Video Interview: Ruth Brown & Betty Pfister

The Roaring Fork Veterans History Project

In Association with Aspen Historical Society and the

Library of Congress Presents:

Betty P. Pfister And Ruth Brown

Women Airforce Service Pilots/World War II

Interview conducted by: Tom Egan

Transcribed by: Western Deposition & Transcription, LLC

TOM EGAN:  Hello.  I’m Tom Egan, and we are doing an interview for the Roaring Fork Valley Veteran’s History Project.  We are at the Grassroots T.V. Studios in downtown Aspen, and today it’s my pleasure to interview a couple of ladies from the WASP Program.  We’ve got Ruth Brown and Betty Pfister.  Thank you so much for joining us today.

Now, before we get into stories, and finding out more about your service in the military, can we get some background information?

So, Ruth, can we start with you?  Maybe tell us where and when you were born, maybe where you went to school, some biographical background information.

RUTH BROWN:  I was born in Denver, and went to school in the start of Graland, which I’m sure you’ve heard of Graland.

TOM EGAN:  And where is that?

RUTH BROWN:  In Denver.

TOM EGAN:  That’s in Denver, yeah.

RUTH BROWN:  Elementary school, yeah.

TOM EGAN:  Oh, okay.  The elementary school.

RUTH BROWN:  And then I went to — after Graland I went to camp for a couple of years, and then I went east to school.

TOM EGAN:  And where did you go to school in the east?

RUTH BROWN:  To Ms. Porter’s in Farmington, Connecticut.

TOM EGAN:  Great.  And Betty?

BETTY PFISTER:  I was born in New York, and went to school there until about eighth grade or ninth grade, I guess.  I went to boarding school in Pennsylvania.

TOM EGAN:  And are there any particular memories of your childhood?  Did you have large families, small families?  Give us a little more background, because as we get into talking about flying, I suspect some of that is going to affect why you ended up becoming pilots.  Did you have a large family?

RUTH BROWN:  Not particularly, no.  I just had one sister, and a mother and a father that both have passed away now, but they lived for quite a while in my growing up stages.  And, did you want to know why I was thinking –- when I got into flying?

TOM EGAN:  Sure.

RUTH BROWN:  Well, my family had one of the first private airplanes that flew around this country.  They had a pilot, and just a pleasure plane.  And so I was, as a little girl, I was sort of having to go with them, and I really didn’t like it at all.  Every time they’d tell me that I had to go on the flight I’d say no, I don’t really want to go.  But they made me go, so I went.

And so later on in the years, having flown so much for them as a passenger in the rear of the airplane, I wanted to something for the war effort, which we had gotten into at that point, and rather than knitting for bundles for Britain, I decided with the flying background that I had that I’d get into flying, and that’s when the WASP –- that’s how I got into the WASPS.

TOM EGAN:  When did you get your license, pilot’s license?

RUTH BROWN:  Training with the WASPS, which was in

19 — I’m terrible at dates, but 1939 I guess it was.

TOM EGAN:  And just to backtrack a little bit, your family has a history in Denver that a lot of people may be familiar with the name Brown.  Your grandfather was prominent in Denver.

RUTH BROWN:  Well, my name wasn’t Brown.  That’s my married name.  My name was Humphreys.

TOM EGAN:  Okay.

RUTH BROWN:  And my grandfather was Colonel Humphreys, and then also Charles Boettcher, who you have probably have heard of.

TOM EGAN:  And then, Betty, when did you learn to fly and get your pilot’s license, and why?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, I learned to fly because my brother had started flying, and he ended up being a Navy pilot.  He was at Yale, and as Ruthie said, the war was on and everybody was — a lot of people were changing their plans because of that, and he was — he got in the Navy.  Dropped out of Yale after two years and became a Navy pilot.  And I was sort of a copycat.  He was only a year older, and I liked to do the same things he did, and I think curiosity more than anything I started flying.

Then I got the telegram from Jackie Cochran asking if I’d be interested in the WASP Program, and I sent a return telegram about as fast as it was possible, and that was the beginning for me.

TOM EGAN:  And when was that?

BETTY PFISTER:  That was 1943.  I was at college at the time, and I accelerated my college program so I could get out early.

TOM EGAN:  Where were you in college?

BETTY PFISTER:  Bennington College in Vermont.

TOM EGAN:  Uh-huh.  I almost went there.

Now, how would someone know to get in touch with you specifically about that?  Was there —

BETTY PFISTER:  Jackie Cochran — there was a — I don’t know who keeps records, but they were keeping records in Washington of all the women that had pilot licenses, and Jackie Cochran got those records, and I don’t know if you got a telegram from Jackie asking you?

RUTH BROWN:  No.

BETTY PFISTER:  You knew about the WASP and then aimed for that, or?

RUTH BROWN:  Uh-huh.

BETTY PFISTER:  See, mine was a little different.  I had never heard of the WASP and Jackie sent these telegrams to

— I was a couple of months earlier, I think than you were, and that was what they were doing as I remember.

RUTH BROWN:  Right.

BETTY PFISTER:  I don’t remember applying.  I remember her asking if I was interested.  My whole class was a little close to the beginning of the program.

TOM EGAN:  Now, can you give us some sense of what it was like to be a woman in the military at that time?  I think nowadays, this is 2008, it’s much more common, but my — what I read is it wasn’t particularly common, and it was something brand new as opposed to the previous history where women were generally nurses.  You had the WAC and the WASP Program.  What was the atmosphere like being women pilots in a military effort?  Was it — did you feel welcome?  Did you feel like you were really helping, or was there some emotional detachment that you felt?  What was the atmosphere like, Betty?

RUTH BROWN:  It was —

TOM EGAN:  Or Ruth?

RUTH BROWN:  It was good as far as I was concerned.  The military bases that I happened to be stationed at were very accepting of the women pilots.  In fact we usually got — made the male pilots a little jealous because they usually gave us a free — whatever you want to say — they were glad to have us aboard.  And as far as the flying was concerned they favored us over the male pilots.  Why, I don’t know, but they did.

TOM EGAN:  What was your impression of that time being a woman in the military?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, I started out in the WASP in the Ferry Command after I had graduated from training, and went to a base that had a very large contingent of WASPS there.  So it wasn’t as though we were breaking trails.  They were already accepted at that base in Wilmington, Delaware.

And I went from there to Palm Springs, where we were welcomed with open arms, and they couldn’t have treated us any better.  And then I ended up the last few months before the WASPS were deactivated, I ended up in Arizona at a field.  There were only eight of us testing airplanes the cadets — the male cadets had cracked up, and the commanding officer there did not like WASPS at all, so, that was my experience.

TOM EGAN:  Now how long were each of you in the Program?  Ruth?

RUTH BROWN:  In the WASP Program?

TOM EGAN:  In the WASP Program.

RUTH BROWN:  We were in — what was it, a couple of years for training, wasn’t it?

