Meet Quest Maker Cheryl Young
Quest Makers are women in their 40s and beyond who've declared
"now it's my time," and then set off on their own journeys to realize their dreams. Every month a Quest Maker is featured in the FREE e-newsletter, Your Next Quest Chronicles. Click here to enjoy archived issues.
Quest Maker Cheryl Young
From middle school educator
to pilot of her own life
Cheryl Young's quest sought her out in a university research library when a book literally landed on her head, setting her off on a quest that ignited an exciting second life for 69-year old Elizabeth Wall Strohfus. Along the way, Cheryl wrote two books and helped spread the word about unsung WWII heroes - Women Airforce Service Pilots - (WASP). Just as WASPs have shown her how to be the pilot of her own life, over the last 20 years Cheryl has done the same for young girls so they can set their own course and fly!
When did you decide to embark on your journey?
In 1984, I was teaching middle school social studies in Vermont. Having grown up in the Midwest, I felt I needed more education about New England so I attended a summer institute as a humanities scholar at Dartmouth College. Part of the work involved creating a curriculum project that was important to my teaching.
What interested me was that there were whole groups of women left out of the history books. We've been taught about white men and the generals. History books traditionally have cited individual women such as Betsy, Eleanor and Sojourner. That wasn’t enough.
Every day I did research in the amazing Dartmouth library. I’d spend my afternoons on my project researching women of the Industrial Revolution, the first employees of the mills. One day as I reached for a book on a high shelf, it fell out of my hand and onto my head. When I picked it up, chills went down my spine as I read the title: Those Wonderful Women in Their Flying Machines: The Untold Heroines of World War II by Sally V. Keil. (1979). The book told the story of WASPs, Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII. What attracted me most to the WASPs was that the women were 60's and 70's at that time and still alive. I could interview them instead of read about them.
[Editor's Note: WASP was born in 1942 when 1,102 women pilots spread out across the country and “undertook in ground-to-air anti-aircraft practice; towing targets for air-to-air gunnery practice with live ammunition; flying drones; conducting night exercises; testing repaired aircraft before use in cadet training; serving as instructors; and transporting cargo and male pilots to embarkation points.” They were still considered civilians, never receiving any of the benefits their male counterparts did. During duty, 38 WASPS were killed. The military would not allow the flag to be put on their coffins. Once the war was over, the women pilots received absolutely no recognition from their government. Source: Kevin Bohn, CNN]
It wasn’t until I had left teaching, however, and had moved back to Minnesota, several years later, that I was able to locate a live one by calling the Ninety-Nines—a flying organization for women aviators created by Amelia Earhart—and asking if they had any members who had piloted during the war.
That’s how I met Elizabeth “Betty” Wall Strohfus who lived about 90 minutes from me. On my first visit, I knocked on the door, expecting to meet an elderly looking woman. Instead, I found a very lively, funny, loving and amazing woman. I spent 7 1/2 hours with her.
After the interview was over, I got into my car. I was so overwhelmed by her story: how do you educate a population about something they know nothing about? As I put my key in the ignition, I said to myself, I have a choice here: I can put roots down in the driveway and do nothing about this unknown story or I can do something.
How did your quest unfold?
All the way home, I thought about the different kinds of resources I could use to get this story out there. I became a real PR person. I found editors and television producers and began to tell her story. One producer at Minneapolis KARE 11 was particularly helpful. She sent crews to our speaking events and also came with us to Seattle for a WASP reunion.
I realized that one of the most impressive and wonderful ways to tell Elizabeth’s story would be to deliver presentations with the photos of her wartime experience. It was our way to spread the word. I took her scrapbook to the Dakota County Historical Society where we made 40 slides for a talk. With a microphone in her hand, Elizabeth was a natural born speaker with a passion and love for what the WASPs had accomplished. She’s soon to be 90 and 20 years later, she’s still giving her powerpoint presentation.
We traveled to air shows including the biggest one of all, the Experimental Aircraft Association Airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and every two years we attended the WASPs reunions around the country.
Elizabeth and I also attended the opening of the Women Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. To see thousands of women, daughters, friends, mothers, grandmothers coming together to recognize accomplishments unknown to most people in this country was deeply satisfying and very special. I felt honored to have the opportunity to view history from my vantage point.
What women accomplish when they have to is so powerful. It’s happening in Iran today with women who are fearless in their fight for independence, respect and their beliefs.
What changes did this bring to your life?
