Chuck Yeager didn't have anything on Lillian Yonally.
Sure, Yeager was a record-setting test pilot, the first to exceed the speed of sound. But Yonally broke through a different barrier: gender stereotypes.
Yonally, a World War II pilot, was one tough woman. She served in the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP. The WASP picked up the slack at home when all the male pilots went overseas. Yonally's main job as a WASP was flying B-25 bombers with a target in tow, while new recruits on the ground fired with live ammunition at the target.
More than 25,000 women applied to the WASP program. Only 1,830 were eaccpeted and 1,074 completed the training.
At age 98, Yonally is one of the few WASP still alive. Katie speaks with Yonally's daughter, Lynn Yonally.
Chuck Yeager didn't have anything on Lillian Yonally.
Sure, Yeager was a record-setting test pilot, the first to exceed the speed of sound. But Yonally broke through a different barrier: gender stereotypes.
Yonally, a World War II pilot, was one tough woman. She served in the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP. The WASP picked up the slack at home when all the male pilots went overseas. Yonally's main job as a WASP was flying B-25 bombers with a target in tow, while new recruits on the ground fired with live ammunition at the target.
More than 25,000 women applied to the WASP program. Only 1,830 were eaccpeted and 1,074 completed the training.
At age 98, Yonally is one of the few WASP still alive. Katie speaks with Yonally's daughter, Lynn Yonally.
My mother was a woman of tremendous integrity. My mother was curious, sensitive, compassionate, honest, always there for us, unflappable, loyal, complicated, she is devoted, resilient, dazzling, giving, vivacious, extraordinary.
Lynn Yonally :My mother actually met my father when he was the artillery commander, and they were shooting at her plane.
Katie Hafner :Welcome to Our Mothers Ourselves, a weekly conversation about one extraordinary mother. Hi, I'm Katie Hafner, and I'm your host. Lillian Yonally loved nothing more than flying a B-25. And when she was 21, she couldn't figure out why any woman in her right mind would choose a man over a plane. Lillian was part of a small and select corps of female pilots during World War II called the WASP. Yhat stands for Women Air Force Service Pilots. The WASP picked up the slack at home when all the male pilots went overseas. They trained male pilots. They tested new planes. They flew damaged planes back to base for repair. They flew in bad weather and landed on unlighted runways at night. Many of them died. But it took decades before the WASP were recognized for their service to the country. Lillian Yonally is one of the few WASPs still alive. She's almost 100. Today I'm talking with Lynn Yonally, one of Lillian's six children. Lynn, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast to talk to me about your mom.
Lynn Yonally :Thank you. I love this series.
Katie Hafner :Thank you so much. I want to ask you, as you were growing up, what kinds of stories would your mom tell you about having done this amazing thing?
Lynn Yonally :She'd never told us. I was actually in conversation with my sister this morning. And I said to her, "When did you realize that, you know, what mom had done during World War II?" And she said, "You know, I don't really remember her ever saying anything." And I said, "I don't either." All the time growing up, we sort of knew that she flew, but we never ever heard any stories. The first time I know I can go back and and really put a pin in it is when I was 27 years old. It was when the WASP finally got organized and said, "We should have our veteran status," and she started writing letters. And when she said that, I was like, "What do you mean?" And she started talking.
Katie Hafner :So you when she said WASP, you'd had no idea what she was talking about at first.
Lynn Yonally :We sort of knew that it had to do with flying and the military, but we had no idea what it meant. What those letters meant. My mother always deferred anything about World War II to my father and his experience.
Katie Hafner :And what was his experience?
Lynn Yonally :My mother actually met my father when he was the artillery commander, and they were shooting at her plane, and they got...
Katie Hafner :Whoa. Back up for a second.
Lynn Yonally :Yes.
Katie Hafner :All right. So we need to explain what that means. So they were shooting at her plane.
Lynn Yonally :He joined the Army, just like many people. Left college, and went out to the Mojave Desert to train with an artillery unit. And my mother at that time was Flying B-25's tow target. Tow target means that you are pulling a sleeve about thirty feet behind your plane. And the new recruits would dip their bullets in a color and then they would shoot live ammunition at that sleeve. And they would determine, you know, how good they were by how many hits they had on the sleeve.
Katie Hafner :Okay, let's stop. Let's stop there for one second because I happen to have cued up your mother actually talking about this from an interview that she did for, um, this sounds like it was an oral history project. And what's amazing to me is that she's sitting there, she looks like this very demure little old lady in her 80s sitting there in her lovely, looks like kind of a seersucker blouse. You think she'd be talking, reminiscing about her quilting bee, and here she is. Talking about her tow targets. So imagine this lady with her, I think they're pearl earrings.
Lynn Yonally :Oh, yes, yeah.
Katie Hafner :Okay, here we go.
Lillian Yonally :I didn't know what tow target was going to be. You you fly with a tow rail operator in the stern of the airplane, and they let the sleeve out from there when you're on course. Tow for four hours, two two-hour shifts for the guys down below. They fire live, live ammunition at the sleeve.
Interviewer :So how long did you do that for?
Lillian Yonally :Most all the time.
Katie Hafner :Okay, so these were women- let's, ok, let's, let's dial back, and then we're going to come back to your mom and your dad and the tow planes. So your mother, this thing that she really never talked about with her six children, was that she joined, it's called the Women Air Force-
Lynn Yonally :-Service Pilots.
Katie Hafner :Right. Air Force Service Pilots.
Lynn Yonally :Correct. The WASP.
Katie Hafner :And they were pilots, or would-be pilots-
Lynn Yonally :No, they were all pilots. They had to have their pilot's license, and had to have a certain number of hours of flight.
Katie Hafner :And this was World War II, Pearl Harbor had happened-
Lynn Yonally :1943.
Katie Hafner :And the idea was that, because there would be a shortage of men to do the things that needed to be done with the, with planes domestically-
Lynn Yonally :They could transport planes from the factories to the bases. My mother was the first class to be trained on B-25s, which then went on to be tow targets, and the Army was not sure that the women could do it. And so it was an experiment.
Katie Hafner :Mm hmm. And so your mom, one thing that's very interesting about the WASP was that a lot of women wanted to do it, and not many women made it through the program.
Lynn Yonally :Correct. 25,000 women applied. Only a little more than 1100 made it through the training and became actual WASPs. What we have determined since is that there was actually kind of a quiet number that they were looking for. So her best friend washed out the day before graduation.
Katie Hafner :Washed out meaning didn't make it?
Lynn Yonally :Didn't make it. That's right. And my mom has often said, "She was a better pilot than I was." Remember that these women did not question. They were honored to be asked to do what they did. And right up until now, my mom is 98 years old. And she will tell you it was an honor to do it.
Katie Hafner :Let's get down to the nitty gritty of what they did in their jobs, particularly the tow targets.
Lynn Yonally :So tow target is where you're training the artillery to be better at shooting. And so like I said, they have a sleeve that they pick up behind them which he was indicating. Which you're coming down the field and then they, then the sleeve goes out from behind your, your plane. But that kind of snap means that you've gotta throttle up really fast. And she often talked about that. And she, you just don't have any clue as to what that would feel like. But then you fly in a formation for two hours with people shooting at you. And then you come down and they assess how well they did.
Katie Hafner :Some of these women had their toes shot.
Lynn Yonally :Oh, yeah.
Katie Hafner :Their feet shot!
Lynn Yonally :Yeah. Or what she would say also, if they shot they, the wire that was holding that sleeve, you would suddenly be thrust forward and you had to compensate. And-
Katie Hafner :Because it was severed, it's severed the sleeve.
Lynn Yonally :Yes, exactly. So you didn't have that drag anymore. The story that we kind of grew up with was that dad shot her down. We didn't know what he meant by that. It was always a joke. And she would just kind of laugh. Well, over the years after, when they got their military status, suddenly she opened up.
Katie Hafner :So when she started to open up, it was much later in life.
Lynn Yonally :Oh!
Katie Hafner :And then was it like-
Lynn Yonally :Oh! It was like the dam burst! That's the other thing. She snuck her camera into basic training and took it with her. And she took color slides of her service. Color was just coming into being used. And she has these amazing photos.
Katie Hafner :So she snuck the camera in. And she snuck it in because it was secretive what they were doing?
Lynn Yonally :They were not allowed to take any pictures because of course the Army was not sure that this experiment was going to succeed.
Katie Hafner :This experiment of women-
Lynn Yonally :Flying.
Katie Hafner :The planes. Okay. And so would they have had egg on their face if they had tried it and it had failed and women turned out to be not-
Lynn Yonally :Yes.
Katie Hafner :Daring enough, or courageous enough, or tough enough?
Lynn Yonally :Tough enough. Ha ha. Their training was unbelievable. This was a group of women that supported each other so much through the training and through everything else. And when they came together again, they're the most humble group of women, fierce women that I've ever, ever come in contact with. I was fortunate. I probably went to ten or fifteen reunions. I went to Sweetwater with her, and they-
Katie Hafner :Sweetwater-
Lynn Yonally :Sweetwater, Texas is where they trained. They're just, they were amazing women. It's a group of women that just hold each other up. Each class was proud to be themselves.
Katie Hafner :She was in the seventh class, right?
Lynn Yonally :Yes. Yeah. She graduated in class 1943.
Katie Hafner :Mm hmm. So when she says in that little snippet that I played for you, she said, "Oh, I," he asked, "How long did you do that? The towing of the targets." And she said, "Oh, most of the time," sort of like, just matter of fact, like, "And this is how you make a peach cobbler. I keep it in the oven."
Lynn Yonally :Yeah. That, and that's how she talked about it. I mean, and she was in service because she was in the seventh class. She graduated in May of 1943. And they were disbanded in December of 1944. So she had some of the longest service, which is also unique. You know, I mean, they were disbanded rapidly in December of 1944. To give you a little background, which I think is also part of the story of my mom, is that she was a child of divorced parents. And so her childhood was difficult. And when she was 15, her father remarried.
Katie Hafner :Back up a little bit. She was born in 1922.
Lynn Yonally :Correct.
Katie Hafner :In Lynn, Massachusetts. She then, they then moved to New Bedford, which is made famous by Moby Dick and other things.
Lynn Yonally :Yes, she had a sister that was born when she was two and a half. When her parents divorced, her mother was Canadian, lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia. And the judge awarded my aunt to the mother and awarded my mother to her father. So they were separated.
Katie Hafner :Was that just some standard procedure in those days?
Lynn Yonally :I think my grandfather coming from a wealthy well-known family in New Bedford was given one of the children. Because the judge was probably on his side. You should read the newspaper article about this divorce. And this one, this woman from Canada had the gall to divorce Jack Lorraine!
Katie Hafner :And where did their wealth come from?
Lynn Yonally :My great-grandfather emigrated from England as a penniless orphan and, and landed in Illinois. And then went bankrupt three times. And his best friend said, "You need to go to New Bedford. It's the wealthiest city on the East Coast." And in those days it was, because of the whaling business. And he established a coffee and tea business. So he traveled all over the world, collecting the best coffee and the best tea and opened up Lorraine's Good Coffee.
Katie Hafner :All right, so your poor mother, she's buffeted by this unfortunate situation. So then she went to boarding school in Providence, Rhode Island.
Lynn Yonally :That was because her father remarried. And her new stepmother, that was part of the deal that she would not have to deal with this 15-year-old teenager. I'm sure it was very difficult. But the other thing was that for her birthday, before she left her boarding school, her dad said, "What would you like?" And she said, "I want flying lessons." And he gave her that.
Katie Hafner :And apparently catches the flying bug.
Lynn Yonally :Right. Now, part of that agreement also was that my mother would never again live at home.
Katie Hafner :The agreement being, "I'll give you flying lessons if you fly the coop entirely?" Is that-
Lynn Yonally :Well, I think, I don't think the flying lessons were in compensation. But from there on, her home was not with her father.
Katie Hafner :Oh, that is tragic.
Lynn Yonally :It- Yes. Yes, it is. She, when she was, when she graduated from high school, from the boarding school, she was sent to New York. To Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School. Because the family felt that she needed a way to support herself. So when she was at Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School, she became an executive secretary, and went to work for Grumman Aircraft on Long Island. While at Grumman, she got bored sitting behind a desk and just doing secretarial work. So her boss said, "You know, there's an opening in the control tower. Would you like to be a control tower operator?" And so she is probably one of the first, if not the only woman from that era that was a control tower operator. She actually got a call in from someone that use the letter C.L., and kept saying "I need to land," and she kept saying "I'm the control tower operator," and he kept saying "I need to talk to the control tower operator," and finds out that it's Charles Lindbergh.
Katie Hafner :And he didn't believe that she was-
Lynn Yonally :In the control tower, that a woman was was guiding him in.
Katie Hafner :And finally he had to just accept it.
Lynn Yonally :Exactly. And then he came up and met her.
Katie Hafner :And do you know how the meeting went?
Lynn Yonally :I don't! Hahaha! I mean, Charles Lindbergh, from what we also know, had a very strong wife who also flew. So he probably was like, "Okay, fine." I don't know for sure. But-
Katie Hafner :So what year would that have been?
Lynn Yonally :Probably 1942 or early 1943.
Katie Hafner :Mm hmm. So she heard about this, the WASP. It must have somehow, there must have been some kind of way of hearing that this was starting.
Lynn Yonally :She was connected to the flying community through Grumman.
Katie Hafner :All right, so she goes through her training. This is every bit as tough on the women as it was on the men.
Lynn Yonally :They did the same training. But the men who came in to that training had no aviation background, they were not pilots. So the women had the same training, but they already had their pilot's license and many hours. But they were, they did the same physical, the same mental, the same classes. It was arduous.
Katie Hafner :There is, I have to call it a propaganda film, about the WASPs that was made in the 40's. And it shows them with this very jaunty music.
Lynn Yonally :Yeah.
Katie Hafner :And they look like they're just having a jolly little time. And then, the narrator of this, the voiceover it says, "Oh, isn't she pretty?"
Lynn Yonally :Ohhh!
Katie Hafner :It is invaluable footage.
Lynn Yonally :Mm hm.
Katie Hafner :But it's galling.
Lynn Yonally :It's the 1940s, we have to put it in context.
Katie Hafner :Let's just do a little rundown on what it is that the WASP were expected to do. They, they ferried, a lot of them ferried planes-
Lynn Yonally :Right. You would pick the plane up as it was rolled off the assembly line.
Katie Hafner :So it was untested.
Lynn Yonally :Untested. They would give you your orders and you would fly it to whatever military base you were told to fly it to. They would also be training in planes that often came back from overseas that had been damaged. So I know my mom talked often about, "You always walked around the plane. You looked at everything." She said she only rejected a plane once, because that was not something they were encouraged to do.
Katie Hafner :Why weren't they encouraged to reject a plane?
Lynn Yonally :Because it would mean that maybe a woman couldn't fly it. It just wasn't done.
Katie Hafner :But if it was, if the plane was damaged, and shouldn't have been flown...
Lynn Yonally :There were women that were killed.
Katie Hafner :That's not okay... I think.
Lynn Yonally :No. Again, they did not, they didn't talk about that. To them, that was just part of the cost of the war. But then, about halfway through the 1980s and 1990s, you could tell that they were changing, as was our culture toward women. And they started getting a little more militant about the women that had been killed. 38 women lost their lives in accidents and a variety of ways. The military did not honor them during that time.
Katie Hafner :In fact, the family had to pay for the casket.
Lynn Yonally :Yeah, or the girls did. Yeah. I mean, girls often collect enough enough money to send one of the WASPs with the casket, so that the girl wouldn't go home alone.
Katie Hafner :So when your mother started talking about her service to the country, as a WASP, did it, make you see her in a new light?
Lynn Yonally :I guess, because of the way she grew up, she always did talk about her life and how difficult it was when she was, when her father remarried. You just knew that this person was a very strong individual. And that she just accepted whatever came, and did the best she could. So when she started talking about her service, it somehow didn't surprise us. Sometimes she just blew me away with the way she would talk about it so matter of factly. But that was what she taught us too, is that you accept what life throws at you, and you do the best you can and just move forward.
Katie Hafner :One thing I was going to ask you is, if you were given one word to describe your mother, what would that word be?
Lynn Yonally :Fortitude.
Katie Hafner :Mhm. Because?
Lynn Yonally :She never gives up.