BETTY PFISTER:  No, about eight months for training, and I think about the ones at the very beginning until — we all were let go the same day no matter what your — what base we were at, December 20, 1944 the Program was finished.

And we had started at different times.  I think the beginning of 1943, I think was the first WASP class.

RUTH BROWN:  Uh-huh.

BETTY PFISTER:  That’s all I can remember.  I was in the fourth class.

TOM EGAN:  And what rank did you have, and what branch of the military were you considered a part of?

BETTY PFISTER:  We had no rank.  It was all just on a level keel, and we were not really in the — we were in a very strange position.  We were civilians on military status, I think they called us.

RUTH BROWN:  Right.

BETTY PFISTER:  And we were given certain military privileges.  We could use — in fact they encouraged using the Officer’s Club.  They encouraged dating officers.  We were supposedly couldn’t date enlisted men because we were going to be officers.  Some of the ladies married enlisted men, and you wondered how they got to know each other well enough to marry them.

TOM EGAN:  In that time of being in the WASP Program, and I should mention WASP is Women’s Airforce Service Pilots; is that correct?

RUTH BROWN:  Right.

BETTY PFISTER:  Yeah.

TOM EGAN:  You mentioned that you both had an interest in flying beforehand.  It’s been said that the male pilots came in as regular men, if you will, and became pilots.  You almost had to be a pilot, or at least on your way to becoming a pilot to be asked to be a WASP, and your experience with the Jackie Cochran telegram would indicate that.

Did you feel like perhaps when you started you were maybe a step ahead of the male pilots who were coming in, or the male enlistees, if you will, that didn’t know how to fly?  Did you feel a little special?

BETTY PFISTER:  I don’t think — I didn’t.

RUTH BROWN:  No, I didn’t.

BETTY PFISTER:  Just very happy to be flying the military planes and getting the training they gave us.  They gave us identical training that the men had excepting there was no bombing training.  Well — that’s wrong.  They did do some bombing practice, I guess.  I didn’t, but —

RUTH BROWN:  Well, I was at a bombardier’s school.

BETTY PFISTER:  Yeah.

RUTH BROWN:  So, we had bombing training.

TOM EGAN:  And where was that?  Where were you?

RUTH BROWN:  In Childress, Texas.

TOM EGAN:  Childress, Texas.  And were you —

RUTH BROWN:  I spent my —

TOM EGAN:  — there for the entire time, or?

RUTH BROWN:  — spent my whole life with the WASP, practically, in Texas.

TOM EGAN:  And what was the name of the base?

RUTH BROWN:  Childress Army Air Force —

TOM EGAN:  That was the name of it.

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah.

TOM EGAN:  And, Betty, you actually moved around a bit.  You said you were back east, then California, then Arizona.

BETTY PFISTER:  Yes.

TOM EGAN:  And how long would you be at each one?

BETTY PFISTER:  There was no set time.  I had — I can’t remember how long I was in Wilmington, and I had selected Wilmington as my first choice because you didn’t always get your first choice, but we were allowed to at least specify, because it was nearest to New York.  I think there were four Ferry Command fields at the time.  I know they had Romulus, Michigan and Dallas, Texas.  A lot of Texas bases, I know that.

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah, there were.

TOM EGAN:  Same with the men, I believe.  Now, when you — after you enlisted, did you know what you were going to be doing, or was it somewhat nebulous at that point, and what eventually did you end up doing, mostly?  Ruth?  Were you told beforehand, or?

RUTH BROWN:  No.  I wasn’t told beforehand.  You enlisted in — to first of all to be able to enlist in the WASPS, in the flying end, you had to have so many hours of flight logged, and which I hadn’t had.  I’d had a lot of hours with my family in that airplane I told you about, but that was just as a passenger.  So I had to have as a pilot a certain amount of hours.

So, I went to a base in Texas — no, actually, as a matter of fact I did this in Denver, Colorado, where I was born,  and I picked up the — I think you had to have 35 hours of logged flying time to be able to enlist in the WASPS.

And so after that you had no idea, once you were accepted, as to where they were going to send you.  They just put you where they needed you.

TOM EGAN:  Did you think you might end up in combat, or was that always —

RUTH BROWN:  No.  That was usually not —

BETTY PFISTER:  That was never a possibility.

RUTH BROWN:  Never a possibility.

TOM EGAN:  So.

RUTH BROWN:  You know, unless the war changed in any dramatic effect where they really had to send the women overseas.

BETTY PFISTER:  But they had a lot of — the men were overseas, and they needed people to replace the men’s jobs.

RUTH BROWN:  Right.

BETTY PFISTER:  I was in the Ferry Command which we all thought was the prime.  I still think, looking back today, it was the best fun place that WASPS could have because we got to fly many different types of airplanes.

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah, you really did.

BETTY PFISTER:  Many more — other than that, people

— the WASPS were more like Ruth.  I think the majority were at training bases.

RUTH BROWN:  Right.

BETTY PFISTER:  And in the training command, and they would fly one type aircraft.

RUTH BROWN:  Exactly.

BETTY PFISTER:  Where we got to fly lots of different ones.

TOM EGAN:  And where would you be ferrying these planes from, and where would you be taking them?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, we took them all over the United States.  It was a great feeling that the WASPS flew overseas, and flew over the Atlantic, which we never did.  Twenty-five, I think, American women flew in England with the English women, but they didn’t go back and forth across the ocean.  The WASPS never did overseas.  They were going to at one point, there was a possibility, but it never happened.

TOM EGAN:  So it was within the country, ferrying planes from —

BETTY PFISTER:  We were about 300 of us I think in the Ferry Command, something like that.  I remember some figures, if you want them:  25,000 women applied when the program was finished, and 2,000 had been accepted for training, and 1,000 graduated.  That was — and 38 were killed in the two years that the training was — that the program was in place.

TOM EGAN:  And you were one of the 1,000 — you were both one of the —

BETTY PFISTER:  Yeah, lucky ones.

TOM EGAN:  Lucky 1,000 if you will.

RUTH BROWN:  Lucky ones.

TOM EGAN:  And, what was your position in the WASP?  If you weren’t in the ferry program, what would you be doing, Ruth?

RUTH BROWN:  Well, I was in the what they called the Training Command, instead of the Ferry Command, and that was being sent to bases where you were helping the — the flying there was done for training, like the — I was at the bombardiers school, and we were training bombardiers.

Then I went to a gunnery school and we were training the gunners.  Towing targets for the gunners.

TOM EGAN:  Was there any feeling of maybe amongst either of you, or in the WASP Program, itself, that you really wanted to be a part of the frontline?  That you were helping everything, and then right when you get to the point where you could go, they say no, you can’t go.  Was there ever a feeling you were training, and you felt maybe you should be the ones going into combat, or was there ever that in the WASP, or were you happy to be where you were?

RUTH BROWN:  I was happy to be where I was.