If you are with someone like Elizabeth for 10 years you absorb it all. I kept notes of all her stories. That’s what led me to write and publish my first book, Love at First Flight: One Woman’s Experience as a WASP in WWII in 1994 (now out of print); a collection of her stories and photographs. When I thought about how a legacy could be created, long-term, I felt that books last longer than people.
When Elizabeth turned 70, she remarried. At her wedding, I met her new 5-year old grandson, who had drawn pictures of her planes. I told him that when he turned 10 I’d write a book and he’d draw the pictures. That’s exactly what we did. I wrote the story and mailed the text to him at his home in South Dakota with an open page where an illustration needed to be. Over a six month period, every month Andy would send me four completed illustrations. This was his story. My Grandma Is a Pilot was published in 1995 and is still in print.
There is power in a goal that comes to you and cannot be denied. I feel profoundly that it’s been a loss to our country not to know the WASPs’ history as well as women’s contributions to so many sections of our society.
The WASPs didn’t have officer status. They used inferior equipment. They had to be better than the men pilots. They were held to a higher performance standard. They trained the pilots. They pulled targets for artilary practice. They ferried 92% of aircraft from factory to field. The WWII WASPs were shocked at the interest in them 30-40 years after the event. You can learn more about the WASPs at Wings Across America, the website created by WASP Deanie Parrish's daughter, Nancy.
I was just one person helping to spread the word. There were other people—the sons and daughters of these women—also working hard for years and years. You just don’t give up. It has taken the light of a lot of matches to catch fire. For 65 years they have gone unrecognized - until recently.
Right now Senate Bill 614 to award a Congressional Gold Medal to the Women Airforce Service Pilots is sitting on President Obama's desk ready to be signed. When it is, there will be a big hullabaloo celebration and I hope it will make up a bit for what they’ve not had – recognition and a place in history for what they accomplished.
How did you make time for your dream?
I looked for a job in retail which offered flexibility. For seven years, I worked at Chico’s in Mall of America. I’d take late afternoon and evening hours so I could work on my projects during the day. I could also arrange to have evenings off when we had a presentation to do. The women I worked with were very supportive and interested in my quest. They got it. They supported and encouraged me knowing I was not going to be in retail long.
How did you deal with obstacles on your adventure?
The biggest obstacle was financial. I did this project on my own dime, yet I never let that get in Elizabeth’s way because I didn’t want her to ever worry about it.
Just because you have good will in your heart doesn’t mean it’s easy to do.
I had to learn how to be very resourceful and creative – to be entrepreneurial. This experience taught me to really dig down and find my creative spirit. You have to have a challenge. Without some obstacles, you don’t move forward.
Being a visionary is a lonely place to be. There are all kinds of ways for everyone to tell you not to do what you are doing. Most of my family didn’t really understand. To them, it didn’t make career sense and they would wonder out loud, “Why are you doing this? How can you make money doing this?” I am happy to say that my two nieces understood. Along the way, they had some tremendous experiences meeting Elizabeth and other WASPs.
What helped you stay on your quest's path?
Determination. Stubbornness. Focus. Every time I met another woman pilot, I was inspired, whether she was a wing walker, a WASP or an astronaut. These women of high achievement taught me to reach higher. Flight has always been a metaphor for freedom and independence. They showed me what it was to be the pilot of my own life.
What's been the secret to reaching your goals?
Passion. If you don’t have passion, I don’t think you can do it. It’s a power that is deep and that cannot be assuaged by logic. If logic had taken over at any time, I would never have taken on this project.
Looking back, what's one thing you wish you had known as you set off on your journey?
If I had known of a similar path that someone else had followed, it would have made it easier. I had to create my own path and let the events show me what was needed. If it was a grant to take care of transportation costs to and from special events, I wrote it. If it was transportation, be it air or automobile, I organized it. If we needed to get a press release written, I wrote the press release or story. It would have been good, too, to have a single sponsor to fund our activities. However, we always seemed to find a way to make it work.
What's the best advice you've ever received?
I learned that sometimes traditional methods of discovery and learning are not adequate to the questions one needs answered. I once had the opportunity to hear Anthropologist Margaret Mead speak. She also had many questions she didn’t know how to answer.
One of her research methods was quite useful to me. Before she would go to sleep, Mead would pose a question in her mind. In the morning, she would wake up knowing the answer. When I got stuck and didn’t know where to go next, I’d do the same. I’d ask myself: “What do I next? Where do I go next? Who do I talk to next?”
