by Fannie Flagg
“Then back in 1976, when ten women began flight training for the U.S. Air Force, a Pentagon press release touted them as ‘the first women military pilots,’ and I called Jamsie and Nancy and Dinks and they hit the roof. ‘Hell, no. We were the first.’ None of us were winners, but we knew what was fair. So a group of us got together again and decided we weren’t going to let all those gals who died, your mother or any of them, just be forgotten.”
THE NEXT DAY, FRITZI picked Sookie up and took her to lunch at the Alisal River Grill, where Fritzi often played golf. After they had ordered, Sookie asked her if she had ever met her real father.
“Just once. A real quick hello and good-bye. But I can tell you his name. It was James Brunston. I don’t know his middle name.”
“What did he look like?”
“He looked very healthy, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Sookie laughed. “No, I mean was he tall? Short?”
“Geez, honey, it was over sixty years ago now, but I remember that he was a tall, good-looking blond guy with blue eyes. You got your mother’s hair, but I think you got his nose.”
“What was he like?”
“Oh, he seemed nice enough. Of course, later when I found out what he had pulled on Sophie, I changed my mind.
“But you know, looking back on it now, I realize that it was a different time. People were scared, and all bets were off. We all sort of lived for the moment. We had to. That’s all we had. None of us knew if we even had a future, so we grabbed for every little slice of happiness we could. I know I did. And who’s to say? He could have loved your mother, and maybe he would have come back. Who knows? Not to excuse him, but this kind of thing happened. Boys fell madly in love with girls they didn’t even know. Boys were desperate to get married. Hell, I could have married a hundred different boys if I had wanted to. All they knew was that they could be killed any day, and I guess they wanted to leave something or someone behind to prove that at least they had been here.
“Me, I got lucky. After the war, me and Billy moved out here and started a little flight school, and we had forty good years together. After we retired, we traveled. We had a little plane, and I flew us wherever we wanted to go. I can’t complain. I’ve had a damn good life, and I’ve lived long enough to see the gals fly jets and finally get a chance. And it feels good to know you helped open up a little window for them, ya know?”
SOOKIE STAYED ON IN Solvang for a week and visited with Fritzi every day. They usually had either lunch or dinner together, and the rest of the time, she just wandered around town, talking to people, and it was wonderful. Here in Solvang, she wasn’t Lenore Simmons’s daughter. For the first time in years, she was just herself. She met a lot of Fritzi’s friends, and she even made some friends of her own. Two nice ladies visiting from Japan invited her to have dinner with them, and she had breakfast with the sweetest couple, Susan and Michael Beckman from Tenafly, New Jersey. And she met the cutest lady, named Linda Peckham, in the hotel spa.
She called Earle every night, and in one conversation, he said, “Honey, I haven’t heard you sound so happy in a long time.” And it was true.
ON HER LAST DAY in California, she and Fritzi went to the old Spanish mission for mass and had dinner at Bit o’ Denmark restaurant.
When they had finished dinner, Sookie said, “Uh … Fritzi, before I go home, could I ask you one more question? I’m really curious about the name Ginger. Did you name me after someone in your family?”
Fritzi laughed. “No, sorry about that, kid. The night we took you in, when they were filling out the birth certificate, and they asked me what your name was, it was the first name I came up with. I was a big fan of Ginger Rogers.”
“Oh, as in Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers?”
“That’s right.”
“Oh, how nice. I love her.”
“Yeah? Me, too. I met her once, and she was a pretty swell dame on the screen and off. But you did have a real name—the name your mother gave you.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, and you’re probably not gonna like it, but she named you after me.”
“My real name is Fritzi?”
“Yeah. Fritzi Willinka Jurdabralinski. Can you take it?”
Sookie smiled. “Yes, I can. And not only that, I am honored to be named after you.”
THE NEXT MORNING, WHEN Sookie was leaving to go home, Fritzi walked her to the car, and Sookie said, “Thank you for a wonderful time.”
Fritzi said, “Kid, I wouldn’t have missed meeting you for the world. And oh, before you go, here’s a little present for you.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“You keep in touch, ya hear?”
“I will.”
AS SOOKIE’S CAR DROVE away, Fritzi walked back in the house and thought to herself, “That poor kid. Such a nice sweet gal, and she’s been lied to all her life. And now I’m doing the same damn thing.” She hadn’t told her what had really happened to her mother. Sookie had been through enough already, and what good would it do for her to know anyway? Nothing could be proved.
IN THE CAR, SOOKIE opened the little package that Fritzi had handed to her. Inside was a small blue rosary and a note.
Dear Sarah Jane,
This belonged to your mother, and I know she would want you to have it.
Fritzi
THE ACCIDENT
NOVEMBER 23, 1944
ALTHOUGH THE WASPs HAD ONLY A FEW MORE WEEKS BEFORE THEY would be officially disbanded and would return to civilian life, there were still a lot of guys wanting to get a date with Sophie. But dating was the last thing on her mind. All she wanted to do was fly the remainder of her ferrying trips and, in between, spend time with her baby.