TOM EGAN:  Was there ever a feeling, or did you ever get a feeling from the male pilots of — I don’t know if the right word is jealousy, or if they were envious of your position, or even the pilots you trained were good for you, and good to you?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, I didn’t train any pilots, so.  I was receiving all — on the receiving end of all the training of different types of aircraft, and once I’d checked out on a certain plane, then I was eligible and requested to fly them —

TOM EGAN:  Fly them.

BETTY PFISTER:  — all over the place.

TOM EGAN:  Now, Ruth, if you were actually helping train the gunners and the bombardiers, was there ever a feeling that you knew more than they did, and why aren’t I the one going over, or — and did they ever feel —

RUTH BROWN:  No, I had — I had no desire to go over, actually.  I was happy to be there what I was doing.

TOM EGAN:  Now, were your expectations met when you joined the WASP?  Was it a fulfilling experience, or was it — were there parts of it that you felt —

RUTH BROWN:  No, I liked — I thought it was very fulfilling.  Did you feel it was fulfilling, Betty?

BETTY PFISTER:  Oh, yeah, yeah.

TOM EGAN:  And can you describe what a day would be like as a WASP, because we get that daily description from the men, and this would be a unique perspective.  What was a normal day for you, like in the WASP?

RUTH BROWN:  Well, you’d get up at the crack of dawn, or whatever it is with the bugle sounding off.  And you’re in a barracks, and you marched to breakfast, and then the training began, which a lot of it was ground school.  And then you’d — you know, then you started training of course in the airplanes.

TOM EGAN:  And how long was a day in the military back then?

RUTH BROWN:  What would you say, Betty?

BETTY PFISTER:  Probably six in the morning until 10:00 at night.  I mean, ten would be after dinner.  You had time to do some ground school.  It was doing homework, but there was a lot of training going on.

TOM EGAN:  Was it similar to how the men trained?

BETTY PFISTER:  Almost identical —

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah.

BETTY PFISTER:  — except not the — we had the same program the men cadets had except we didn’t have any bombing.  We were not doing bombing.  You were training bombardiers —

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah.

BETTY PFISTER:  — but you were not training, yourself, to be one.

RUTH BROWN:  No, exactly.

BETTY PFISTER:  And you might want to tell a little bit about towing targets, because I think that was pretty hairy.

TOM EGAN:  It sounds exciting.

RUTH BROWN:  Well, it never bothered me.  The idea — people now — or you know, ask the question, “Did you ever feel that you were going to be hit by the training, the target training,” but I never did.  You towed a thing way back of you that —

TOM EGAN:  How far back would you say?

RUTH BROWN:  Oh, Lord, I have no idea exactly, but quite far back.

BETTY PFISTER:  I think you were training some brand new gunners, too, and some of the gunners weren’t very good at that point, and I know some of the women in the Tow Target Squadron said they came back with a couple of holes in the tail of the T-6’s or whatever.

TOM EGAN:  Now, just quickly, that reminds me.  You mentioned that 38 WASPS were killed in the program.  What would generally be the reason that that would happen?  Would it be target practice, do you think, or was it just —

BETTY PFISTER:  No, that was never because of target practice.

RUTH BROWN:  No.

TOM EGAN:  Never because of that.

BETTY PFISTER:  But sometimes they were, I would think, caused by bad weather and WASPS either didn’t land soon enough, and got themselves in weather they couldn’t handle —

RUTH BROWN:  I think that’s right.

BETTY PFISTER:  — or sometimes it was an unfamiliarity or a defect with the airplane.  There was even talk about sabotage in a few places.

TOM EGAN:  What was the most exciting flight that you had in that time?  There must have been one or two where things weren’t going exactly as planned.  Ruth?  Or, were they all pretty standard flights, no problems?

RUTH BROWN:  Mine were all fairly standard I would say.

TOM EGAN:  Uh-huh.  Did you have any close calls, or experiences where you’d get up and the plane isn’t doing what it wants — what you want it to do, or?

BETTY PFISTER:  I had one, and one only.  It ended up with a major crash of the aircraft.  My co-pilot and I were not — my first solo, twin engine solo, we ended up losing both engines and it got very quiet up there, and that was my only —

TOM EGAN:  What happened?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, what happened was that our instructor — we only had about four or five hours in that type equipment, and my instructor had sent us out to take turns flying without him in the airplane.  We had just very minimal, which I think was not a good idea in retrospect.  I think we could have had a little more — but it probably wouldn’t have helped this particular accident.  It’s kind of a long story.  I don’t know if you —

TOM EGAN:  We’d —

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, what happened was that the planes were all lined up on the flight line.  This was in Sweetwater, Texas in advanced training.  And they were all lined up to be refueled, and they had these I guess fairly inexperienced young men that were driving the fuel truck, and they would fuel maybe, I don’t know, ten to 15 planes, and the big truck was empty and went back and got refilled.

And when they got to the plane that I was going to fly, which was — let’s just pretend number eight on the truck filling, they should have started with number eight, and they started with number nine, and number eight never got filled.

But we had bad fuel gauges, and our instructor had always told us to — it’s called sticking the fuel tank.  You take the cap off and put a piece of wood or metal or something in there and get a reading.  But he never did it himself, and he didn’t insist we do, but it was protocol to do it.

So anyway, our gauges looked fine, and he slapped us on the back and said go solo.  And I was the first one — we kind of drew a straw in the left seat, and after I had flown about five or ten minutes, I can’t remember all the details, an engine quit, and he’d said, “Now don’t pull engines on each other,”  because we weren’t good enough at that point to handle a single engine.  And I was — I still remember my co-pilot’s name.  Some things you’re never going to forget.  Her name was Virginia Wilson, and she was a good friend of mine, and she was in the right seat.

TOM EGAN:  Which is the co-pilot’s seat.

BETTY PFISTER:  Co-pilot’s seat.  And after we had been flying five or ten minutes all of a sudden, I don’t know which engine, one of them quit and I was furious at Ginny because this was a little scary for both of us.  And I looked at her and started to say, “What did you do?”  I mean, I could see she hadn’t moved her hand to pull the meg steer, or do something, and she was white as a sheet.

And I said, “Oh, my God.  You didn’t do anything.  We’ve really lost an engine.”  And so I turned around as fast as I could to head back to Sweetwater on one engine, and both of us hoping we could make it.  It was kind of — and it flew very well on one engine.  We got it trimmed up, and there was no problem.  We were quite happy with everything.

And I still remember, though, the tower was upset when we called in and said we had lost and engine and we wanted priority, because they had had two WASPS and an instructor killed the day before, so everybody was pretty nervous and on edge in general.

Anyway, the second engine quit just before we were assured of making the airport, and I remember it was going to be a question of whether we were going to stall in, and that would be pretty bad, or could we make it.  And I think I got really lucky because we made it without a scratch on ourselves.  The plane was totaled, so we hit pretty hard, but in a level position.

TOM EGAN:  What kind of plane was that?

BETTY PFISTER:  It was called a useless — a UC78, a Useless Cessna.

TOM EGAN:  And was that a plane that you flew much after that?

BETTY PFISTER:  Never flew one again that I remember, but it was part of standard basic.  Did you have that for basic training?

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah.

BETTY PFISTER:  For your twin engine part.

RUTH BROWN:  Twin engine, yeah.

BETTY PFISTER:  Yeah.

RUTH BROWN:  A-T 11’s is the.

BETTY PFISTER:  We had the UC78.

TOM EGAN:  Did you use a fuel stick every time after that?

BETTY PFISTER:  Never used one again.

TOM EGAN:  Really.

BETTY PFISTER:  And then they had an inquest, I guess it was an inquest.  Anytime that a plane had that much damage, or if anyone was hurt, which we weren’t.  Oh, but they panicked because the flight surgeon, which — who was on duty all the time, had just arrived at the field about a week before, they’d had a change.  And I remember he was there when the two WASPS were killed, and then suddenly the next day, or a couple of days later we put on our act, and so I think it was harder on him than anyone.

TOM EGAN:  How soon after that were you flying again?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, the next day we were — they made us take a thorough exam, and as I say, we literally didn’t need a band aid.  We were not — we just luckily — we just got in nice and smoothly.  I was very lucky.

TOM EGAN:  What was it like mentally going up the next day?

BETTY PFISTER:  No problem.

TOM EGAN:  Really?  That’s impressive.  I think I would have had trouble with that.

Do you know how many hours you flew while you were in the WASP Program, or how many missions?  Did you call them missions?

BETTY PFISTER:  We didn’t call them missions.

RUTH BROWN:  No.

TOM EGAN:  Well, what did you call it?  Just a —

RUTH BROWN:  We just —

BETTY PFISTER:  Flights.  Hours.

TOM EGAN:  A day at the office.

RUTH BROWN:  Hours in the log book.

TOM EGAN:  How many hours did you end up with, do you remember in the —

RUTH BROWN:  I had around 1,000.

BETTY PFISTER:  I did, too.

TOM EGAN:  That pretty —

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, 800 I think for me, something like that.

TOM EGAN:  And that would be pretty standard, do you think?

BETTY PFISTER:  There was no such thing as a standard.  It just totally depended on the job you were doing.

TOM EGAN:  Do you think you flew more or less than the average WASP?

BETTY PFISTER:  I have no idea.

TOM EGAN:  No idea.  Now, we talked about the flying.  Some of the people — are there specific people that you remember from that era that stick in your mind?  You mentioned Virginia Wilson, I believe.  Were there others that stick in your mind, and why would they?  Ruth?  People from that era,  maybe a commander or —

BETTY PFISTER:  Did you have a favorite instructor?  I did.  I can’t remember his —

RUTH BROWN:  You did.

BETTY PFISTER:  Yeah.

RUTH BROWN:  I can’t remember who I had.  You’re talking about remembering like instructors, or —

TOM EGAN:  Just anyone who sticks out in your mind from that experience —

RUTH BROWN:  — or somebody training with you.

TOM EGAN:  Yeah.  Any of the above.

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah.  Well, I think of some of the — some of the gals that I knew well stick in my mind.  Like a Sammy Chapin, and —

BETTY PFISTER:  Exactly.  Ellie Folk.

RUTH BROWN:  Ellie Folk.  Of course I knew Ellie before.

BETTY PFISTER:  That’s true.

TOM EGAN:  You both knew these women?

BETTY PFISTER:  No, we had different friends.  I happened to know Sammy, but mostly from after the WASP, I think.  I met her after the WASP.

TOM EGAN:  Did you know each other in the WASP Program?

RUTH BROWN:  No, because you had to train at the same time that —

BETTY PFISTER:  In the same class.

RUTH BROWN:  In the same class.

BETTY PFISTER:  And I was a couple of months ahead of Ruth.

TOM EGAN:  Oh, okay.  Now the other area of being a WASP that we would like to fill in, if we can, is down time.  What did you do at down time, or leave, or — when we talk to a number of the men there’s always a — it seems like there were pranks and jokes and stories about getting in trouble, and that sort of thing.

Were the WASPS — was the WASP Program filled with that sort of thing, too, or you may be a little more sedate and — how would you describe your down time?  Time off.

BETTY PFISTER:  We didn’t have very much.

RUTH BROWN:  I was just going to say the same thing.

BETTY PFISTER:  What was time off?  We had very little.

RUTH BROWN:  We had very little time off.

TOM EGAN:  Were you working seven days a week?

BETTY PFISTER:  Oh, yeah.

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah.

TOM EGAN:  For the entire two years, or a year and eight months, or whatever it was it.

BETTY PFISTER:  Right.

TOM EGAN:  When you did go out for entertainment, what would there — what would you do?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, we might maybe go to the movies, or once I remember going to Sweetwater Lake and just kind of have a chance to swim and relax a little bit.  There was very little time off.

RUTH BROWN:  That’s true.

TOM EGAN:  Were you relieved when December 20, 1944 came about.

BETTY PFISTER:  Oh, anything but.  We were all extremely upset.

TOM EGAN:  Really.

BETTY PFISTER:  We wanted to keep going.

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah.

BETTY PFISTER:  Some of the WASPS even offered to do it for free.

RUTH BROWN:  They got rid of us right away.

TOM EGAN:  What was the reason?  Since you had apparently —

BETTY PFISTER:  They said we were taking the jobs of men who were now back from overseas, and they thought we were taking jobs that the men needed.

TOM EGAN:  How did that make you feel?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, we didn’t think it was — that was the case.  They still had a lot of planes that needed to be ferried.  I don’t know about the training command, how that —

TOM EGAN:  Because that was after D-Day, which would be about 60 years ago tomorrow — 64 years ago tomorrow.  Did that have something to do with — was the war beginning to wind down then?

BETTY PFISTER:  Absolutely.

TOM EGAN:  I mean, for people who don’t know.

RUTH BROWN:  Oh, absolutely.

TOM EGAN:  That was given as the reason for the closing down of the whole WASP Program.  But they’d invested a lot of money in us as far as our training went.  And —

TOM EGAN:  Now, you had said that you were essentially civilians with military —

BETTY PFISTER:  Status.

TOM EGAN:  — status.  Did that make you eligible for the GI Bill, and all of the benefits after?

BETTY PFISTER:  No, we weren’t until 1973 I think, or something like that.  A very small bunch of WASPS, would you call it lobbied for military privileges.  I’d loved to have had the GI Bill.  I’d have gotten a jet rating as fast as I could, and a few things like that, but we were not.

TOM EGAN:  And did that — you were very excited to go in and help the war effort.  Was there any feeling of being pushed aside, or were you upset at the way the end happened?

BETTY PFISTER:  I would say very much so.

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah, I agree.

TOM EGAN:  Was there any recourse?  Did anyone try to make sure that you stayed involved?  Was there ever any thought of that?  It was basically a cut and dry thing at the end.

BETTY PFISTER:  Yes.

RUTH BROWN:  Exactly.

TOM EGAN:  And how did the rest of the pilots that you were working with feel about that?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, I think some of them thought it was — I don’t really know, but I think some of them thought it was very unfair the way the WASP disbandment went ahead, but there was nothing could be done.

TOM EGAN:  Did the program ever get revived in any form that you’re aware of?

BETTY PFISTER:  No.

RUTH BROWN:  No.

TOM EGAN:  And never really any plans to revive a program like that, because now we do have female pilots in the military, if I’m not mistaken.

BETTY PFISTER:  Oh, yeah, you have them in combat, even, today.  It’s — I think it’s optional if they try — try out or request combat training.  But I think if they’re qualified they’re allowed to do almost everything.

TOM EGAN:  Did you feel — do you feel like you were pioneers, or did you just at the time feel like you were doing a job that needed to be done?  Because in reality it would — I’m sure that the women pilots of today would look back on the WASP Program as a pioneering effort for women in the military.

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, I go to some of the reunions, or there’s a big organization, I don’t know if you’ve been to, Ruth.  It’s called Women — Women in Aviation, and they get together every year.  It’s a huge bunch of women in every branch of aviation, and they treat the few WASP who manage to attend like royalty.  We’re all getting on in years, and so anybody who is 70 or 75 today, and says that they were in a WASP — in the WASP Program is not telling the truth, because you had to be 21, I think, minimum in my day, maybe.

RUTH BROWN:  Right.

BETTY PFISTER:  So, everybody is either passed away or is — we’re dropping like flies, and —

TOM EGAN:  Well, that’s why we’re to talk about it.

RUTH BROWN:  There are very few left, right?

BETTY PFISTER:  I think there are something like out of 1,000 total WASPS, there — these are kind of round figures, there are something like 350 left alive.  And some of them are not physically able to travel, or go to a reunion.  And I think some have no interest in it.  But most still love to see their old classmates and tell stories together.

TOM EGAN:  Now, you were in the whole atmosphere of the military and the war.  After that December 20, 1944 end of the WASP Program, did you have trouble readjusting to civilian life?  Did you find you were really ready to do things, and they kind of cut you off?  I mean, we’ve talked to a number of the male veterans and a number of them had trouble readjusting.  They had been in combat, however.

So, did you have that same readjustment issue, or was it may be easier for you?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, a great many of the WASPS either were about to be married, or got married during the program, and so they started having families and raising babies, and that took a lot of the time then

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah.

BETTY PFISTER:  And it was almost impossible for a woman to get a pilot’s job.  I know because a small bunch of us wanted to stay in aviation.  In fact, not such a small bunch; I think a lot of the WASPS wanted to stay in aviation, and very few were able to get jobs.

I started flying for non-scheduled airlines, and I can still remember I was being paid $3.00 an hour, and lucky to — and I loved my job, and lucky to — and the pilot I flew with would be getting $5.00 an hour, so the prices sound pretty funny today comparing.

TOM EGAN:  Well, and the difference — the difference would be 80 percent difference in pay.  That must have had an effect on the psyche of the WASP after you left the program.  You did all of this effort for the war — you put all of this effort into the war effort, and then after the end of it, it almost seems in retrospect, and I’m speaking from not having been there like you were, just, “Thanks for your help.  See you later,” and that doesn’t seem fair.  Did you feel that way?

BETTY PFISTER:  No, I don’t think — I think we

were —

RUTH BROWN:  Well, the only thing was, remember we had trouble with — I’ve forgotten what you call it, but you know with this — the financial status of what we were on, when you felt like you were just kind of tossed aside and good-bye.

BETTY PFISTER:  That’s true.

TOM EGAN:  I’m sure that the women in today’s military look back and thank you for that.  And you mentioned at reunions  you get that.  What sort of response do you get from women pilots that are in the military today?  Are they — do they ask you questions?  Are they afraid to talk to you, or?

BETTY PFISTER:  Oh, anything but afraid.  They’re — at least my feeling has been, I don’t know, I’ve probably been to more of the reunions, I think.

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah, you have.  I haven’t.

BETTY PFISTER:  But I’ve kept up my interest in aviation, and these women that are in the military today they just treat us beautifully.  In fact they want our autographs, and they — we have a booth in the exhibit hall at these big conventions and they really feel that the WASP Program broke the path for what they’re doing today.

Of course we look at what they’re doing today and think that’s terrific.

TOM EGAN:  Yeah.  Now, you’ve stated — you just mentioned you’ve stayed active in aviation.  Ruth, have you also remained active as a pilot?

RUTH BROWN:  No, I haven’t.

TOM EGAN:  When was the last time that you were actively flying?

RUTH BROWN:  Actively flying?  Well, when I left the WASP I didn’t fly after that.

TOM EGAN:  Really.  Did you have a desire to?  You had mentioned earlier you didn’t really like flying when you started.

RUTH BROWN:  I liked flying all right, but I wasn’t — wasn’t eager to continue with it.

TOM EGAN:  But you were, Betty.

BETTY PFISTER:  I was, and actually both of us had husbands who were pilots.

RUTH BROWN:  Right.

BETTY PFISTER:  And so my husband was a salesman, and he had to travel all over.  And after we got married and moved to Aspen I remember the very first trip after we were married. Art had a baby blue Cadillac and used to be gone two or three weeks at a time, and then come back here and spend some time in Aspen between trips.

But I didn’t like driving.  I still don’t today.  That’s stayed constant, and I had two airplanes when we got married.  One was not such a — well, I thought it was a wonderful airplane.  It’s in the Air & Space Museum today.

TOM EGAN:  The actual plane?

BETTY PFISTER:  I had to — I gave it to them.  I loaned it for a while, and they don’t like loans, so it’s on donation.

TOM EGAN:  What kind of plane was that?

BETTY PFISTER:  A P-39 Airacobra, a little fighter plane that I just adored.  But, anyway.

TOM EGAN:  You said you had a second one as well.

BETTY PFISTER:  The second one was a Navion, which wasn’t a very good airplane.  In fact it was terrible here in the mountains.  It didn’t have any power at all, and finally one day we tried to go to Gunnison, which isn’t that far, and we couldn’t get over the hills to Gunnison.  We had to come back and land.

But anyway, he had — my husband had flown the Hump during the War.

TOM EGAN:  Which is Burma.

BETTY PFISTER:  China-Burma-India Theater; and he did that for quite some time.  And he was also training — I remember he trained a lot of Chinese Cadets, which was interesting because most of them didn’t speak English, and he had some experiences, too.

But after we got married he was — the very first trip — we put the suitcases in the car and we started to drive past the Aspen Airport, and gosh this is 60 years ago, I guess, or 50 years ago.  Anyway it’s a long time.

And I asked him where he was going.  And he said well, we’re going to wherever it was, Wichita or something.  That was about an eight or ten hour flight with a couple of fuel stops.

And I said, “Well, I forgot to tell you.  I don’t like driving, and my airplane is sitting right here and I think we should take it.”

And everything was in my favor.  There wasn’t one cloud between here and Wichita.  And Art was open-minded enough to say he’d try it, and it took something like — I don’t know, two or three hours nonstop.  It was a lot easier, and that got him back into flying again.

TOM EGAN:  Now, had you met your husbands during the war, or before, or after?  When did that happen, since they were also pilots?  Ruth?

RUTH BROWN:  I knew my husband.  We grew up together in Denver, but he had married somebody else and had raised a family.  And so I really didn’t see much of him in those immediate days.  But then after the war is when we got together again, and he had divorced his wife, and then he and I got married.

TOM EGAN:  When was that?

RUTH BROWN:  In 1947.

TOM EGAN:  And for those in the Aspen area it was — Darcy Brown was your husband.

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah.

TOM EGAN:  I worked for him.

RUTH BROWN:  You did?

TOM EGAN:  In the ’70’s, yeah.  And I always appreciated the fact that he waited in line just like everyone else for a hamburger at the Sun Deck.

Anyway.  And, Betty, when did — did you know Art before, or during the war, or was afterwards?

BETTY PFISTER:  Afterwards.

TOM EGAN:  Uh-huh.  And you said that he was flying in the war.  Did flying become the way you met, or how did —

BETTY PFISTER:  Oh, no.

TOM EGAN:  — what brought you to Aspen?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, I was — somebody had told my parents that this one airplane I had was very dangerous, and they were getting upset about my flying it anymore.  And then I got a job, because it was so hard to get a flying job, at Saks Fifth Avenue in the ski shop.  And it was the first year that Aspen opened the first lift.  I think it was 1946 or something like that.

TOM EGAN:  ’46, in December, yeah.

RUTH BROWN:  Something like that.

BETTY PFISTER:  And I would ask all these ladies that I was zipping into their fancy new ski outfits, and I would say, “Where are you going?”  And about two out of three said, “Oh, we’re going to Aspen, Colorado.”

TOM EGAN:  And this was in New York Saks Fifth Avenue.

BETTY PFISTER:  In New York.  I didn’t work there very long.  I was one of those Christmas sales ladies that — at least we could wear ski clothes when we worked as opposed to everywhere else in the shop.  They had to wear their little black dresses, and their pearls, and.

TOM EGAN:  Did you already ski?

BETTY PFISTER:  Yes, I had skied quite a bit when I was at Bennington College.  And I had been to South America with the Dartmouth Ski Team, and I skied very fast.  I was never a good skier, but I went like hell.

TOM EGAN:  Which in racing is the key, right?  So you met Art.

BETTY PFISTER:  I met him here in the lift line.  He and a friend of his — do you want this story?

TOM EGAN:  Sure.

BETTY PFISTER:  I think I’m talking too much.

RUTH BROWN:  Go ahead.

TOM EGAN:  No, no, no.

BETTY PFISTER:  They wore — there was only one — two lifts I guess we had, Lift One, and then Midway, and the Lift Two.  And Lift One everybody would be in line to go up the lift.

TOM EGAN:  And it was a single chair.

BETTY PFISTER:  And it was a single chair.  And he and a friend of his were wearing little cardboard signs around their neck that day, and it said, “We are the 2281 Club, and if you think we’re attractive we are available.”  And I thought they were both kind of attractive, but one a little more, that was Art, a little more than the other.

And the 2281 was his phone number, because we only had four digits in the phone those days in Aspen.  He was building a house here.  So that’s how we met.  And it took us —

TOM EGAN:  A sign around his neck.

BETTY PFISTER:  Really true.  But it took us about six years of casual dating and skiing together, and partying together to decide to get married.

TOM EGAN:  Now, flying-wise, you’ve continued to fly, as you said.  Do you still fly?

BETTY PFISTER:  No, I gave up my helicopter, which was the true love of my aviation experience, and I — I don’t know, 15 years ago, probably.  I am absolutely certain that you have to fly a lot or it isn’t safe to be a pilot.

RUTH BROWN:  How true.

BETTY PFISTER:  It was also getting very expensive.

TOM EGAN:  As I think everything is.  For those in the future, 2008 was expensive.  They’ll probably laugh at that.

Did the experience in the WASPS — in the WASP Program change your attitude about, and I’ll throw these words out:  Did it change it about war?  And I know you were in the United States, but certainly you must have been touched by what was going on overseas.

Ruth, did it change your attitude about war, or did you really just do a job and not think about it too much.

RUTH BROWN:  I didn’t think about it too much.

TOM EGAN:  Did it change your attitude, or did you have an attitude to change?

BETTY PFISTER:  I was too busy to even think about it, I guess.

RUTH BROWN:  Think about it.

TOM EGAN:  Which, amazingly is the answer we get a lot from the veterans.  Did it change your attitude about anything, really, about America, about other countries, about society?

RUTH BROWN:  Not really.

TOM EGAN:  No?

BETTY PFISTER:  I’d agree.

TOM EGAN:  Yeah.  What would be the most memorable thing you took away from the WASP Program would you think; a feeling of accomplishment, disappointment that it was over when you look back at those times.

BETTY PFISTER:  Both of the above, I would say.

TOM EGAN:  When you look back at those times what jumps out at you from that — from that time in your life?  Any one thing?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, my brother was killed when I was in the middle WASP training.  He was a Navy pilot and flying off a carrier.  He was 21 years old, and the catapult failed to work and the ship ran over them, and so that had a very personal consequence.  My family had a big conference and decided I could continue my flight.  I was right in the middle of my basic training when that happened.

RUTH BROWN:  Oh.

BETTY PFISTER:  But, that colored my life.

TOM EGAN:  But not so much directly from the WASP Program as the war itself.

BETTY PFISTER:  Exactly.  But a great many of the WASPS were married when they went in the WASP, and some got married during the WASP Program, and a lot of the their husbands were killed overseas.  I say a lot, but for a small group such as ours it had a definite — one of my bay mates was killed.  I was — I roomed with a Chinese girl.  There were two Chinese women, I think, in the program, and her name was Hazel Lee, and she was a very, very close friend during WASP days.  And she was up at Romulus, Michigan, I think, and coming in to land and another plane landed on top of her or something.  It was pretty traumatic.

TOM EGAN:  Now since the WASP experience, what organizations — you had mentioned, Betty, earlier that you go to some of the reunions.  The 99’s is another group?  Is that a women’s pilot group, am I correct?

BETTY PFISTER:  Yes, it’s a huge group.  I would — certainly the biggest group of women pilots today —

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah, I think so.

