Bernice "Bee" S. Falk Haydu (December 15, 1920 – January 30, 2021) was an American aviator and served as a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Haydu remained active in aviation and remained an advocate for women pilots.

Early life

Bernice Falk was born in December 1920 and raised in Montclair, New Jersey. She graduated from high school there in 1938. While working as a secretary, she enrolled in aviation classes on weekends, because her brother Lloyd was in the Army Air Force and she found that she also liked flying. In 1944 she attended WASP flight training in

Sweetwater, Texas Sweetwater is a municipality in and the seat of Nolan County, Texas, United States. It is 123 miles southeast of Lubbock and 40 miles west of Abilene, Texas. Its population was 10,906 at the 2010 census. History The town's name "Sweetwater" is t ...

Career

After completing training in March 1944, Bee Falk was assigned to

Pecos Army Airfield Pecos Municipal Airport is a city-owned airport two miles southwest of Pecos, in Reeves County, Texas, United States. The FAA's National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2009–2013 categorized it as a ''general aviation'' airport. Facil ...

as an engineering test pilot and a utility pilot for the remainder of the WASP program. After the war, Bee Haydu ferried aircraft and opened a

Cessna Cessna () is an American brand of general aviation aircraft owned by Textron Aviation since 2014, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas. Originally, it was a brand of the Cessna Aircraft Company, an American general aviation aircraft manufacturing c ...

dealership. She owned a flight school with several other veterans, and worked for Indamer, a New York company that sold aircraft parts to India. She also participated in airshows, and in two Powder Puff Derbies. In 1971, she was seriously injured as a passenger in an airshow flight in Ottawa. She was president of the Order of

Fifinella Fifinella was a female gremlin designed by Walt Disney for a proposed film from Roald Dahl's book ''The Gremlins''. During World War II, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) asked permission to use the image as their official mascot, and th ...

, an alumnae group for WASPs, from 1975 to 1978; during her tenure WASPs were officially recognized as veterans by Congress. From 1978 to 1980 she was president of Women Military Aviators. She was one of the three surviving WASPs present in the

Oval Office The Oval Office is the formal working space of the President of the United States. Part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, it is located in the West Wing of the White House, in Washington, D.C. The oval-shaped room ...

in 2009, when

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the WASPs for their service. Haydu received an honorary doctorate from Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in 2015.

Personal life and legacy

Bee Falk married fellow aviator Joe Haydu in 1951. They had three children together, Joseph, Steven, and Diana, born in 1952, 1953, and 1954, respectively. She was widowed in 2001, and spent her later life in Florida. Haydu published a memoir of World War II, ''Letters Home 1944-1945'', in 2008. She gave memorabilia and an oral history interview to the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

and donated other materials to the

Texas Women's University Texas Woman's University (TWU) is a public coeducational university in Denton, Texas, with two health science center-focused campuses in Dallas and Houston. While TWU has been fully co-educational since 1994, it is the largest state-supported u ...

in Denton, Texas. There is a plaque commemorating the work of Bee Falk Haydu at the Aviation Hall of Fame and Museum of New Jersey at Teterboro Airport, and her WASP uniform is on display at the

National Air and Space Museum The National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, also called the Air and Space Museum, is a museum in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Established in 1946 as the National Air Museum, it opened its main building on the Nat ...

. In her twilight years, Bee traveled with The Greatest Generations Foundation, a veterans organization that honors the legacies of the World War II generation through battlefield return programs. She turned 100 on 15 December 2020, and died the following month on January 30, 2021.Bernice S. HAYDU obituary
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References

External links

A photograph of Bernice Falk from 1944
in the collection of the Texas Women's University. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Falk Haydu, Bernice 1920 births 2021 deaths American women centenarians Aviators from New Jersey Military personnel from New Jersey People from Montclair, New Jersey Women Airforce Service Pilots personnel 21st-century American women American women aviators