Florence Mascott flew WASP missions. Photo provided
Related story: Local pilot helps re-create women's WWII air journey
By Ron Hayes
“You know,” Florence Mascott says, proudly, “whenever the women pilots know there’s a WASP on the plane, they always come out and say, ‘Thank you for opening things up for us.’ ”
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, established Aug. 5, 1943.
Florence Rubin Elion Mascott was 18½ when she arrived in Sweetwater, Texas, in May 1944 to begin the four-month training to become a WASP.She is 88 now, and a resident of Palm Beach for the past 37 years.
Everyone calls her Flip, a nickname from her childhood in Cambridge, Mass., where she looked up at the sky above Boston and fell in love with flight.
“When I told my mother I wanted to fly, to my surprise, she said that was wonderful,” Flip recalls.
She and two Civil Air Patrol cadets hitched 50 miles to Worcester each week for flying lessons. And then she heard about the WASPs.
You needed 35 hours of flying time.
She found a small flight school in Warrenton, Va., where she could board and earn the required flying time for $300. Her mother lent her the money.
“The school was actually a farm, and the runway was a cow pasture,” she says. “My teacher was an Argentinean. I think he was about my age.”
She earned the flying time, passed the tests, and paid her way to Sweetwater.
She has a photograph of herself then, looking spiffy in a leather flight jacket and goggles.
“The only thing that belonged to me was the shoes,” she says with a laugh. “They had no clothes for women, so we wore men’s khakis.”
For three months, Flip Rubin trained. Calisthenics, ground school and flight instruction in a Stearman PT-17. She did aerobatics, spins and stalls. She soloed.
“On hot summer nights, we carried our cots outside and slept under the stars,” she remembers, “until a coral snake was discovered under one of the cots.”
And then, in August, she resigned.
She was not alone. The government had announced that the WASPs would be officially dissolved on Dec. 20, 1944.
And her boyfriend had proposed.
“It was crazy,” she says now. “I was immature. All I needed was someone to say, ‘What are you doing to yourself?’ ”
The marriage didn’t last, but the friendships she made that summer did.
Today, Flip Mascott is active in the Wingtip-To-Wingtip Association, which promotes the WASPs’ legacy.
She sells jewelry adorned with Fifinella, a gremlin mascot designed by Walt Disney and adopted by the WASPs during World War II.
They are trying to raise $250,000 to sponsor a WASP float in next year’s Tournament of Roses parade.
And they are trying to make sure the WASPs are remembered.
“You know,” she says, “I was the youngest in my class. Most are in their 90s now. There’s only about 140 of us left.”
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