Geraldine Nyman was born in Emmett, Idaho in 1920. She grew up with a family that moved every year. Her father was a barber who would buy a barber shop with no bath tubs. He would outfit the barber shop with a bath tub, stay a year, and then continue on to another shop. The family never went through a Depression because of her father's ability to make money. Nyman ended up going to a different school every year. She graduated high school when she was 15. Since her education lacked continuity, Nyman found that when she moved, more often than not, she was at a more advanced level then everyone else. As a result, she was bumped up a few grades. She had no brothers or sisters. Nyman went to college, but quit her last year because she was taking a class and the professor was terrible. She got up and walked out, packed her bags and left college. She went back home and got all of her stuff out of the sorority house. Nyman was bored one day and decided to take a flying lesson because she had never been in a plane before. The flying instructor offered Nyman a job because he needed help around the office. Nyman helped him, got her flying instruction, and subsequently became a flying instructor. When the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, everything shut down on the west coast. Nyman was within 200 miles of the coast. The flying school was shut down. She took off for New York on a bus and stopped along the way to get flying lessons. Nyman got to New York eventually and that is where she met Jacqueline Cochran. Cochran had taken 20 women to England to fly with the Royal Air Force. Cochran invited Nyman to go in the next batch of 20. Cochran called frantically a week later saying she had finally gotten approval to form the Women's Pilot Service but expressed concern that she needed to have women who were well qualified. She also wanted women who had lots of guts. Cochran showed Nyman a letter from a high up in the Air Force. The man who wrote it said that he was told he had to make sure he gave the women an opportunity to fly, but that he knew women could never and would never be able to fly military aircraft and to get rid of them as soon as possible. They had more flying time than any instructor on the base and they did not even have any military aircraft. Once they realized that the girls were able to fly the planes successfully, they brought military aircraft onto the base. Nyman was in the first class and they graduated successfully at Ellington Field. Cochran asked if the women were to receive wings, she was told they were not. In response, Cochran personally bought the first graduating class of WASPS [Annotator's Note: Women Airforce Service Pilots] their wings. They were very special to everyone. After Nyman graduated she decided to go home. On the train home, Nyman met a handsome young lieutenant. They were very interested in each other and they ended up getting married, they have been married for 67 years. A group decided to get together and head to Long Beach, California. They got to Long Beach and went into the office of the head man. He forgot they were coming and did not have a place for them to stay. A lieutenant came by and said they had an old insane asylum that had not been used so they cleaned it up and put the girls there. There were a lot of windows so Nyman was concerned about peeping toms. There were no toilet seats and no bath curtains. They did not have any bedding, so they were given two army blankets. This went on until the second class arrived. The second class was horrified. They stayed about three or four weeks and were complaining. All of them went to the Villa Riviera which was the nicest hotel in town. They got the suite and sent the bill to the commanding officer. A week or two later the commanding officer procured barracks space for them, so it paid to go to the hotel and send the commanding officer a bill.

They started flying and did not quit flying from that point on. Geraldine Nyman was stationed in Long Beach, California throughout the war. They were under not so nice instructors there but as more girls arrived the instructors became nicer. They had a lot of adventures with bad airplanes. One time Nyman was out and had a forced landing. They always inspected the pilots when they had a forced landing. He asked Nyman if she forgot to put the second engine on. Nyman's engine had been sabotaged. Someone had left cleaning rags in the engine. The officer refused to call it sabotage and instead wrote a report that Nyman had forgotten to do her preflight checks. Nyman said this is one time he was not going to tell her she did something wrong. Nyman threatened to go to the newspaper. The officer settled on calling it vapor lock. They were not treated very nicely. They kept on flying and they kept on bringing in more girls. One time they were told to go to a town and pick up some planes that were right off of the boats. They had been given up on because they were used. Nyman was instructed to fly the planes to another air base where someone would be able to take a look at them and see if any parts could be scrounged. About three fourths of the way, the canopy flew off of the plane Nyman was flying. Nyman said they can take the plane and dump it, she refused to fly it. Nyman had to quit because she had a bad accident. She had to land and was injured. She was not far from the strip when both engines started sputtering. She was over the top of a housing project. The tower told her to bail out but she refused because the plane could have crashed into the housing project. Nyman found a spot where she could go in but it was surrounded by a big fence. Nyman hit the fence and had to go to the hospital but she did not kill anyone. That was quite an experience for her. When she got home she was told that they were going to have a party. They had a little parachute pin to give her hinting that she should have used it. Nyman stood tall and said she did not want to use it because she feared for people on the ground. She appreciated the gesture. All of the time that they were in the service, even when they were in Houston, the girls who were killed were not allowed to have a flag on their casket. They were not recognized as members of the Air Force. For 35 years they were nothing to the military. If a girl was killed she would not even get a gold star in a window.

