By JUDY RATTNER
The spry 93-year-old, who is still active at St. Agnes and keeps busy making handmade quilts for the Mercy League and the St. Patrick�s Parade Committee, was accompanied on the trip by one of her daughters, Maureen McGuire, also a Rockville Centre resident who is a retired registered nurse (and paid her own way). The two were guests of The Honor Flight Network, a volunteer service conceived to fulfill the dreams of American veterans who, due to financial or physical issues, would otherwise be unable to make the trip.
�I just can�t say, it was the most wonderful day. It was very emotional,� said O�Sullivan, who was the only woman among the veterans who took the trip on April 18. �They gave us a throwaway camera, there were 29 men and myself and anybody that had a cane they had a wheelchair for, because they said there�d be a lot of walking. I had a cane and about half the men did too, and they had extra people to push the wheelchairs of the men who didn�t have anyone with them.�
The day started early with the group meeting at Islip MacArthur airport at 6:30 a.m, taking off at 7:50 and landing at 9 a.m. in the Baltimore-Washington Airport. From there they were bused to Washington, D.C. visited the monuments, went to dinner and flew back to Long Island, arriving close to 9 p.m. At many points along the way there were moving and memorable moments.
�When we flew to Baltimore,� said O�Sullivan, �they had told the people in the airport that the Honor Flight was coming through and when we walked through [the airport], everyone was standing up and cheering. I had tears running down my face and a lot of the men did too. One man said, �I have what I have today because of people like you.'"
O�Sullivan grew up on a ranch in Wibaux, Montana, 20 miles away from the nearest town. Wibaux, she said, had a population of 617 people �on a Saturday night.� Moving to Seattle to live with a cousin and intending to get a job building airplanes, she joined the WAAC Auxiliary Corps instead, and several months later, at the age of 25, became part of the regular Army. She went to Ft. Des Moines in Iowa for basic training and then was sent to Commerce, Texas to the State Teachers College for classes in Army administration. At that time a woman in the military could do only three things: work in an office, be a cook or baker or work in a motor pool (not driving). She said she deliberately failed the tests for the kitchen and motor pool assignments. After eight weeks, her next stop was in Truaxville, Wis. where she worked as a post locator, keeping records of everyone who had departed from that post.
Signing a form agreeing to serve overseas, O�Sullivan next received orders to report to Ft. Oglethorpe in Georgia for overseas training. When she was issued new wool uniforms, she said that was her first clue that she and her fellow trainees weren�t going to the South Pacific war theater. Next stop was Camp Shanks, N.Y. where she spent one week before shipping out. Not able to call her family to let them know, she notified them with a postcard that had the Statue of Liberty on it, and a pre-set code, because when they�d see that, she said they�d know she was departing from the East coast.
Traveling with about 100 other women on an ocean liner packed with her male Army counterparts, the Montana native sailed across the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth. O�Sullivan said she was actually scared to death of water and never wore a life jacket because if she fell over, she �wanted it to be quick.� After an uneventful trip, they landed at the Firth of Clyde in Scotland to cheering crowds who were celebrating the D-Day landing in April 1943. O'Sullivan was taken via truck to Midlands, Stoke-on-Trent, England, where she joined the 8th Army Air Corps and began her work assigning staff and equipment, B-17 and B-24 bombers, to bases in England and Europe.
Working as a statistician in the same Army office was Brooklyn-native Frank O�Sullivan, and the rest was history. They left the same day -- she returned home to Montana on Thanksgiving Day 1945, and after a stint with the Army of Occupation in Germany, Frank returned home, with a Bronze Star, in April 1946. The couple married the next month, settled in Brooklyn and eventually moved to Rockville Centre where they raised their five daughters. The couple was married for 50 years when Frank died.
�It�s embarrassing to make a big deal out of it,� said O�Sullivan, referring to her time in England, �I wasn�t in a fox hole, fighting like other veterans and in combat.�
But her daughter disagreed, �For World War II, she did everything her country allowed her to do. She enlisted, she agreed to serve overseas and she spent nights in bomb shelters � she wasn�t in a fox hole, but she wasn�t home safe either. Today,� McGuire added, �things have changed for women, but she did as much as women were allowed to at the time. Other than the nurses, it was the first time women were allowed in the Army.�
The volunteers at the Honor Flight Network and the people O�Sullivan met on her visit to the memorials also seemed to disagree, viewing the group of veterans as heroes.
�I was amazed in Washington,� said O�Sullivan, �the people would come up and say �Thank you, you did a great job.� People knew we were a group because they gave us T-shirts to wear and people would talk to us.
�It was a terrific day,� said O�Sullivan of her Honor Flight to Washington, �I�ll never forget it.�
For more information on the Honor Flight Network, visit www.honorflight.org.
Questions about this story? RVCeditor@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 208.