BETTY PFISTER:  — are members of the 99.  I think it’s 5- or 6,000 women all over the world.  They have chapters in India and —

TOM EGAN:  And you were — were you a charter member of that group?

BETTY PFISTER:  Oh, no, heavens no.

TOM EGAN:  How long has been going on?  Because you were a member, am I correct?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, I’ve just kept up my membership.  I pay a very minimal dues, and I don’t go to any of their meetings because I wouldn’t — there’s a chapter– or two of them in Denver, and Colorado Springs, but I don’t know any of those ladies.

RUTH BROWN:  How many are in the 99, do you know?

BETTY PFISTER:  I’m guessing around 5,000 or something.

RUTH BROWN:  Oh, Lord, that is large.

BETTY PFISTER:  And — the WASP is the only program that I’m aware of where we’re losing members all the time with no replacements, obviously, as we die off.  Where the 99’s, any 16-year-old, or 18-year-old with a pilot’s license can join the 99’s.  And they have women pilots of all ages.  I don’t know what the minimum age is today, I think it’s 18.  It might be 16 — up to that.

RUTH BROWN:  I don’t know.  I’ve never kept track of it.

BETTY PFISTER:  They have women in their ’70’s or 80’s who would be in the minority.  Most of them are probably in their 40’s and 50’s, and actively flying today.

TOM EGAN:  Before you finished flying how many hours would you say you had?

BETTY PFISTER:  I’m not sure.  I kept keeping — stopped keeping a log book after a while, but I think I had up in the 1,000’s anyway.

TOM EGAN:  Did you ever want to fly commercially once you got out of the WASP Program?  You had mentioned you were

co-piloting for $3.00 an hour.

BETTY PFISTER:  Oh, yes, I’d have flown.  I couldn’t get on a scheduled airline.  In fact there’s a woman in Denver who I think was one of the very earliest women pilots, on airline pilots.  I’ve forgotten her name right now, but — I can’t think of her name, but I would have welcomed a job in United Airlines’ right seat.  I would have thought that was wonderful, but it wasn’t happening.  I was lucky to get a job on this non-scheduled airline.

TOM EGAN:  How long did you do that?

BETTY PFISTER:  As long as I could find work.

TOM EGAN:  Let’s talk about Aspen for a few minutes, if we can.  When did you come to Aspen for the first time?

RUTH BROWN:  In 1945.

TOM EGAN:  ’45; is that when you moved here?

RUTH BROWN:  Yeah.

TOM EGAN:  So, you’ve lived in Aspen since then.

RUTH BROWN:  All the way.

TOM EGAN:  Even before the first lift.

RUTH BROWN:  That’s right.

TOM EGAN:  This is a question that can probably take hours and hours to answer, but what would you consider the biggest changes in Aspen since you’ve been here?  And I realize that’s such an open ended question.  Besides the real estate prices, what would you consider some the biggest changes you’ve seen here?

RUTH BROWN:  Well, just the obvious.  The big — the big change is that it’s — when I first knew it, it started out as a little mining camp, as it were, and has grown into a metropolis traffic wise, building wise, et cetera, et cetera.

TOM EGAN:  Now do you — I’m going to assume you ski, or have skied.

RUTH BROWN:  I have skied.

TOM EGAN:  Do you ski at this point?

RUTH BROWN:  No, I don’t.

TOM EGAN:  Was that something that was a big part of your life, obviously your husband being the CEO of the Ski Corps.

RUTH BROWN:  It was.

TOM EGAN:  Then the Ski Company.

RUTH BROWN:  Obviously.  I wasn’t a great skier, but I enjoyed skiing, and skied a lot for fun.

TOM EGAN:  And in Aspen, do you think Aspen remains a ski town, or do you think it’s become something else?

RUTH BROWN:  I think it’s become something else.  I think it’s a glitter pad.

TOM EGAN:  Do you like that?

RUTH BROWN:  No.

TOM EGAN:  What are your feelings, Betty?  You’ve been here — you moved here in right after the war, as well.

BETTY PFISTER:  Full time in ’54.

TOM EGAN:  ’54.  Quite a bit different from then till now.

BETTY PFISTER:  I go along with Ruthie’s answers, too.  It’s just become so fashionable as a ski resort that it’s changed a lot of the life for those of us who live here full time and consider this home.  It’s very, very different.

And there’s a lot of changes and a few things I think are good, but I hate a lot of the new architecture and what they’ve done to the downtown area, and they seem to be destroying even more of the landscape every time I look around.

TOM EGAN:  When Aspen started naming runs, and cutting runs, one of them is now named Ruthie’s Run.

RUTH BROWN:  Right.

TOM EGAN:  And you are the Ruthie.

RUTH BROWN:  That’s right.

TOM EGAN:  How did that come about, and were you happy about it, or —

RUTH BROWN:  Just because I offered to pay for it.

TOM EGAN:  So you had to pay for your own run.  And your husband was the CEO.  That doesn’t seem quite fair.

RUTH BROWN:  No, I offered.  I thought that we needed another way off the mountain other than what they had, because there were — Roche Run was a little more difficult than I cared about.  And then the next thing was, of course that was a race run, and the trails that they had, at that point, cut off of Aspen Mountain were really not for the — I’m not going to say beginners but intermediate skiers.  And so I thought that we needed something that was more intermediate and pleasant to come down.

Well, that was my idea and I went to Walter Paepcke and suggested the idea, and said that I’d be willing to finance it to a degree to get it started.  And he agreed also.  He wasn’t a skier, but he knew the thought, and so they proceeded to cut Ruthie’s Run, and then he insisted it be called Ruthie’s Run.

And I’ll never forget the day that it opened for the first time.  It was a snowy, blizzardy day, and I had to open it for them, help them open it.  So we went to the top of the mountain and stood in there freezing to death waiting for this great big opening.  And finally when it came I had to lead off the troop coming down the mountain, and people like Fred Iselin, and those Stein Eric’s, and those big skiers, were behind me coming down the mountain.

Well, as I told you I wasn’t a real fast skier, or a good skier, but just intermediate, so they had to plow their way down the mountain with me to officially open Ruthie’s Run.

TOM EGAN:  And was the skiing good that day?

RUTH BROWN:  Was it good that day?

TOM EGAN:  Yeah.

RUTH BROWN:  It was — no.  It was terrible.  It was

— I mean it was deep powder, and blizzardy conditions.  It wasn’t good in my line, anyway.

TOM EGAN:  How much did it cost?  How much did a run cost back then, do you remember?  I’m assuming it was just for the clearing of the run, the timber and brush.

RUTH BROWN:  Right.  I’d say somewhere around 9,000.

TOM EGAN:  Uh-huh.  In skiing in your skiing career here, Betty, are there any particular times or events that stick out in your mind?

BETTY PFISTER:  Not really.

TOM EGAN:  Now, you live at the base of Tiehack.

BETTY PFISTER:  Uh-huh.

TOM EGAN:  When — were you living there when — before Buttermilk opened?