[Annotator's Note: Geraldine Nyman was a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, and transported military aircraft to various locations around the United States until she was severely injured during a crash landing.] Barry Goldwater kept going to Congress and asking when they were going to do something about them [Annotator's note: the WASPs] getting recognition. They eventually allowed ten women into the Air Force. This made Goldwater explode because he thought it was not fair. They finally said they would be recognized as part of the Air Force but they would not be able to put anything in front of their names. One "smart ass" congressman stated that he "hopes they are satisfied because they can now be buried at Arlington." That was a low blow. They still had no official recognition. They did not say what they were and they were not able to get anything in front of their names. Not long ago, Nyman had some people visit her, two girls who had been in the WACs [Annotator's Note: Women's Army Corps]. They were colonels. Nyman believes that if she had a rank from the beginning she may very well be more than a colonel today. It was hard to look at the girls and realize they were colonels. Pappy was the instructor for the WASPs. When they hired him, they did not think he would take up for the girls. He fought for the girls at every corner. He did not make it too obvious because he did not want to get fired. They used to receive the most awful meals when other people were eating steaks. One time, Nyman asked for a salad and she received a leaf of lettuce with mayonnaise. Pappy tried very hard to be nice to the girls. Many of the people working there realized Pappy was trying. They realized once they got 1,300 girls to sign up that the program was going to work. Nyman heard that there were termites in one of their bamboo trainer planes. He said they had to fly them, Pappy volunteered to go with the girls if they went up in one of the bamboo planes. One time an engine quit and they went down. Pappy knew the problem was in the wing and he wanted to make sure the wings broke when he landed so they did not have to fly in those planes again. Pappy was scared to death that one of the girls was going to be killed. This event took place in Houston. Their base was right next to Ellington Air Force Base. It was also a municipal airport so every now and then they got a civilian flight. They learned Morse code, went to class, and were instructed well. The course was several months long before they were allowed to graduate. It was thorough training. They [Annotator's Note: the Army Air Forces] extended training to increase the chances they would get rid of them. There were 23 women who graduated in the first class of WASPs. Nyman was not a part of any major accidents. The second batch of girls had a fatality. One girl was killed and the mother was not allowed to put a gold star in the window. Nyman does not remember many of the girls from the second class, but she knows all of the women from the first class. Nyman wishes some of the girls were around so that they could be interviewed.

Geraldine Nyman only knows one girl from the second graduating class of WASPs [Annotator's Note: Women Airforce Service Pilots]. At the time of this interview, Nyman was one of three remaining WASPs from the first graduating class. Nyman recalls that they flew a lot of different kind of airplanes. They flew the AT-6 [Annotator's Note: North American AT-6 advanced trainer aircraft], the AT-17s [Annotator's Note: Cessna AT-17 Bobcat advanced trainer aircraft] and other types of planes. They flew all of the planes with BT [Annotator's Note: basic trainer] designation. In Long Beach, at the beginning of the program, they flew just about every kind of plane available. Nyman's job was to take a plane someplace, pick up another plane, and return. Sometimes, Nyman would be gone an entire week. Nyman's boyfriend at the time would write to her so she would always have a fat stack of letters waiting for her. Nyman flew back to see her boyfriend one time. They did not fly much when they were in Houston. Sometimes they did not have much training in the planes they had to fly. [Annotator's Note: Nyman asks her husband which planes she flew in Montana. Her husband responds to the question.] Nyman was flying a big twin engine aircraft and she hit a flock of birds. That was when Nyman had to go down and was over the housing area. Nyman did not pay too much attention to aviation's early heroes and pioneers. Nyman had about 500 hours of stick time to her credit before the war had started. She accumulated most of the hours teaching. Most of the girls who went into the first class had a lot of flying hours. After Nyman discovered that one of her planes was sabotaged, she made sure to double check her planes for future flights. Nyman made sure she told the other girls so that they would be aware. [Annotator's Note: Nyman's husband speaks and refers to a place called Ogden that the pilots went to.] They were not allowed to socialize with men on base. Some of the girls maybe did but Nyman did not. [Annotator's Note: Nyman's husband speaks again and reminds Nyman about the ratings she had when she first entered and he also reminds her about being rated as a mechanic and that she flew tri-motors that carried firefighters.] The man in Montana who was in charge of the whole thing reminded Nyman that if there was trouble she could land on the treetops with a tri-motor plane. Nyman was not in the service when she flew the tri-motors.

