Gwendolyne Cowart

Gwendolyne Elizabeth Cowart was born in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1920, the daughter of James Monroe Cowart and Louie Leonie Lester Cowart.[2] Her father was a locomotive engineer; her parents were divorced in 1928.[3] She was raised by her mother in Georgia, and as a young woman performed on roller skates in shows.[1] She attended Mount de Sales Academy in Macon, Georgia.[4]

Cowart was "the youngest girl in the South to get a commercial flying license,"[4] and was an officer in Atlanta's Southeastern Aviatrix Association in 1940.[5][6] That year, she made news for landing a plane in a cow pasture after it ran out of fuel.[7]

During World War II, Cowart first served as an assistant instrument instructor for the U.S. Navy at Camp Gordon, before she became a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP).[8] She trained to fly pursuit fighter aircraft at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas,[1] and was assigned to New Castle Army Air Base in Delaware.[9][10] She was a member of the Women's Flight Training Detachment headed by Jacqueline Cochran.[4][11] She ferried P-38s and P-47s across the United States. "You know, you can pick up a nice 350 miles an hour in those ships," she told an interviewer in 1944.[8] Later in life, she worked as an artist for the Corpus Christi Independent School District.[1]

Cowart married fellow pilot James Hickerson. She had a son, Gary Hickerson. She died in 2003, in Houston, Texas, aged 82 years.[1] She was named in the listing of WASPs awarded a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.[12]

• A photograph of Cowart with fellow WASPs Nancy Batson and Shirley Haugan, in uniform during World War II. In the Women's Collection, Texas Women's University.