls and Women (1891) because "while Japan as a whole has been closely studied, and much and varied information had been gathered about its country and people, one-half of its population has been left entirely unnoticed, passed over with brief mention or altogether misunderstood." She had formed close friendships with many Japanese women from all classes from princesses to fisherwomen. B. 02-26-1869, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, revolutionary who became Lenin's wife and continued to play a central role in the Bolshevik revolution and the communist party after his death. B. 02-26-1906, Madeleine Carroll, Anglo-American actor best known for her screen portrayals in The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1937). While some actors played at being World War II heroes in front of the cameras, MC six years away from a lucrative career at its peak to do war work. B. 02-26-1921, Betty Hutton, brash actor/singer best known for her role in the movie Annie Get Your Gun (1950). | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | QUOTES DU JOUR HYMOWITZE, CAROL and WEISSMAN, MICHAELE:       "One day after the Patriot defeats at Lexington and Concord, the women of Groton, Massachusetts, dressed in men's clothing, armed themselves with muskets and pitchforks, and set out to defend the local bridge from the retreating British. The women captured a small group of British solders, including a courier carrying valuable intelligence and handed their prisoners over to the local militia."             -- A History of Women in America by Carol Hymowitze and Michaele Weissman. Printed in cooperation with the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, Bantam Books, 1978. De CLEYRE, VOLTARAINE:       "I never expect men to GIVE us liberty. No, women, we are not WORTH it, until we TAKE it."             -- Voltaraine de Cleyre (1866-1912). | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |