Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 31, 1993 TAG: 9306010188
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: JOANNE M. ANDERSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Arising at 5 a.m., she would hop in her black Essex sedan and drive from her Southwest Roanoke home to Woodrum Field to log an hour of flight time before reporting to work downtown at the tuberculosis association.
While native Roanoker Elsie Dyer was doing that, a young man in the Bronx would leave home at 4 a.m. in his black Chevrolet and drive to Somerville, N.J., to log an hour of flight time before going to work in a Manhattan chemical factory.
During World War II, Dyer served as a Woman Air Force Service Pilot (WASP) at five military bases, and Bronx native Frank Monaco flew many missions with the Army Air Corps over some of the most rugged terrain in the world.
After the war, they met and married in Alaska, marking the beginning of an odyssey that took them around the world before they retired in the New River Valley.
After graduating from Jefferson High School with the class of 1926, Dyer went to work for Norfolk and Western Railway.
"Everyone did, you know," she said. "But the work was routine, so repetitive."
She tried starting a kindergarten during the Depression, then went to work as an executive secretary. She was the second president of the Roanoke Junior Woman's Club, which was founded in 1929.
Then there was the day her brother took her for an airplane ride. It was love at first flight.
For her 33rd birthday, Elsie Dyer gave herself a present - her first flying lesson. Within a year, she had completed the Civil Pilot Training ground school at Roanoke College (women were not allowed to take the airborne sessions) and she had her pilot's license, commercial certification, instrument rating and flight instructor's permit.
She even had an airplane.
"Three of us bought an old Taylorcraft plane so we could log hours whenever we wanted. Martha Anne [Woodrum] and I put curtains and flower vases in the windows and decorated it all nice inside," Dyer recalled.
And the flying?
"It was magnificent," she said, almost in a whisper. "Nothing like today with all the rules and regulations. You were really free back then."
Dyer chuckled when asked about her parents' reaction.
"My mother was just appalled that I would wear pants to the airport. She felt I should wear a skirt, take the pants and change when I got there. But I started wearing pants then, and I've been wearing them ever since."
One evening late in 1942, she was working for Pennsylvania Central airline as a Link flight simulator instructor when she heard interviews were being conducted at Hotel Roanoke for qualified women interested in flying with a new group of female pilots.
Dyer met all the requirements, including 200 hours of flying time, and a few weeks later she was off to Washington, D.C., for a physical and her orders. Her parents were all for it.
"It makes a difference, you know, when you parents support what you're doing, even if it's uncertain where you might go."
Where she went was Love Field, Texas, for indoctrination and a parachute fitting before proceeding to Sweetwater and Houston for a six-month training program - the one given to all air cadets, even though the WASPs were not officially part of the military.
Dyer's first flying assignment was at Camp Davis, N.C. She flew planes towing targets for ground troops to shoot.
Later at Camp Stewart, Ga., she operated radio-controlled target airplanes from a mother plane. Only once was she shot at by mistake.
"When we realized they were shooting at the wrong plane, we took a dive out of the line of fire. It wasn't until we landed on the runway safely that the guys in the control tower learned that we had not been shot down!"
Meanwhile, back in New York City, young Frank Monaco had become a member of the Civil Pilot Training program and decided to join the Air Corps. When the recruiter informed him that he'd failed the eye exam, Monaco was frantic.
"When you want something so badly your bones ache, it can only be a momentary setback," he said.
He ran to a pay phone, called an eye doctor in the Yellow Pages, ran to his office, paid for another eye test, had the doctor put it in writing and ran back to the recruiting station and demanded to see the lieutenant colonel.
Monaco was accepted into the Air Corps that day.
After cadet training and duty in Montgomery, Ala., Greenville, S.C., and Lawrence Field in Evanston, Ill., he was ordered to India to fly "the Hump" delivering cargo to U.S. and Chinese troops in China.
"The Hump" was the name pilots gave this perilous 500-mile air route because they had to fly over the Himalaya mountains.
"Oh, we used it to chill beer," Frank said in his slightly faded New York accent. "It was pretty hot in India and China, but it could be mighty cool over the mountains, so a case of beer would be nice and cold when we landed.
"There were some scary experiences, for sure, but probably the weirdest trip was transporting 52 Chinese people. Packed in like vertical sardines, they were. Along the way, the flight engineer reported to me that some were jumping out of the airplane. There wasn't anything I could do. When we landed, there were only 47. Frightened, I guess. We'll never know."
Aviation in Roanoke was gaining in popularity by 1948, but there were no pilot jobs open to women. Dyer, discharged from the WASPs in 1944, the year the group was disbanded, had sent out 80 applications and received 80 rejection letters.
Did this make her angry?
"Mad? No, just disappointed," she said.
There were rumors at the airport that bush pilots were needed in Alaska. Well, why not? She would go, once again with her parents blessing.
Dyer and a WASP friend from South Dakota found Alaska to be a rugged land for outdoor-oriented folk.
"You either loved it or hated it," Dyer said. "I thought it was marvelous. The glaciers, the whales, the mountains, the wildlife, the salmon - all of it was wonderful."
Although the women had no trouble securing bush pilot jobs, they couldn't find a place to live. The only solution was to get jobs as dispatchers at the air base near Anchorage so they could live on base.
Radio contact was established from ground to air and, in a slight variation of boy meets girl, pilot met dispatcher.
During their courtship, Frank was discharged and went to work for the Federal Aviation Administration in Anchorage. They were married in February 1949.
Their son, Duncan, was born in Fairbanks the following year, and the Monaco trio left for New York and nearly 20 years abroad, in Rome, Tokyo, Rio de Janiero, Buenos Aires and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The youngest Monaco, a pilot, of course, did not attend school in the United States until he enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle.
During Frank Monaco's final years with the FAA, the couple started thinking about where to retire. They'd been around the world and across the country.
"We looked on the West Coast at first, but nowhere felt right," Elsie Monaco said. "And then we came back to Roanoke. It had changed so much.
The street she had lived on, Virginia Avenue, had been renamed Crystal Spring Avenue.
"The house I remember was gone. I think it's better that way, really; you can let it go easier. But still, there was an element of comfort in the familiar."
So they drove just a little farther down the road and into the Southwest Virginia mountains seven years ago.
"Frank promised me a mountain wherever we settled," Elsie Monaco said with a smile. "I've got my mountain, and we have all the memories of a wonderful adventure called life."
\ THEY WERE CALLED WASPS
\ The Women Air Force Service Pilots, known as WASPs, were the first women military pilots in the U.S. Army Air Corps (now the Air Force) during World War II.
\ About 25,000 women applied; 1,830 were accepted; only 1,074 completed training and earned their wings.
\ They flew more than 60 million miles in 78 types of military aircraft, nearly every plane in the Army inventory at the time.
\ The WASPs were disbanded in December 1944 and were given military recognition and veteran status in 1979.
\ - Staff report
by CNB