None of the fliers were having any luck with her. But one guy in particular was having a hard time taking no for an answer. He wasn’t used to it. Bud Harris had a certain reputation to uphold. He was known as the Lady Killer. He was handsome, was a smooth talker, and had always had success. He’d been so sure he could get a date with Sophie, he made a bet with his buddies that not only would he go out with her, but he would have her in the sack in two weeks.
He tried everything he knew, including the old “Oh, honey, I may never come back alive. Won’t you give me just one date?” line. He sent flowers, he wrote notes, he used all of his tricks of the trade. But she still had no interest, and he wasn’t happy about it.
He wasn’t about to lose his bet over some dumb little Polack bitch who didn’t know how lucky she was that he’d even looked at her. One evening, when he was sitting around having a few drinks, he found out that Sophie was doing a cross-country that day and was bringing in a plane later that night. After another drink, he decided he would go over and meet her and try to talk a little sense into her—tell her to stop playing so hard to get. He knew she wanted it. Besides, that’s why most of them were here anyway.
Sophie was tired when she pulled in and just wanted to get back to her bay, crawl into bed, and go to sleep. She walked out of the hangar, headed over to make her flight report, when Harris was suddenly beside her. He grabbed her by the arm and slammed her up against a wall. “Hey, baby, what’s your hurry? Come here, I wanna talk to you. Why are you being so damn snooty? You don’t even know what you are missing yet.”
Sophie tried to get away and push past him, but he pinned her arms down and kissed her roughly on the mouth. “Stop it! Please … don’t!” she said, but he wouldn’t stop, and before she knew it, he had ripped open the top of her flight suit and was groping her. She fought him off as hard as she could, but he was over six feet tall and strong. She screamed “No! Stop!” She tried to scream again, but he put his hand over her mouth, and pushed himself up against her even harder. He was going to win that bet one way or another. And it would always be her word against his.
Suddenly a man’s voice said, “Hey, what’s going on out here?” And he aimed a flashlight at them. It was Elroy Leefers, the mechanic, who had heard her calling out. Harr
is looked around, saw the scrawny little mechanic, and said, “Get lost, Hayseed, we’re busy here.”
From the look of terror in Sophie’s eyes, Elroy quickly figured out what was about to happen, and he reached into his belt and pulled out a heavy metal wrench. “Let go of her, Harris, or I’ll knock your brains out all over this tarmac.”
Harris loosened his grip on Sophie for just a split second and she managed to break loose and run toward Elroy. When she got there Elroy put her behind him and looked at Harris. “Come on, flyboy. I dare you. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Harris stood there and thought about it, but figured it wasn’t worth the trouble. He was out of the mood now, anyway. As Harris walked away, Sophie collapsed in Elroy’s arms. “Oh, thank you, Elroy.”
“Aw, it’s all right, honey, don’t let it get to you. He’s just a bad apple is all.” Sophie didn’t tell anyone what had happened. She had only a little more time left and didn’t want any trouble. She just wanted to get on with life and raise her baby. She managed to avoid seeing Harris for a little while.
But a few days later, the guys in Harris’s unit were flying formation, and one spotted the plane below them and recognized the red hair and he said over the radio, “Hey, lover boy, look downstairs. There’s that redheaded gal who’s so crazy about you. Why don’t you go and say hello?” Harris heard the guys laughing, and he broke formation. That was the last time the guys saw him that day.
When they arrived back at base two hours later without him, they were told that he had been forced to make an emergency landing because of a mechanical malfunction, but that he was fine. It wasn’t until later that night that they heard that another plane had crashed and that the female pilot had been killed.
At the investigative hearing, Bud Harris testified that they had, in fact, by mutual consent, been flying in formation, when the WASP pilot suddenly—and for no apparent reason and without warning—pulled up, causing the tip of her right wing to scrape the underside of his plane, ripping into his landing gear. He assumed she had pulled up and away and was in control and did not see her crash.
There was just one witness. A farmer said he was out in the field and heard a loud roaring noise. When he looked up, he saw two planes flying close together, and then the smaller one suddenly flew off to the right and went into a spin. He watched it spiral slowly down and crash. The plane exploded on impact and burned, and there was little left to determine the exact cause. After an investigation, the crash was declared accidental, and no charges were filed.
He hadn’t meant to do it. Harris had thought that now that Sophie was alone and didn’t have that hayseed looking out for her, it might be fun to throw a little scare into her—let her know just who she was dealing with. He would teach her a lesson about flying she wouldn’t forget in a hurry.
So he circled around and flew in behind her and pulled up beside her. But in his zeal to have her see who he was, he’d pulled in too close, too fast. When she suddenly saw the plane right up on her, she pulled up sharply, trying to get out of his way. As she pulled up, the tip of her wing scraped the bottom of his plane, and he heard the sickening sound of metal meeting metal.
Harris worried that the scrape might have done some damage to his landing gear, so he did not stick around to see her plane spiral down to the ground and crash.
