Reconnected After 7 Decades
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94-year-old Gloria Saucier of Las Vegas, NV appears on episode #535 of Hometown Heroes, airing August 2-5, 2018. A native of Roselle Park, NJ, Gloria served in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve during World War II.
Gloria at the Women for Military Service in America Memorial. For more photos, visit the Hometown Heroes facebook page.
As you’ll hear on Hometown Heroes, and see in the video below, a 2017 trip to Washington, D.C. with Honor Flight Southern Nevada led to her being reconnected with a friend she hadn’t spoken to in more than seven decades. This episode begins with Gloria’s memories of living through the Great Depression in New Jersey.
“In order to save our home,” you’ll hear her explain. “We had to rent it out and move down to, what you would call today, a ghetto.”
It felt like a hardship at the time, but Gloria looks back and sees powerful perspective developed from the experience of waiting in food lines, or sharing meals with neighbors from a variety of ethnic backgrounds.
“To consider other people in need, to share, to give whatever you can afford to give,” she lists as important values learned through those years of bleak economic conditions, surviving daily alongside people whose names and appearances may have differed, but whose priorities were quite similar. “Basically, we all have the same interests. We’re interested in our families, our health, and we have so much in common.”
Gloria learned to fly at the age of 16.
Listen to Hometown Heroes to understand the origins of her affinity for aviation, and why, as a teenager, she had to travel all the way to Martins Creek, PA for flying lessons. The training cost $10 per hour, with fuel included, and her brother, who was serving in the Navy, sent money home to cover the cost.
“I was too young to drive a car,” you’ll hear her note. “I guess when you’re young, you’re fearless, and you don’t think of these things, but it’s a wonderful feeling to be flying up there.”
Once the United States entered World War II, Gloria was eager to use her pilot prowess in support the war effort.
Gloria in the cockpit in 1940. Her love of flying has never waned.
She had plans to join the WASP program before it was curtailed, and ended up enlisting in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. Boot training at Camp Lejeune, NC presented a rude awakening, thanks to an all-male contingent of drill instructors.
“Most of them were from Guadalcanal,” you’ll hear her explain of these battle-hardened Marines. “They hated the women, and they would tell us, ‘We’re gonna march you to the river,’ and I tell you, we got our feet wet!”
Listen to Gloria’s interview for all the reasons she’s thankful for her opportunity to become a Marine, the lessons she learned that she holds on to today, and why she always lets a “Semper Fi!” fly when she encounters a fellow Marine. You’ll also learn about one particular Marine who serves as an ongoing reminder to Saucier of the price of freedom, and the human cost of war.
Jackie Reindel was the first member of her high school graduating class to be killed during World War II, gunned down by a Japanese sniper on Guadalcanal.
“Jackie was very handsome, great football hero, everybody loved him,” you’ll her explain. “Had he been spared, would he have married the hometown girl? Would he have become a very famous football player? These are things that I think of.”
The “Freedom Wall” at the National World War II Memorial.
Reindel was the subject of a Veterans Day speech Gloria delivered in recent years, and he was on her mind when she visited the National World War II Memorial with Honor Flight Southern Nevada in 2017. The Memorial features the “Freedom Wall,” with more than 4,000 gold stars representing Jackie Reindel and 406,000 other Americans who died while serving in World War II. There were more than 16 million Americans in uniform during the war, but fewer than 22,000 were women Marines. Gloria’s Marine Corps service began in Washington, D.C., where she typed up reports about fighter pilots’ exploits. You’ll hear her recall the emotions that duty could sometimes propel, and the turn of events that triggered her transfer to control tower duty in California, first at MCAS El Toro in Orange County, then at MCAS Miramar in San Diego. Her memories even include two chances to fly with legendary USMC ace and Medal of Honor recipient Joe Foss.
Gloria as a TWA Air Hostess. For more on her flight attendant days, watch the short film, “Change in Flight,” produced by her granddaughter, Alixandra.
She looks back with gratitude as she realizes her two years in the Marines left her with an education, lasting discipline, and more.
“As old as I am, I still carry my shoulders back, and I think that has something to do with boot camp,” she chuckles.
After World War II, she used the G.I. Bill to earn a degree from the University of New Mexico, then found a new outlet for her love of flying: she became an air hostess for TWA. You’ll hear about some of her flight attendant adventures on Hometown Heroes, including a memorable run-in with a reputed mobster, and you can learn more about her TWA days by watching the video below, produced by Gloria’s granddaughter, Alixandra:
As much as she loves flying, Gloria was delighted to take to the skies in April, 2017, flying from Las Vegas to Washington, D.C. with Honor Flight Southern Nevada. She was moved by all the memorials the group had the chance to visit, and honored by the privilege of laying a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Despite some rough weather in our nation’s capital, she enjoyed her Honor Flight experience from start to finish. None of that came as a surprise, but the amazing twist her journey took at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial is one she still struggles to explain.
At the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.
Her Honor Flight guardians bought a book from the Women’s Memorial gift shop that they thought Gloria would enjoy. Little did they realize that the author, Bee Falk Haydu, was a friend of Gloria’s nearly 80 years earlier.
“We had the same flight instructors,” you’ll hear Saucier explain. “We knew each other quite well. She went on to become very famous.”
The book, Letters Home, details Bee’s pioneering work as a WASP during World War II, as well as her efforts in later years to secure veterans’ benefits for surviving WASPs. Gloria had lost touch with Bee after their flight training, and was amazed to learn of all her accomplishments. A bigger thrill came when she learned Bee was still living, and the two connected on the telephone, speaking for the first time in more than 75 years. Watch the brief video below for more on that “small world surprise.”
Saucier is hoping she and Bee will have a chance to meet up in person, and promises to let us know when their amazing story of reconnection experiences its next chapter.
“I think the Good Lord works in many mysterious ways, and I think I have a lot of little angels around me,” you’ll hear her reflect. “It’s hard to believe that this all has happened because of the Honor Flight.”
