Innerviews: ; I Thought It Would Be Great to Fly; Wartime Nourished Sense of Adventure

Summary

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At 86, shes as salty and straightforward as ever, a no-nonsense, earthy type, the kind of woman who calls her husband by his last name. Judy Crichton was always very much her own person. At 19, inspired by wartime patriotism and the romance of flight, she joined the Womens Airforce Service Pilots. First, she had to learn to fly. She took flying lessons at Glen Clarks seaplane base at the city levee. When funding for the WASP program dried up, she shifted to the Womens Army Corps, a choice that confounded her brother, Herman, an Air National Guard pilot and one of the 19 airmen killed in the 1951 plane crash at Kanawha (now Yeager) Airport. She finished her WAC obligation as an air traffic controller. A highlight of her later working life was her role as assistant consumer protection director for the city. She still misses Crichton, claimed by a heart attack at 47.

"I grew up down where the farmer's market used to be on Patrick Street. The house belonged to the Littlepages. My dad had the Winter Floral Co. I was Julia Winter. He had greenhouses down there.

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Innerviews: ; I Thought It Would Be Great to Fly; Wartime Nourished Sense of Adventure

"I made corsages. I worked Mother's Day, Easter, Christmas. Busy times, my mother worked, too. Everybody pitched in.

"During the Depression, my parents told me they didn't have enough money to send me to dancing school. Milk and bread are the imperative things in tough times. If you don't have any money, you don't buy flowers. My father kept the floral company going somehow.

"Then m...

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