Geraldine Nyman thought that Cochran [Annotator's Note: Jacqueline Cochran] was independent. Nancy Love had started the WAFS [Annotator's Note: Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron] and wanted to get women into the Air Force. Here they were with two groups of women and Cochran won with her group. They ended up merging both groups into the Air Force. Cochran was a bomber; you could not get past her. Nyman was not married when the WASP [Annotator's Note: Women Airforce Service Pilots] program ended. After the WASPs were disbanded, Nyman went back to her flying school and had the opportunity in Portland to teach a few Navy pilots. From there, Nyman went home and her husband to be came home temporarily to become her husband. The WASPs only lasted several years. Nyman is not sure what class was in session when they stopped it. She was no longer in the program when it disbanded, she had quit months before. She does not remember what her feelings were when the program ended. Nyman faced resentment because the women were taking up the non-combat jobs. The men resented this because they had to go to combat. There was a lot of male resentment. The instructors were not very fair to the first class. They got some instructors for subsequent classes that were a lot better. Nyman feels like they broke down barriers that allowed other women to follow but still feels as if she is not too sure where their legacy will fall. She was happy that they were eventually recognized as pilots. It took 30 years for the Air Force to finally recognize them. Nyman's parents were not bothered by the fact that she wanted to fly. She was very independent growing up. Nyman's grandmother thought it was great. No one in her family criticized her. [Annotator's Note: Nyman's husband speaks again, referring to the relationship that Nyman had with her parents.] One time, Nyman thought she had run out of gas but it had been sabotage. Nyman has trouble remembering the second incident.

One time, Geraldine Nyman was on a trip going back east and had to land at the closest airport. Nyman was able to get into the airport. They took the plane in and told her that she came in on a wing and a prayer. She was notified that the wrong steel was in the valves of the engine of the airplane. She had flown across the United States in that plane. Nyman started crying because she thought of all of the people flying faulty planes and it made her unhappy. This happened while Nyman was in service. Nyman was paid 150 dollars a month. They had to pay for housing and everything else. There was not much left at the end of the pay period. Nyman notes that they did have decent facilities aside from what they first got in Long Beach. She does not remember any ill treatment from the press. They had very little free time. She does not feel that World War 2 changed her life. Nyman hints that her husband served in Europe and served near the Maginot line. As far as the war was concerned, Nyman felt like she tried to do the right things at all times. [Annotator's Note: Nyman's husband speaks and discusses a little bit about his service.] Nyman thinks the United States is spending too much money right now. She thinks it is hard to tell how the country is doing today. She is not sure if World War 2 changed the rest of the world, but it had to to an extent. Nyman thinks we [Annotator's Note: America] are a mess now; it's not politics; it's just where we are. Nyman notes that there were a few positives that came out of World War 2 that include the fact that France was made free. [Annotator's Note: Nyman's husband brings up the fact that their family opened a bush pilot service in Alaska.]

Being a bush pilot in Alaska was a fun experience for Geraldine Nyman. One of their employees crashed a plane in the ocean. Eventually they moved out of Alaska. Nyman makes note that there are a lot of different museums dedicated to World War 2. She thinks that The National WWII Museum is probably a good thing. Nyman loved being a WASP [Annotator's Note: Women Airforce Service Pilots]. She loved flying all of the different kinds of airplanes. Anything she complains about is superficial because she loved the airplanes so much. There are not many WASPs left, just a few handfuls. The remaining WASPs are scattered all over the country. Some of the women are still alive but some cannot remember much. Nyman had to pick up a shipment of P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] and get them to Canada for Russian women fighter pilots. When they got up there the women were waiting. They were tough. They were fighter pilots. When they delivered the planes, the Russian pilots jumped in and flew the planes to Russia. A group of WASPs were invited to Russia to meet the women fighter pilots who received planes from the WASPs. The Russian women treated them royally. When they heard the stories from the women fighter pilots, there were a lot of similarities. The Russian men would not have anything to do with the Russian women pilots. The WASPs got back and realized they had not done much in comparison with the Russian pilots. Nyman notes that they did not do much during World War 2. Nyman is proud that they are receiving the Congressional Gold Medal. She wants people to know why they are getting the medal. Nyman does not remember what kind of designation she had. They flew what they trained on. Sometimes they had to fly new planes with no training. Nyman does not recall a hierarchy among the first graduating class.