Junk Love: Aviatrix

When I was in the second grade, my teacher read us a story about Amelia Earhart. I was instantly hooked. In my mind, no person was as cool as Amelia, and I tried my best to get other people on board with the idea. One of my parents worked at a small airport at the time, so I probably made a nuisance of myself asking the pilots questions or rattling off Earhart facts in the break room. My first time in a plane, I was utterly distraught that no one thought to bring a leather cap and goggles for me to wear. In the third grade, we had to do a biographical presentation about a famous person. I chose Amelia Earhart. In the fourth grade, my entry for the Young Writers contest was a fictional short story about Amelia and her navigator on an island in the South Pacific. Even by the time I was in high school, when I had to write a paper about a famous figure, I went back to my girl. So it's no surprise that I am attracted to the general idea of the aviatrix. I just love chicks with planes--what can I say? (*Side note: I also love dudes with planes, and collect vintage flight-related books for boys.)

So, when I read today's headline that someone has footage of Amelia just before her final flight, I admit that I was thrilled. And I figured that today is the perfect day to pay tribute to girls with planes in a variety of collectible formats: pinup, photography, and advertising.Enjoy!

The Skinny -- Rie Cramer

Rie Cramer

Marie Cramer, better known as Rie, was an illustrator of her times.  Her images perfectly capture the essence of the 1920s and 30s, from her color choices to her linework and detail to her subject matter and point of view.  Her work features flowing Art Nouveau figures, with bright, saturated color, and lots of personality.  We Blackbird girls love illustrators, and her work makes us so, so happy.

The youngest in a family of four girls, Rie Cramer was born and raised in the Dutch East Indies, more specifically in Java, Indonesia, in 1887.  Her father, Henry Cramer, was often absent, as he was with the "packet service", traveling on ships with cargo.  Her mother, Elisabeth Frederika Schenck, took Rie and her sisters back to The Netherlands when she was 9 years old, and she attended an art academy in The Hague, the third largest city in the country, from 1905 to 1907.

At 17, she left a folder of her work -- drawings and rhymes -- with a publisher, W. de Haan, in Utrecht.  They loved it, and she got a contract in 1906 to do the book, Of Girls and Boys.  She did a sequel a year later.  

"In contrast to the then usual moralistic and educational children's books were these playful books about domestic life and the world of the child. The illustrations were not only informative, but appealed to the imagination and made the book much more accessible to children than the usual children's literature."*

Rie went on to illustrate books for other Dutch authors, like Nienke Hichtum and Anna Sutorius, as well as the classics, like Grimm's Fairy Tales and Alice in Wonderland.  She was heavily influenced by the art of other illustrators from around the world, like Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac.  She worked with a dark black outline, and then filled in with watercolors.

 

  
Rie was married two times, both ending in divorce, and she had a passionate, life-changing affair with married art critic Albert Plasschaert that ended in 1919.  She had no children.  But she lived for her art, going on to make dolls, ceramics, and even write plays and novels under a pseudonym.  She also wrote for a children's magazine, Sunshine, in the 1920s and 30s.

World War II was especially difficult for Rie.  In 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands.  Two of Rie's pre-war novels, She,We, and You and The Land of Promise were banned for their anti-Nazi message.  She worked against the Nazis, hiding refugees and writing poetry, called Verses of Resistance.  Through it all, though, she continued to illustrate children's books.  After the war, her fame spread to Britain and beyond, and she wrote a series of children's radio shows, of which 42 episodes aired in 1954 and 1955.

The Little Mermaid

Rie's later years were spent in Mallorca, living with friends.  According to her, it was the best time of her life. She wrote several books about Mallorca, and her love for cats.  She was crazy about her cats, and even posed with one of her cats for her passport photo.  In 1971, she moved back to the Netherlands.  Rie died at the age of 89 in 1977.  

Critics have said that Rie neglected part of society with her art, focusing too much on the whimsy and beauty, and not enough on the realness of the world during the time she worked.  However, her lighthearted, beautiful art speaks more to me because the fantasy she put into every illustration.  Rie captured the most important element of childhood in her work -- imagination and fun.

*http://www.fairyworx.net/Rie_Cramer.html

The Skinny: The Fairer Sex Goes to War

"Rosie the Riveter" is one of the most recognizable images from the WWII era, symbolizing the essential role of women in industry while their men were away at war. A Google search will get you dozens of images of grease-smeared women with drills, welding torches, and heavy machinery, working long hours to build the implements of war and hold our country together. But, people sometimes forget the women who held it together in the war--the WACs, WAVEs, and other groups of women volunteers who got dirty, in a thousand other ways, so that combat soldiers could actually engage in combat. We tend to think of them in a cute South Pacific, pin-up sort of way (washing that man right out of their hair), but they deserve to be recognized for their contribution to freedom.