Katie Hafner :Mhm.
Lynn Yonally :My mother has stage four kidney disease, and she has congestive heart failure at the nth degree. And over the last year, she has had many strokes. She wakes up, she gets up out of bed, she washes her face and she says, "What's next?"
Katie Hafner :And that is what made her an amazing World War II pilot.
Lynn Yonally :Hahaha. Yes.
Katie Hafner :Right?
Lynn Yonally :Yep. Yeah, she just doesn't give up.
Katie Hafner :Speaking of how much she loved flying. She, there was, I wanted to read you this funny quote. She made the interviewer laugh. When she was talking about training on a B-25. And she said, "Yeah, we all went to Mesa Field in Sacramento. And we all got through the training, except for one girl who found the guy she wanted to marry." And then she, your mother says, "And I can't imagine taking a guy over an airplane. I mean, those B-25s were beautiful." Hahaha!
Lynn Yonally :Yeah. And she often said that, "Why would you-." Because she met my dad. She had met my dad at that point, but she wouldn't have taken him over plane. And yet, when she started having us, when she had my oldest brother, that was the end.
Katie Hafner :Let's dial back for one second, then we'll talk about when she gave it all up. So your, he did actually shoot at her. Set this scene up for me.
Lynn Yonally :I'm not exactly sure what happened during the training session. But from what I understand, his unit came a little too close. And she was upset. So when she landed, she went to find the captain in charge of that artillery unit, which was my father. And she decided to give him whatfor, which my mother was very good at. And-
Katie Hafner :A piece of her mind.
Lynn Yonally :Oh, for sure.
Katie Hafner :And when you say they came a little too close, you mean their, that their bullets came too close to the plane?
Lynn Yonally :Yes.
Katie Hafner :Is that right?
Lynn Yonally :Yes. Anyway, so they had this, you know, he she gave him a piece of her mind and he listened and then he asked her out.
Katie Hafner :She exudes confidence in the photographs I've seen. Certainly not demure.
Lynn Yonally :No, no, although she was raised by a Victorian grandmother, she certainly made sure that we knew our manners.
Katie Hafner :So there must have been a mutual attraction.
Lynn Yonally :And they, and he got a Jeep for the evening.
Katie Hafner :Okay.
Lynn Yonally :And a bottle of champagne.
Katie Hafner :Uh huh.
Lynn Yonally :And she proceeded to drink champagne and fall asleep.
Katie Hafner :Ohoho!
Lynn Yonally :And he, being a Midwestern gentleman, took her home.
Katie Hafner :Mm hmm. So he went off in 1940-
Lynn Yonally :Three.
Katie Hafner :Three. To-
Lynn Yonally :To France, Germany, Italy, then was transported through the Panama Canal to Korea. And then, at the end of Korean War, came home.
Katie Hafner :And married your mom?
Lynn Yonally :And married my mom. Yeah. Oh, well. Now during that time, you know, the War for her had ended in December of '44.
Katie Hafner :The War ended for her in 1944 because she, because the WASP were disbanded.
Lynn Yonally :Yes, December. Of 1944. So she went back and got a job on Long Island. Again, working in the aircraft industry. Owned a plane with two other guys, was having a really good time, and often told us that there was this other guy that was really interesting. And when my dad got back home and called her, she dropped everything.
Katie Hafner :To be with him.
Lynn Yonally :Yeah. She sold her piece of the plane.
Katie Hafner :And then she proceeded to have six children.
Lynn Yonally :Well, she had four of us between 1947 and 1952. And then my brother was born on her 40th birthday. In the car. My oldest brother delivered him.
Katie Hafner :Was he a doctor?
Lynn Yonally :No, he wasn't! He was 14!
Katie Hafner :Oh!
Lynn Yonally :When she got pregnant, she decided it was time for all of us to know how this happened. And what happens when a baby is developing and oh, we knew everything and we had a stethoscope. We listened to the baby's heartbeat. We, you know, but we didn't know that we were going to be witnessing a full birth.
Katie Hafner :Okay, so she was really a total firecracker of a mom.
Lynn Yonally :She, we knew when we became teenagers, she talked openly about sexual life and what it was like, and you know, everything that you needed to know. We use the correct words.
