A Pilot Achieves Her Dream
September 25, 2008 – 6:00 amIn February of 1943, Kay was teaching in Bucks County, Pennsylvania when the Marine Corps Women Reserves was formed. She thought she would like to be a Marine, so she joined. Her boot camp training was at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. From there she was assigned to attend a Link Trainer School at a naval facility near Atlanta, Georgia. Following that training, she received her permanent assignment to the Naval Air Station at Cherry Point, North Carolina.
As a Link Trainer, she instructed pilots in instrument flying. Much of the time was spent helping returning pilots brush up on new procedures. One of the pilots who came through for training was Tyrone Power. (For you younger readers, he was a famous movie star when many of us were growing up.)
Kay was very happy as a Link Trainer Instructor. She felt she was very lucky, being at the right place at the right time, and she can’t think of anything else she would rather have done. She was discharged at Camp Lejeune in 1946. Neither she nor the ten or so other women serving with her really wanted to disband.
When she returned to Bucks County, she returned to teaching music in elementary schools in Bucks County. She had received her higher education at Moravian College for Women in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1948 she married her high school math teacher. Kay continues her interest in music, playing the recorder and singing with several choral groups.
Kay always wanted to be a pilot. She recalls as a child running out to see a plane overhead. When she was at Cherry Point, she had hitch-hiked to Rocky Mount to take flying lessons. She continued her interest in flying when she returned to Bucks County and received additional lessons. Kay became the first woman pilot to fly out of the Quakertown, Pennsylvania Airport.
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