Amazingly, right on the dot of 4:00am - maybe three to four days a week - in my sleep I would hear this party of laughing women, as if they were having a party. It was very clear to me that these were women pilots. The phrase they kept repeating in my dreams was "You have to tell them. You’ve GOT to tell them.” I’d wake up—write down a lot of information in my journal and empty my mind: the message was received. I’d then go back to sleep. When I’d wake up in the morning, I’d know exactly where to go to get the next step accomplished.
I was a most unlikely storyteller for these women. I am not a pilot and no one in my family has ever been interested in aviation. I asked the women in this dream: “Why me?” They replied: “Why not you? Oral history has always been a strong interest for you.” The women in my dreamstate gave me encouragement and direction and kept me motivated. Someone had to tell their story.
I came to realize that there is a circle here, too. I was born in December, 1944, the same time the WASPs were deactivated. Coincidentally, Doris Young—the first woman to get her WASP wings—shared the same last name as mine.
What is the one essential quality you'd tell women to pack for their own journey?
Never give up. You hear that from the WASPs, too. I did whatever I could to get the story out there. When you are a behind-the-scenes person like I am, you do it because the bigger picture is your mission.
Is there a particular quote, a movie, a book or a person that has sustained you?
The poem, “I Will Not Die An Unlived Life” by Dawna Markova, which is included in her book of the same name. In Chapter I, Markova recounts how her poem found its way to South Africa where it inspired a woman named Nomathemba Luhabe to empower other women. It made me realize that you don’t know the impact you can have with a seemingly simple effort. From the book falling on my head to the bill now sitting on the president’s desk, that’s how I feel.
| I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear Of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, To allow my living to open me, To make me less afraid, More accessible, To loosen my heart Until it becomes a wing, A torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; To live so that which came to me as seed Goes to the next as blossom And that which came to me as blossom, Goes on as fruit. |
| — Dawna Markova |
Do you have a new quest around the corner?
Yes. In 1999 I moved back to Vermont and got involved with Vermont Works for Women, an organization whose mission is to help women and girls explore nontraditional careers. One of its programs is Rosie’s Girls®, named after WWII’s Rosie the Riveter. During a 3-week summer camp, girls in grades 6-8 explore carpentry, welding, wiring and “green” careers as well as other entrepreneurial opportunities and learn how to be economically savvy.
Every site has somebody who brings it to life and I am the one for the camp taking place in Bennington from July 20 - August 7, 2009. It has taken me a year to bring it all together, with the help of a stellar advisory board and advice from the other sites. I'd like to do a similar program for adult women too.
I’m also not done making sure the next generation is as empowered as the women of WWII were. I want to make sure that the power women had then isn’t forgotten. We cannot lose the possibility for empowerment of the next generation. I think Love at First Flight needs a few more chapters because a lot has happened since I left Elizabeth to pursue my new life in Vermont.
The WASPs taught me to set a course and fly. Now my passion is to bring creativity and innovation back to education through entrepreneurship.
Is there anything else you'd like to share?
While I was in Minnesota, I created an aviation group for girls with the help of pilots who were a part of the Young Eagles, a program which gave youth an opportunity to go flying in a general aviation aircraft. The girls experienced flights in biplanes, sail planes and piper cubs, which were offered free of charge through the generosity of volunteers. One of our pilot volunteers, a Northwest Airlines captain, lived in a house facing a grass landing strip where she kept her piper. She also owned an L29 fighter housed at a nearby airport where the girls loved to hang out with their mentor. We created a mentorship program for the high school girls so they could teach the younger girls that women could be pilots.
That legacy tree that started in Elizabeth’s driveway took root and grew and grew and grew. My quest unfolded on its own. I didn’t have a vision at the beginning; I just wanted to let the Midwest know.about achieving women who are fantastic role models. Now Elizabeth gets letters from all over the world. I have been a witness to history and what a trip it has been. Our stories matter!
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To contact Cheryl or to purchase a copy of My Grandma Is a Pilot
($20 includes S/H), you can send her an email.
To keep an eye on the passage of Senate Bill 614, visit Wings Across America's website.
Click here to learn more about Rosie's Girls.
If you'd like to read the essay and the Journal Sparker inspired by Cheryl's interview, click here to enjoy June's YNQ Chronicles.
What you can expect to find in every issue of YNQ Chronicles