HER WWII DREAMS TAKE FLIGHT AGAIN.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

The boys in class took right to it - the old vets stopping by to talk about how much this World War II Memorial being dedicated in Washington, D.C., later this month means to their generation.

But the girls - they just stared off into space.

``They couldn't relate to these men,'' said Bob Alvis, who had arranged for the vets to visit schools in his Lancaster and Palmdale area to reach and teach the younger generation about the importance of the memorial.

``The girls just weren't that interested, though.''

Then 79-year-old Flora Belle Reece walked into their classrooms one day, and it all changed.

``They came alive when this woman started talking about how she wasn't much older than they were when she left home at 18 to serve her country in World War II,'' Alvis said.

``The girls weren't staring off into space anymore.''

She was the daughter of a preacher, growing up on an Oklahoma farm. But it wasn't the land that held Flora Belle Smith's dreams. It was the sky.

``We lived by a river, and I'd sit for hours watching the birds soar and glide, and do all their antics in the air. I fell in love with that sense of freedom they had up there.''

Her family didn't own a car, but that didn't matter, she told the class. She didn't want to drive when she turned 16. She wanted to fly.

``I was taking flying lessons at a little airport near our farm when I opened a Life magazine one day and saw a picture of a young girl in pigtails about my age sitting on the wing of a military plane.

``Right away, I knew I wanted to be her,'' Flora Belle told the girls.

The girl in the picture was in training to become a WASP - a Women Airforce Service Pilot. Their job was to fill in stateside for male pilots so they could be freed up for combat flying overseas from November 1943 to December 1944.

All a girl needed to join the WASP training program was 35 hours of flying experience. Flora Belle had that. Six months later, she was one of 1,018 young women in this country who became WASPs during World War II.

They ferried new planes from factories to military bases, made mail runs to bases all over the country and towed targets for male pilots and gunners in training to shoot at.

But her real flying dream was to take to the skies in one of those sleek P-38 Fighters winning the war for us in air-to-air combat missions in the South Pacific.

Planes like the one that ace fighter pilot Richard Bong landed at her base one day in late 1944 on his way around the country for a war bond drive.

Flora Belle walked over and asked the crew chief - begged, really - to let her sit in the cockpit of this famous fighter plane for just a few minutes.

``I sat there dreaming that someday I was going to fly in one of these planes,'' she told the girls.

It never happened. In December of 1944, the WASPs were disbanded and Flora Belle returned home to marry her childhood sweetheart, Richard Reece. They had three children, and she went on to have a career as a schoolteacher.

But she never forgot that dream, Flora Belle told the girls. Don't forget yours.

Bob Alvis watched from the back of the classroom as the girls surrounded Flora Belle after her talk - thanking her and saying they never knew about the WASPs and the contributions women, like her, made during World War II.

Alvis smiled and made a mental note to himself to call a couple of his pals when he got home. Flora Belle knew him for all his efforts on behalf of the World War II Memorial, but she didn't know about the other hat he wore as a representative of the P-38 National Association.

This woman had just done him a huge favor by reaching those girls in class staring out into space - the least he could do for her was make an old dream of hers from 60 years ago finally come true.

Next Tuesday, April 20, marks the 60th anniversary of the delivery of the 5,000th P-38 built in 1944 at Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank, where Dorothy Alvis - Bob's mother - was one of the Rosie the Riveters working on the aircraft.

There are only five P-38s still flying. After World War II ended, most of them were sold off as scrap because the country was sick of war and didn't need any reminders hanging around, like old P-38s, Alvis says.

One of the fighters that survived is coming home to Bob Hope Airport Tuesday. It should touch down around 1 p.m., then taxi over to Mercury Air Center, 10750 Sherman Way, for a little celebration.

If you're in the neighborhood, stop by to see the historic military fighter and meet the pilot, Steve Hinton.

And say hi to the woman who will be sitting in the tiny cockpit right behind him - Flora Belle Reece.

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

(1 -- 2) Flora Belle Reece, 79, was a member of the the Women Airforce Service Pilots in the 1940s, but never had the chance to fly a fighter plane. At left, she holds a photo of herself from her aviator days. Above, she sits in the cockpit of a P-38 Fighter in 1943 alongside WASP flier Dorothy Allen at Foster Field in Victoria, Texas.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer