MILITARY WOMEN AVIATORS ORAL HISTORY INITIATIVE Interview No. 6 Participant Edited Transcript Interviewee: Colonel Sally Murphy, United States Army (Retired) Date: July 23, 2019 By: Monica Smith Place: National Air and Space Museum Director’s Conference Room 601 Independence Avenue SW Washington, D.C. 20024 SMITH: My name is Monica Smith. I’m a Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum, consultant in Washington, D.C. Today is July 23, 2019, and I have the pleasure of speaking with Colonel Sally Murphy, United States Army, retired. This interview is being taped as part of the Military Women Aviators Oral History Initiative. It will be archived at the Smithsonian Institution. Welcome, COL Murphy. MURPHY: Thank you. SMITH: Would you please state your full name and your occupation? MURPHY: I was born Sally Dale Stonecipher. I was married for a short period of time, so I was a Woolfolk for a while, and now I’m a Murphy. So it’s Sally D. Murphy. SMITH: And you were in the Army. Can you tell me your dates of service, please? MURPHY: Yes. I joined the Army in 1972, at the end of the year, but reported for duty in January of ʼ73 at the Women’s Army Corps School at Anniston, Alabama, at the time. And so that was January, then. And we did a short course there, and we were sent off to the regular Army branches that were essentially the men’s branches of the Army and were trained. I went to the Military Intelligence Corps. I was supposed to be trained as a cryptographer. So we went out to Fort Huachuca. There were about five women from my class who went into Intelligence. And we went out to Fort Huachuca and we studied there. And everything was changing in the Army at the time. You know, it was — we didn’t know it, but it was a variant of the Women’s Army Corps, you know, they were starting to phase from the women’s separate service, so to speak, into integrating us fully into the Army. It was also the first military intelligence basic courses, so we were in the first classes of that. And so everything seemed new and fresh and whatever. And little did I know, when I was in Fort Huachuca, the Stars and Stripes newspaper had a very small article in it that said that the Army had opened up the field of aviation to women pilots. And I thought: wow, this could be interesting. You know, I’d met my husband1 by then, and we were getting to know each other. And he’d flown in Vietnam. I’d spent all of my college and early adulthood years watching Vietnam on television, and helicopters were a central theme of that video coverage. And I thought: well, you know, everybody seems to fly. I might as well, too. And I applied, and that opened up a whole ʼnother venue. So at Fort Huachuca, I waited. I had to get a flight physical, pass the aptitude test, and all those things. And so I was there for a couple of — three extra months while the Army sorted this out. The Army’s intention was that in the first class, there would be three women, and we were all three going to come from Fort Huachuca, from an Intelligence background. At that time, the Intelligence flew — the Intelligence services flew airplanes, and we did signals and collection, and imagery and all sorts of intelligence operations. But they were on an airplane basis. But at that time also, the Army no longer trained pilots just to be airplane pilots. You had to go through the rotary wing training program 1 Daniel J. Murphy. MWAOHI Interviewee: Colonel Sally Murphy, United States Army (Retired) By: Monica Smith Date: July 23, 2019 first, because that was, and is, and continues to be, the main interest of the Army, is in helicopters. And so they were going to send three of us to that course, and then we go to airplane school, and we’d be three Military Intelligence-rated officers for aviation. And it just turned out that the other two women — one got delayed, and one decided not to go. So that’s why I ended up in the position of where I was the first, and only, woman in that class. It would have been nice if there had been someone who you got along with. It wouldn’t have been helpful at all if you went with somebody who you didn’t get along with, but if it had been another woman in the class, a couple of women, that would have been nicer, I think, better. But as it turns out, it worked out just fine. SMITH: That’s great. Let’s back up a little bit and find out how you got there. MURPHY: Okay. SMITH: So can you tell me where you were born, and — MURPHY: Yes. I was born in Wichita, Kansas. And my father was a textbook [5:00] salesman — schoolbooks. And my mother was a housewife, although she’d been trained as a cosmetologist. And I have an older sister, Susan, who I always pull out and wave at people when they get all overly interested in being the first woman Army aviator and ask about that. I always say, “Yeah, but you should meet my sister, because she’s a lumberjack.” [laughs] She’s not really a lumberjack, but she’s spent all her time in the lumber business and owns some lumber companies and all that. So I guess it was just in our makeup to go out and try new things, you know? SMITH: That’s—alright… MURPHY: We grew up in Prairie Village—Overland Park.2 Went to high school there. SMITH: Okay. MURPHY: I did all of my schooling there. We were fortunate that — in a way, because we didn’t go to the same schools, you know? The suburbs were growing so quickly that — she was a couple of years ahead of me — that she’d go to one high school, and I’d go to the other high school, so it was almost like being an only child, but you had the benefit of having a sibling [laughs] at home. So we grew up, and we grew up in an environment that was very interesting. My mother, if she’d grown up in a different period, would have done wonderful and wild things. She would have aspired to and achieved great heights. But she grew up in a time when opportunities weren’t available to women. And my father and mother both encouraged my sister and I to do whatever we wanted to do. And there was plenty of praise, plenty of boundaries, and we grew up — I think she would tell you also — we grew up in an environment where we never doubted that we could do whatever we wanted to do, because that’s the way we had been raised. When people probe, you know, where I was excluded from things, you know, when I was treated badly and rejected, I can come up with like three, you know? In high school, I couldn’t get in the drafting department. I couldn’t sign up for the drafting courses, because they were closed to men. They didn’t have a women’s golf team, although one of my classmates was the state champion golfer — junior 2 Kansas. 2 MWAOHI Interviewee: Colonel Sally Murphy, United States Army (Retired) By: Monica Smith Date: July 23, 2019 golfer, and — but they didn’t — women couldn’t be on the golf team. And there’s a couple of other little things like that. But I really have to dig. SMITH: Your classmate — I’m sorry, your classmate, who was a woman? MURPHY: Yes, my classmate who was a woman was the Kansas state junior golf champion, but she didn’t have a venue in high school to play, which I thought was maybe the biggest. And then of course, none of the sports were open to women. There weren’t any women’s sports. This was way before Title IX. And so we had the drill team and the cheerleading squad, and that’s about as athletic as the women were in organized high-school activities at the time. And I was a cheerleader, and I enjoyed it. And it was wonderful. Went off to college, to Kansas State College of Pittsburg — Pittsburg, Kansas. It’s now Pittsburg State University, I think. Wonderful education. Joined a sorority that I enjoyed until I outgrew it and met lots of good friends. Had a good education. SMITH: What was your major, your course of--? MURPHY: I majored in history, and I had a minor in library science. They have both served me well. When I finally retired completely from working for a living, I was more a proofreader/editor for this whole company, because no one can write. No one. [laughs] SMITH: Tell me about that. MURPHY: Yeah. So I — you know, it was a good education. It was a good environment. It was Kansas. I mean, it was the ʼ60s. We didn’t have Vietnam protests. We had a whole bunch of men in ROTC. You know, women weren’t allowed, of course. They could be on the drill team, but they weren’t in ROTC. And you know, so we were that throwback, back-woods sort of Kansas stereotypical college, which there were plenty of. They were patriotic and not demonstrating and all that.