 The idea of women as support staff pre-dates World War II. There have been field nurses for much longer than that (remember Florence Nightingale?). In addition to the thousands of nurses who signed up, women volunteers drove ambulances in World War I, a task which may seem low-risk and of no great importance. But think about it--the ambulances had to go where the wounded soldiers were. And the wounded soldiers were on the battlefield. Sometimes, retrieving the wounded meant bullet holes in your ambulance. 

Hello Girls

The Hello Girls, also known as the Signal Corps Women, were sworn into the Army to serve as multilingual telephone operators for essential communications. Sadly, they were demoted after the war, so that they would not qualify for veterans benefits. And we're not even going to delve into the vast numbers of women who managed to actually serve, and die, in combat. (Most military organizations like to pretend that never happened.) In World War II, the demand for military nurses was so high that FDR tried to initiate a draft for females. It stalled, however, and the draft idea disappeared by the end of the war.

In 1942, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) introduced females into the US Army to serve as support and communications staff at designated sites to monitor for potential attacks on US soil. They were sworn in, trained, and given uniforms like every other soldier. The group started with 6,000 women, and after the initial trial run, the Army requested another 500,000. They didn't get their wish, because certain commanders, including General Eisenhower, were opposed to the idea of women in the military. (He quickly changed his mind, after seeing the results of their service, and became one of the greatest supporters of the group for the last few years of the war.) By 1943, the corps had gained enough of a reputation for the "auxiliary" term to be dropped, leaving them officially designated as the Women's Army Corps. Now, the women were no longer civilians, but active members of the United States military. They were more commonly called WACs, and by 1945, there were over 32,000 of them. The WACs were represented in at least 200 specialty jobs for the military, in every operational zone of the war. There were even 1,100 black women who enlisted and served in segregated units.


Also in 1942, two units of qualified female pilots, enlisting as civilian volunteers, were created. The Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) transported bomber and fighter planes to combat zones. The Women's Flying Training Detachment received additional flight training, so that the women pilots could take over non-combat flying duties for male pilots, thereby freeing up more male pilots for battle. In August of 1943, the two groups were combined to form the Women's Airforce Service Pilots. In addition to plane transport, the WASPs also served as instructors for the Eastern Flying Training Command. The group was disbanded in late 1944, and again, the female pilots would not be able to claim privileges as veterans.

WASP training

1942 was, apparently, an important year for women's service. Mildred McAfee, the first female commissioned  officer in the US Navy, was sworn in as Naval Reserve Lieutenant Commander and put in charge of a new group of women: Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, also known as the WAVES. This was not a novel idea. In fact, the US Navy utilized female civilian volunteers during WWI as well, but this time around, the training was more detailed and the job descriptions more complex. And the numbers were huge--women flocked to volunteer for service, especially since the navy had, oddly enough, traditionally been more supportive of women than certain other branches of the military. Within the first year, there were 27,000 WAVES. Clerical jobs were, of course, the majority (but imagine coordinating millions of soldiers and commanders without people to transfer messages, answer the phones, and organize paperwork). This time around, however, some new duties were added for the enlisted women: aviation, legal, medical, intelligence, scientific research, and technology labs. communications, intelligence, science and technology. By the time the war ended, 2.5% of navy personnel were women, many of them officers.

 The Coast Guard joined suit, forming the SPARs in 1942. These women enlisted in the Coast Guard so that the men could then be dispatched overseas for combat. Many of these were WAVES who agreed to an official discharge from the NAVY. They were restricted to coastal waters of the US, and were forbidden to ever issue an order to a male, but were, essentially, filling many of the regular duties of the US Coast Guard. There were also women in the United Service Organization (USO), the American Red Cross, and the Civil Air Patrol. And, somewhat surprisingly, the United States Marines welcomed women into service. With WACs, WAVES, SPARs, and WASPS, everyone expected a clever acronym from the Marines, who are infamous for their sense of humor (ha!). Instead, the Commandant said in an interview for Life magazine, "They are Marines. They don't have a nickname and they don't need one. They get their basic training in a Marine atmosphere at a Marine post. They inherit the traditions of Marines. They are Marines."

Shooting range practice at SPARS academy

 All told, over 400,000 women served with the US Military during World War II. During the war, many of them won Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars, and other awards for service. Many of them died alongside their male colleagues. Most of them were discharged as soon as the conflict ended, and sent back home to be wives and mothers (like much of the female industrial workforce). Decades later, legislation allowed some of them to receive Veterans status, and the appropriate benefits and privileges. This Veterans Day, as you think of the people who have served, and are serving, our country, consider the women who worked hard to preserve our freedom decades ago, who were underestimated and unrecognized for the majority of their lifetimes.

Elizabeth L. Gardner, WASP

*Information obtained from: http://womenofwwii.com/coastguardspars.html; http://www.uscg.mil/history/WomenIndex.asp; http://www.uscg.mil/history/WomenIndex.asp; http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/prs-tpic/females/wave-ww2.htm; http://www.malvernmemorialparade.com/2010_wacs-waves.htm; http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/womenww1_one.htm