CLOSE-UP : Winging It With Winnie Wood

At the dedication of a memorial to the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots in Sweetwater, Tex., earlier this year, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said she grew up mesmerized by stories of World War II’s WASPs told by her Aunt Winnie.

Aunt Winnie is Winifred Wood, 74, a former WASP and retired elementary school teacher who lives in Idyllwild. The youngest of five children, Wood grew up in a Southern family that encouraged the breaking of boundaries. She says her sister, Jane, Reno’s mother, was a reporter for the Miami News “who opened up a whole world for Janny.” Reno calls often but, she says, laughing, “I don’t give her any political advice.”

Wood joined the WASPs in May, 1943. “We just wanted to help our country,” she says, “and we all loved to fly.” She served as a a test pilot, trained other aviators, towed targets for the male pilots and helped in the training of antiaircraft batteries.

After the war, Wood dabbled in several professions--German-English translating, publicity, real estate--before becoming a teacher. She worked for many years in an Escondido elementary school.

Only her family and friends gave her more joy than her time flying with the WASPs. In “We Were Wasps,” a self-published book she wrote shortly after the war, Wood says: “. . . it will last for me always, in color and with music. The California snow and the Texas canyons, the music of the B-25s and the git fiddle. . . . They took away my silver wings, but they left me with something brighter, something that won’t tarnish until I am old and feeble and can no longer even remember fun . . . .”