There were animals to feed, books to read, talent shows, church activities and outdoor adventures.ĭuring the Great Depression, Mabel’s mother supported their family with her rural schoolteacher’s salary. Mabel helped her mother with the gardening, housework, sewing, cooking and baking.
In 1925, at age 8, she and her family moved near Blackstone, Nottoway County, Virginia, where they lived a simple rural life down a red clay country road called Cellar Creek Road. Mabel was born in 1917 in a pine tree forest in Greenwood, near Dover, Delaware. Her brothers and sisters never stopped missing Mabel’s smiles, thoughtfulness and fun-loving enthusiasm Mabel’s vitality seemed so absent from all family gatherings in the 60 years since she died. Her parents and many friends suffered such loss when Mabel died at just age 26. Mabel Rawlinson was a college graduate, a lovely, lively and witty young woman, a pilot, and a heroine, who sacrificed her life while serving her country in World War II. Mabel Rawlinson was one of the 38 WASP who would die during the war, many from plane mechanical failures.
Training location: Houston Municipal Airport (Tex.) and Avenger Field (Sweetwater, Tex.)Īssigned bases: New Castle Army Air Base (Wilmington, Del.) Graduated: Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas, July 3, 1943
Entered Army Air Force flight training: Houston Municipal Airport, Houston, Texas, January 15, 1943
