Inspiration
The inspiration for Crosswinds came from my 2019 visit to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum in Honolulu and then in 2021 an educational webinar I produced to honor Cornelia Fort and the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Held on Dec. 7, 2021, more than 400 students and teachers attended the 60-minute event during which panelists, including a curator from the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum in Honolulu and the director of the National WASP WWII Museum in Sweetwater, Texas, discussed how they were keeping history alive.
As I read Cornelia’s editorials that she wrote as the Chief Editorial Writer for The Campus, the Sarah Lawrence College newspaper, and met additional members of the Fort family, I knew I had to produce a documentary on Cornelia. My hope is young and old alike will be inspired by her courageous life!
Judith Miller, M.Ed., M.A., Crosswinds writer and producer
WAFS & WASP
Women pilots who ferried military planes as civilians flying for the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II were born at the dawn of aviation. They heard about the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk and saw early barnstormers perform aerial gymnastics at air shows.
September 6, 1942 changed the lives of 28 female pilots who were the elite female pilots of the day with more than 500 hours in the air. On Sept. 6, 1942, the U.S. Army sent telegrams to 83 female pilots asking them to report to Wilmington, Delaware to be interviewed for a job as a ferry pilot in the Army’s new Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, the WAFS. Led by Nancy Love, an accomplished pilot herself with more than 1,000 hours in the air, Betty Gillies and Cornelia Fort were the first two pilots to report. In August 1944, the WAFS came under the umbrella of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, the WASP. Cornelia died in March 1943 but is considered a WASP since she was one of the 28 original female pilots.
Pursuing their dream to learn to fly, the first female pilots defied all odds and norms of the day to earn their seat in the cockpit. Once there, they excelled. They helped each other knowing if they individually succeeded, the WAFS as a whole would succeed.
CROSSWINDS: The Courageous Life of Cornelia Fort
Crosswinds: The Courageous Life of Cornelia Fort is an 80-minute documentary that includes interviews with two of Cornelia’s nieces; Cornelia’s nephew, an original Rosie who built planes at a Boeing factory in Seattle, a Tuskegee Airman, and never before seen silent video of Cornelia walking in downtown Honolulu in early 1942 before she returned to Nashville following the Pearl Harbor attack.
