Bernice Haydu was born in December 1920 in Bradley Beach, New Jersey. When she was still a toddler, the family moved to Montclair, New Jersey, where Haydu went to grammar and high school. She was a child of the Great Depression, and family funds were insufficient to send both she and her older brother to college, so he continued his education and she went to work. After several years in the civilian workforce, she began taking night courses at the Newark College of Engineering in New Jersey, and the subject she pursued was aviation. That course prepared her for a private pilot's license, and after her first lesson in a side-by-side Taylor Craft, Haydu was hooked. She said it was wonderful to feel the freedom of flight. After a few months, she enrolled in the WASPs [Annotator's Note: Women Airforce Service Pilots], a Civil Service experimental program designed to determine whether women could handle military aircraft and military life. Haydu was told that if the plan was successful, she would be enlisted in the Army Air Corps. Her log book proved that she had the requisite 35 flying hours, she passed the physical, she met the height requirement, she obtained the appropriate character references, and she performed the myriad tasks she had to do to be accepted. Because she wasn't yet a part of the Army Air Corps, she had to pay her own way to Sweetwater, Texas for further training. She also paid for room and board and dress uniform expenses out of her own salary. Haydu said she didn't mind. She wanted to do her share for her country, and was excited about flying big planes.

The extent of Bernice Haydu's travel up to that point had only encompassed three states: Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. Her impression of Texans was that they wore big hats and boots and talked funny. Training of the class that preceded hers in Sweetwater, Texas was delayed by weather, so Haydu's class had two weeks free time and developed a musical skit about their introduction to military life. The girls did the show for their base, then were invited to perform for nearby Camp Barkley. They were then asked to bring the show around the country, but refused because they would have had to give up their flight training. Haydu said it was very cold in winter and very hot in summer, but the civilian population treated them very well. She trained in a 220 horsepower PT-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing-Stearman Model 75 primary trainer aircraft] for about 70 hours, and went from that to the 650 horsepower AT-6 [Annotator's Note: North Americanh AT-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft] with a controllable pitch prop and many amenities. They were taught to keep their heads up and on the lookout and during off hours, the girls would sit in pairs in the cockpit of the AT-6, one of them blindfolded, and tasked with locating by touch the controls her partner called out. Haydu said she had a good instructor.

Bernice Haydu said her first solo cross-country flight in the AT-6 [Annotator's Note: North American AT-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft] was interesting. While approaching her first landing field, she noticed sparks and smoke coming out of the engine. Her thoughts went to jumping, losing the plane, having to undergo an interrogation, and maybe losing her position in the program. She decided instead to call the field and declare an emergency. The field was cleared and she landed, and was gratified to learn that there truly was a problem with the engine which they repaired in order for her to continue on. She can't say that she had a favorite aircraft. She loved every one she flew. The WASP [Annotator's Note: Women Airforce Service Pilots] program was disbanded in 1944, and at that time Haydu wrote application letters to numerous manufacturers and airlines for employment, and got every sort of negative response. She realized that if she was going to have a career in aviation, she was going to have to do it on her own. Back in New Jersey, she got her flight instructor's rating, and did free-lance instructing and free-lance ferrying of military aircraft to New York where they were being sold to civilians. Later she established a business ferrying new Cessna aircraft that were being produced for private sale. That led to her getting a Cessna dealership. She parlayed that into a partnership in a flight school. Haydu married a former World War 2 flight instructor, and together they owned three restored Stearmans. All told, they had 14 different aircraft over the years, and kept flying until their late 70s.

There was not much down time for Class 44-7, but Bernice Haydu remembers spending a few weekends swimming at nearby Lake Sweetwater for fun. The girls were not allowed to fraternize with the instructors, under threat of "washing-out" [Annotator's Note: exclusion from a course after a failure to meet required standards]. Haydu would not do anything to jeopardize her position. There were 25,000 women applicants for the WASP [Annotator's Note: Women Airforce Service Pilots] program, of which 2,080 were accepted, and only 1,074 actually graduated. Haydu said there weren't very many men around to date anyway because they were all off at war. Many men, including some of the flight instructors, were against the notion of female pilots, but Haydu said she was fortunate and never had a problem. She noted that Jacqueline Cochran [Annotator's Note: the head of the WASPs] had a lot of clout and helped further the standings of the WASPs. The program was formed to help relieve the men for active duty, and Haydu points out that for every combat pilot, at least 12 service pilots were in support as instructors, test flight engineers, and utility pilots; doing about 22 different jobs at 120 bases. The women flew every aircraft manufactured for World War 2, including the B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. Haydu recalled a funny discrimination story. One group being checked out to fly the B-26 [Annotator's Note: Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber] encountered an officer who said he wasn't teaching any "damn women" how to fly. But he got orders, and had to do so. One of the women got even: she married him.

Bernice Haydu had only one flying occasion when she feared for her life and that was after the war. She and her husband took one of their Stearmans to a Canadian air show, and something went wrong with the brakes, so they weren't able to do a "fly by" [Annotator's Note: a close approach flight past a point] as they had been asked. While her husband was getting their plane repaired, Haydu agreed to accompany an experienced commercial pilot in his restored Fairchild PT-19 [Annotator's Note: Fairchild PT-19 primary trainer aircraft] and do the job. Rather than a simple fly-by, the pilot decided to do a loop, and it didn't work out. While they were upside down, Haydu thought, "today I die." They hit a telephone pole, taking off the right wing, floundered across the road to another telephone pole that took off the left wing. The fuselage came to rest in a plowed field, the plane completely demolished. Haydu went right back to flying. She feels having been a WASP [Annotator's Note: Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP)] is a great feeling, and she enjoys the celebrity. She is very proud of what the WASPs did in showing the world that an airplane knows no sex. Haydu said the women were needed and they were doing a good job. She remembers that in June 1944, General Henry "Hap" Arnold put a bill before Congress to have the WASPs taken into the Army Air Corps. The armed services had taken in the WACs [Annotator's Note: Women's Army Corps] the WAVES [Annotator's Note: Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service in the US Navy], the SPARS [Annotator's Note: Semper Paratus Always Ready, US Coast Guard Women's Reserve], all the female organizations, except the WASPs. Opposition factions lobbied Congress, the bill was defeated in the House of Representatives on 20 December 1944, and the organization was disbanded. Haydu said the women pilots had to pay their own way home.

Today Bernice Haydu has a Congressional Gold Medal and credits Nicole Malachowsky, the first woman Thunderbird pilot, for championing the cause of the WASPs [Annotator's Note: Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP)]. Recognition was a long time coming for the project Jacqueline Cochran [Annotator's Note: the commander of the WASPs] recommended to General Henry Arnold after Pearl Harbor, but didn't see implemented until the end of 1942. President Barack Obama signed a bill in 2009, and on 10 March 2010 the medal was awarded. Haydu said the WASPs were very proud, but also very sad because so many of their colleagues had died before it was done. She proudly wears a replica of the medal.