One of the other fliers in the air that day was a friend of Fritzi’s and told her what he suspected had happened. Harris had been known to be pretty reckless.
Fritzi had flown into the base on the day of the hearing and tracked Harris down in the waiting room, just outside the inquiry room.
She threw the door open, and when she saw Harris sitting there with his feet up on a desk casually smoking a cigarette, her eyes filled with tears of rage.
“You no-good, lousy bastard! You just killed my sister, you sorry no good son of a bitch. I ought to kick your ass all the way to hell and back. Was it worth it? Showing off for your pals?”
He looked up at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No? I swear to God, Harris, if I had a gun right now, I’d blow your Goddamned head off.”
“Hey, lady, it wasn’t my fault. She pulled up.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Harris. You know damn well whose fault it was,” Fritzi said. “You’re not worth killing. I hope you don’t die. I hope they throw you in the brig for life, and that you remember what you did every day for the rest of your lousy, stinking life.”
An officer opened the door, motioned for Harris, and said, “They’re ready for you in the other room.” Harris put out his cigarette, stood up, and walked out.
A collection was taken up among the other girls to take Sophie home, and Fritzi rode all the way to Pulaski with her coffin. Gertrude May flew in from Camp Davis in North Carolina, and Wink got a leave of absence and flew in from England.
The entire town—every man, woman, and child—attended the funeral that day. And even though Sophie wasn’t officially in the army, the local VFW draped the American flag over her coffin anyway, rules be damned. As far as they were concerned, she had died while serving her country.
As a tribute, they had this inscribed in bronze and placed on her tombstone:
She has climbed to the peaks above storm and cloud
She has found the light of son and of God,
I cannot say, I will not say
That she is dead.
She is merely flown away.
—James Whitcomb Riley
NEW YORK CITY
MARCH 1945
AFTER THE WASPS DISBANDED, FRITZI’S FRIEND WILLY HAD GONE home to Oklahoma, but like all the girls, she found herself restless and took off for a trip to New York to see Pinks and catch some shows. One night, while having drinks with some friends, she looked over and happened to see Bud Harris sitting at a table across the room with a bunch of other pilots. She excused herself and walked over to the table. “Hi, good-looking. Wanna dance?”
A few hours later, in a very exclusive hotel room, Harris had done exactly what he had been told to do by the sexy dame from Oklahoma. After he had removed all of his clothes, he smirked at her. “Will I do?”
Willy, still fully dressed in her steel-tipped cowboy boots, smiled and said, “Oh, yes. Come here, big boy.” As soon as he got close enough, she hauled off and kicked him as hard as she could, and Harris fell to the floor, clutching his pride and joy and screaming in pain. Willy calmly strolled over and picked up his shoes and all of his clothes and threw them out the twenty-second-floor window. She left him lying on the floor, naked and writhing in agony.
Willy never told a soul what she had done, but she figured it was the least she could do for Fritzi.
POINT CLEAR, ALABAMA
SOOKIE WAS GLAD TO BE HOME. SHE WAS EVEN HAPPY TO SEE CRAZY old Lenore and actually called and asked her to lunch.
Lenore showed up at the restaurant looking radiant in a beautiful lime green dress with a long white scarf flowing behind her. “The prodigal daughter returns!”
“Hello, Mother. Don’t you look pretty.”
“Why, thank you. I think this is one of my best colors, don’t you?” she said as she waved to a friend across the room.
LENORE MUST HAVE MISSED Sookie when she was gone, because she was pleasant all through lunch, until the very end when she said, “I don’t mean to burst your bubble, Sookie, but I don’t think you lost a pound at that spa. I’d ask them for my money back if I were you.”
AFTER SOOKIE HAD BEEN back for a few days and had time to think about everything that had happened, she realized that this had been the most important trip of her life. She had learned so much that she never knew, and mostly about herself.
She was a lot more than Lenore Simmons’s daughter. She was beginning to be somebody else, and she liked who she was turning out to be. Thank God, Earle had urged her to go. He was right. She wouldn’t have missed this trip for the world.
Just a few months ago, she had been re
ady to sit back and take it easy, and now her life was just beginning again. She was learning so much—about Wisconsin, California, the WASPs, Polish food, Danish food.
Sookie ordered five copies of A History of Poland, and gave one to each of her four children. Then she sat down and read it herself. She was just in awe of how brave the Poles had been and at all the hardships they had endured.
Why hadn’t she known all this before? She looked down at her arm and thought to herself, I have proud and brave Polish blood running up and down in all my veins. How wonderful! The next time she and Earle went over to the Oyster House, she did something that she had never done before in her life. She ordered a dozen raw oysters—and not only that, she ate them! She would probably never do it again, but at least she had done it once. Mrs. Poole was beginning to branch out in the world.
OF COURSE, WHEN SHE got back from Solvang and told Dee Dee her real father’s name, Dee Dee immediately hired a professional genealogist to trace the Brunston family in England and find out if James Brunston was still alive. The lady found out that they had all died, except for one of his daughters.
