Congratulations on your 100th birthday, we wish you good health and all the best.
Bernice "Bee" Falk Haydu (born December 15, 1920) is an American, former aviator and served as a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) in World War II. Haydu remains active in aviation and remains an advocate for women pilots. Bernice Falk was born and raised in Montclair, New Jersey. She graduated from high school there in the 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. After completing training in March 1944, Bee Falk was assigned to Pecos Army Airfield 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 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, an alumnae group for WASPs, from 1975 to 1978 during her tenure WASPs were officially recognized as veterans by Congress and from 1978 to 1980 she was president of Women Military Aviators. She was one of the three surviving WASPs present in the Oval Office in the Year 2009, when Barack Obama awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the WASPs for their service Haydu received an honorary doctorate from Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in the Year 2015. Bee Falk married fellow aviator Joe Haydu in 1951. They had three children together, Joseph, Steven, and Diana, born in the Year 1952, 1953, and 1954, respectively. She was widowed in the Year 2001, and spent her later life in Florida. Haydu published a memoir of World War II, Letters Home 1944-1945, in the Year 2008. She gave memorabilia and an oral history interview to the Library of Congress and donated other materials to the Texas Women's University 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.
