Foil: 9 Panel: 3 Column: 3 Line: 15

Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:
Ms. Jennifer Reed

WASP pilot from April 1943 to December 1944 (World War II). Flew Lockheed Lodestar – towed gliders; graduated from B26 training in Dodge City, KS; towed targets with B26 at Pueblo, CO, and flew B24 and B29 at Clovis, NM. Fran loved it. “All those airplanes – and we were paid!”
Born the youngest of 5 children (3 sisters and 1 brother) on September 12, 1921, Fran was drawn to flying from the start. As a child she waved at planes as they flew over her home in Sacramento on their way to land at the nearby city airport. As a sophomore in high school she began building balsa wood model airplanes and racing them. (The other model plane racers were mostly boys.) When assigned to write an English paper or prepare a talk, her topic would often be planes or flying, or perhaps the principles of aerodynamics – wing shape and air flow and lift.
She graduated from high school in 1939 and got a job at Kress “5-&-Dime” working 9 hours a day, 6 days a week, for $15 a week. A neighbor boy a year or two older bought a car and started taking flying lessons. Fran went to the airport with him once “when my parents were gone for the weekend” and she started to learn to fly at $8 an hour dual. “Sometimes I only had $4 for half an hour.” She had her pilot’s license before she had a driver’s license.
Once the U.S. entered World War II, private aviation stopped. Airplane fuel was only for commercial or official flights. But news began to circulate among local woman pilots that a women’s air corps was being formed. Fran and her pilot friends wrote letters asking for information and asking to fly. She and several others were accepted. She went for training in Sweetwater, TX, graduating in the class 43-W-6.
She flew many planes, met lots of people, and had many adventure crisscrossing the country. In Pueblo, CO, she met U.S. Army Air Corps Captain Don Pullen, a B-24 pilot instructor. They fell in love and after the war was over, they married and moved back to her hometown of Sacramento to purchase a home and raise four children. Often asked if she regretted leaving flying behind, Fran always answered, “No. I had it all. I had great fun flying. And I have four great children. I don’t think anything is greater in life than family.”