BETTY PFISTER:  Yes.  When we got married we had — our first house was over near the Castle Creek Bridge, and then we were building the house that we live in today.  We’ve been in it over 50 years, and that’s about —

TOM EGAN:  Since it was before Buttermilk opened, did you and your husband have a hand in opening Buttermilk?

BETTY PFISTER:  Very much so.  My husband and Friedl Pfeiffer had some adjoining land, and we felt that Little Nell was okay, but it was enough to terrify most beginning adults, and quite a few children, even, and that we needed more of a beginner’s area, a beginner and intermediate area.  Aspen skiing was getting to be very fashionable and very popular.

So Friedl and Art got together and — and I think it was the same year that Highlands opened.  I’m not sure, but I think so.

TOM EGAN:  I believe it was in ’58.

BETTY PFISTER:  Something like that.

TOM EGAN:  Uh-huh.

BETTY PFISTER:  And they started Buttermilk, and all I can remember is we had a — I’m trying to think of the name of it, a restaurant that was a hyper bough — I won’t even try on that one, but anyway it was very unusual.  And Friedl and Art had one of their frequent disagreements about whether to keep Buttermilk open for Thanksgiving that year, I think it was the second year it open, maybe the first.  And all I can remember is Art got his way for once.  Friedl was pretty hardheaded, too, and they would disagree on quite a few things.  They were unlikely partners, I think.

But at any rate, I still remember we took — we had three little girls at that point, and we took the kids and put them in the airplane and went to Wisconsin to see Art’s family at Thanksgiving, Art having won the argument here about shutting down Buttermilk because it wouldn’t — there wouldn’t be enough business to warrant keeping it open.

So, I remember Art had a cast on his leg because we — his mom’s house only had one telephone and it was downstairs, and we had all just gone to bed, and the phone rang.  I don’t know what time it was, nine or ten at night, but his mom called and said, “It’s for you, Art.”

And he said, “Oh, I can’t come downstairs again with this cast on.”  It was very steep stairs.  And she said, “You know, they say it’s really important.  It’s a very super important phone call.”  And we had all three kids with us, and what else could be very important, I thought.

But I remember — of course I, being so curious, went downstairs with Art and he was clumping away with his cast.  And I heard him say, “Jesus Christ, Friedl, really?  Oh, my gosh.”  And it went on like that for a couple of — “What?  The whole damn thing went?”  And the whole place had blown up, the whole restaurant had a — and if it — there had been skiers there it could have been very disastrous.  But we felt it was a good thing Art had won that argument.  Nobody — I mean the — all the equipment was out in the parking lot, and.

TOM EGAN:  And that was that original restaurant with kind of parabolic roof.

BETTY PFISTER:  That’s hyperbolic, or —

TOM EGAN:  Or hyperbolic —

BETTY PFISTER:  — paraboloid or something.

TOM EGAN:  Yeah.

BETTY PFISTER:  That’s what I was trying to say.

TOM EGAN:  We’ve got some photos at the Society.

Now speaking of photos — one more thing.  Obviously at some point the Ski Corps, I believe it was the Ski Corps at that point, became the Ski Company later, bought Buttermilk.  So you two must have gotten to know each other a bit at that point, or at least your husbands were working together.

What was the dynamic at that point in town, the Ski Company being the big corporation; Buttermilk being kind of the new upstart?  Was that how it was — that’s how it’s perceived in historical memory.  Is that how you remember it?

BETTY PFISTER:  No, I remember —

RUTH BROWN:  Do you remember it?

BETTY PFISTER:  I remember Buttermilk as being a great teaching area.

TOM EGAN:  Which it still is.

BETTY PFISTER:  And — as opposed to Little Nell was the only other option at that point.  And I — Highlands was a separate company, too, and then — you probably know more of the ski company history than I do.

But I don’t know when it became where you could buy a lift pass that was good on all four lifts is relatively recently, wasn’t it?  First — for quite a while it was Buttermilk and Aspen Mountain.

RUTH BROWN:  I’ve really forgotten.

BETTY PFISTER:  Yeah, I’ve forgotten it.

TOM EGAN:  Yeah.  I think originally they were separate companies, and then —

BETTY PFISTER:  They merged.

TOM EGAN:  And then the Ski Company bought Buttermilk, and merged and ultimately it’s all four, now.

BETTY PFISTER:  Uh-huh.

TOM EGAN:  One other thing I wanted to ask you about before I — we look at these photos is people in Aspen today may not be aware, but the Maroon Creek Club is — you’ve got a pretty strong connection to that, at least historically; is that right?

BETTY PFISTER:  Well, we sold a lot of our ranch to the people that developed the golf course at Maroon Creek.  And my husband loved to play golf.  I’ve never been a golfer.  I took it up once and took a few lessons and didn’t like anything about it.

But anyway, that’s — that was part of our ranch for a long time.

TOM EGAN:  Now, you’ve brought in a couple of photos, and I wanted to just hold them up and we’ll probably get better shots later, but this is — this is you, Ruth, I assume?

BETTY PFISTER:  No, that was me.

TOM EGAN:  Oh, is that — is this you?  Okay.  Now, do you remember when this was taken?

BETTY PFISTER:  It was during the WASP.  We all had our new uniforms and everybody — I think it was taken at Wilmington, Delaware or — I’m not sure.  It was in a scrapbook that somebody —

TOM EGAN:  And then this one is also you in front

of —

BETTY PFISTER:  An airplane, just somebody’s plane here at the Aspen Airport.  It was taken for some story written about me.  I don’t know — it’s not my plane, but it was posed that way.

TOM EGAN:  And is there anything else you’d like to add, keeping in mind again that there’ll be people in the future looking at this, trying to get a sense of not just the war, but in this particular case the WASP Program.  Have we skipped something that you’d like to add about that time that you can think of?

Again, picturing someone looking at this in 50 years trying to get a feel, a sense of how important and what the WASP Program was like.  I think you’ve given us a good feel, but is there anything you can think of, humorous memories, or anything else that would kind of round out the description.

RUTH BROWN:  You got anything, Betty?

BETTY PFISTER:  No, I think I’ve been doing most of the talking here.

RUTH BROWN:  No, I don’t think there’s anything in particular.

TOM EGAN:  Well, I have a couple of our buttons that we want to give from the Roaring Fork Veteran’s History Project.

Wear with pride, if you will.

RUTH BROWN:  Thank you.

TOM EGAN:  Or stow away with pride.

BETTY PFISTER:  Thank you.

RUTH BROWN:  Thank you.

TOM EGAN:  Thank you so much for joining us today, and we hope to see you around campus, as they say.

RUTH BROWN:  Good.

TOM EGAN:  All right.

BETTY PFISTER:  Thank you.

RUTH BROWN:  Thank you very much.

TOM EGAN:  Thank you Betty.  Thank you Ruth.

RUTH BROWN:  Thank you.

TOM EGAN:  You bet.