MEMORIAL DAY 2005: Her Memory Still Soars

Here's a story about a valiant lady who is remembered this Memorial
Day:


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...home-headlines

May 30, 2005

MEMORIAL DAY 2005
Her Memory Still Soars
Relatives of a young woman killed in 1944 while co-piloting a B-25
bomber await the return of mementos found at the Mojave Desert crash
site.

By H.G. Reza, Times Staff Writer

Written for the female pilots of World War II, the poem "Celestial
Flight" still brings chills at their funerals and warm recollections
on Memorial Day.

"She is not dead — But only flying higher, Higher than she's flown
before," begins the soulful elegy read at the funerals of America's
last-remaining members of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots program,
known fondly as the WASP. The poem is also recited at the funerals of
many other female pilots.

This Memorial Day, the woman whose death inspired it is being honored
again by her family members as they await the return of a few last
personal belongings recovered in February at the Mojave Desert site
where the B-25 bomber she was co-piloting crashed in 1944.

The life of Marie Michell Robinson was a tragic World War II story of
love found and lost that read like a movie. Now it may have a
Hollywood ending.

Robinson, who earned her wings as a WASP, died in a fiery crash just
days after her secret marriage to an Army doctor from a wealthy Texas
family.

Robinson, who was 20, was stationed at Victorville Army Air Field,
about 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles in the High Desert. In a
letter to her father written the day before she died, the flier said
she was thinking of getting married "one of these days."

About a week later, her family was surprised when Maj. Hampton C.
Robinson accompanied her body to Michigan, Marie's home state, and
announced that they had been married in Reno two weeks before she
died.

Marie Robinson and two other crew members perished when their
twin-engine bomber plunged into the desert Oct. 2, 1944. Her story
ended with the funeral and the poem, written the day of the crash by a
fellow WASP. Or so the family thought.

...