WASPS (women pilots in ww2) denied burial in arlington (but, there is NO war on women!!)
(they were not even granted VETERAN status until 1977)
This female pilot was denied equal pay during WWII. Now Arlington Cemetery bars her remains.
https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=
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Elaine Harmon, a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program during WWII. (Family photo via AP)
Elaine Harmon and her comrades flew Army planes across the country. They helped train pilots on how to operate aircraft and instruments. They towed targets behind them while soldiers below fired live ammunition during training. Harmon was aware that her service could cost her life: For 38 other women, it did.
But few people in 1944 wanted Harmon or women like her to be part of the military. Not Harmon’s mother, who believed that Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) “were all just awful, just probably loose women” and was ashamed that her daughter would be one of them. Not civilian male pilots, who felt threatened by the female recruits. And not Congress, which voted down a bill that would have granted the female pilots military status for fiscal and political reasons. As World War II drew to a close, the program was disbanded and largely forgotten. It wasn’t until the Air Force began accepting women for pilot training in 1970 that anyone remembered women had flown for the military previously, and it was not until 1977 that the female pilots were finally granted veteran status.
Harmon, who helped campaign for WASPs to get that status, was at the first full veteran’s funeral for a WASP in 2002. It was a world apart from the brief affairs she had attended before, when urns containing a woman’s ashes were unceremoniously placed inside an outdoor structure at Arlington National Cemetery. It made Harmon proud to know that she also would be afforded full military honors when her time came — in April of last year.
Which is why Terry Harmon, Elaine’s 69-year-old daughter, was angered when Secretary of the Army John McHugh reversed the old rule and said that ashes of WASPs can no longer be inurned at Arlington Cemetery.
“These women have been fighting this battle, off and on, for over 50 years now,” Terry Harmon told the Associated Press.
. . . .
The WASPs Are Being Denied Burial At Arlington Cemetery
The great World War II was at its peak. So, on September 11, 1943, 28-year-old Sandy Thompson left her teaching job and volunteered for the Women Airforce Service Pilots, better known as the WASP. As a pilot, she towed targets for live antiaircraft practice, helped deliver planes to overseas bases, and tested new aircraft.
Of the 1,000 women who were WASPs, 38 were killed during their missions. Sixteen of these unsung heroes still live in Texas, and these pilots are part of the Greatest Generation.
WASPs were considered civilians until 1977. Then Congress granted them veteran status. In 2002, the WASPs were allowed to be cremated and have their ashes placed in Arlington National Cemetery, but now bureaucrats have decided that these veterans are not worthy of having a proper military burial and have revoked burial rights in Arlington. The reason they say is a lack of space. This is disgraceful. A lack of space is a sorry excuse to dishonor these veterans.
The government owns 23 percent of the land mass in the United States. Find space to permanently honor these female veterans.
http://www.texasgopvote.com/family/wasps-are-being-denied-burial-arlington-cemetery-008512
After Harmon died in April at age 95, her daughter, Terry Harmon, 69, of Silver Spring, Maryland, was dismayed to learn that the Army had moved to exclude WASPs. She said her mother had helped lead the effort to gain recognition for WASPs.
'These women have been fighting this battle, off and on, for over 50 years now,' she said.
Harmon’s family and others are working to overturn McHugh’s directive.
During the war, the women were considered civilians. But since 1977, federal law has granted them status as veterans. Since 2002, they have been eligible to have their ashes placed at Arlington.
McHugh’s memo, which Terry Harmon obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, says Army lawyers reviewed the rules in 2014 and determined that WASPs and other World War II veterans classified as 'active duty designees' are not eligible for inurnment — placement of their urns in an above-ground structure at Arlington.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3380720/Female-WWII-pilots-BARRED-Arlington-National-Cemetery-despite-government-permission-buried-there.html#ixzz3xkeIAdWg
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http://abcnews.go.com/US/family-fighting-female-world-war-ii-pilots-laid/story?id=36101302
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/01/01/women-wwii-pilots-barred-from-arlington-national-cemetery.html
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