Katie Hafner :And this was in the '60s.
Lynn Yonally :Yeah, '60s and '70s. We had diagrams.
Katie Hafner :You had diagrams?
Lynn Yonally :Yeah.
Katie Hafner :Uh huh.
Lynn Yonally :We knew what a vagina was. I felt so bad for my friends that didn't know. And whose parents wouldn't talk about it. It's such a part of your life.
Katie Hafner :Mm hmm. And did you say, "Well, I happen to have these diagrams that my mother gave me."
Lynn Yonally :You had to be careful.
Katie Hafner :Right. Did she, did she stopped flying when she had the kids?
Lynn Yonally :Yes. Yep. She totally became a 1950's housewife. She would sew our shorts during the summer. They didn't have a lot of money. Um, so we all dressed in red, white, and blue because you could be either male or female. And you could hand down the clothes. So we would all wear red, white, and blue. And it's-
Katie Hafner :Patriotic.
Lynn Yonally :I guess. Yes.
Katie Hafner :Yeah. And she had no bitterness that she had not pursued a career, say, at Grumman, or as a commercial pilot.
Lynn Yonally :Now, I do believe, talking with my sister again this morning, I said we never, we never had it voiced, but underlying everything, there was a sense of dissatisfaction. And when my dad died, my mom was left in a difficult position. And she went back to work.
Katie Hafner :Doing what?
Lynn Yonally :My dad owned a liquor store, and she ran the liquor store. She worked part time for a lawyer. And she also was a consumer price indexer for the US government. At one time was holding three jobs in order to hold the family together. Even though you didn't know she was a WASP. It was, you know, there's something there. That, that steely backbone of a woman. That you just look into her eyes and like, well, first of all, you didn't misbehave. And secondly, you did the best she could. That was just the way it was. There was no question. My girls, I have two daughters. And they, when I was teaching full time in the same town, my mom took a walk every morning and she said, "Those girls are not going to be driven to school. I'm going to walk them, because I walk every morning. They can walk with me to school."
Katie Hafner :Was there winter where they, uh-
Lynn Yonally :Haha. Yes, they actually did walk uphill both ways in snowstorms. It's, Massena, New York is up on the Canadian border, about 45 minutes south of Montreal. And we, during January and February it would be 30 below for six to eight weeks at a time, and they walked every day.
Katie Hafner :And is that where she lives now, your mom?
Lynn Yonally :She lives outside of Albany, New York. The VA hospital in Albany, New York is extraordinary and they have treated treated her like a queen.
Katie Hafner :And now that we're on the subject of veteran status and benefits, VA benefits. So WASP were granted veteran status with full benefits in 1977. Finally.
Lynn Yonally :Yes.
Katie Hafner :Right?
Lynn Yonally :Mhm.
Katie Hafner :And then in 2010, about two hundred of the surviving pilots were presented with the Congressional Gold Medal by President Obama. Was your mother there?
Lynn Yonally :Oh, yes. And all six of us, and all of the grandchildren except one. You know, when you saw them all standing, you knew that you were witnessing something that wouldn't happen again.
Katie Hafner :Wouldn't happen again because?
Lynn Yonally :You'd never get that many of them together again. And it was the most extraordinary moment when they played the national anthem, and those women all stood up. But when those women stood up from their walkers and their canes and everything else, and sang the national anthem, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.
Katie Hafner :Do you know how many of the WASP are still alive?
Lynn Yonally :Less than thirty. We're down to a very small number.
Katie Hafner :What service she gave to the country. What an American.
Lynn Yonally :Yes. I'm just proud.
Katie Hafner :Well. Thank you, Lynn, so much for talking to me about your mom. It was a real pleasure.
Lynn Yonally :Thank you.
Katie Hafner :And that's it this week for Our Mothers Ourselves. Our theme song is composed and performed by Andrea Perry. Paula Mangin is our artist in residence. And Elizabeth Kaye is the show's producer. If you have an amazing mother to suggest for the podcast, send an email to ourmothersourselves@gmail.com. Our Mothers Ourselves is a production of Odradek Studios. I'm Katie Hafner, and I'm your host. Have a great week everyone, and stay safe. [Transcript proofread by Benjy Wachter.]