Pauline "Polly" C. White

Polly learned about the WASPs (Women Army Service Pilots) from a friend and went to speak with Jacqueline Cochran about joining. She was accepted into the program and went through training at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, TX. She worked as a WASP until they were disbanded at the end of WWII.

During the war, Polly met John White at a party in Washington; she mentioned that she and some friends had just bought a small sailboat. John and his friends offered to help them work on it, and this was beginning of a lifelong love of sailing for both of them.

In 1946, Polly married John White and moved to New Brunswick, NJ while John was in graduate school at Rutgers University. After John was awarded his PhD in Physiology, they moved to Lawyers Hill in Elkridge, MD to raise their three children.

Polly and John were avid sailors. They sailed the Chesapeake Bay while their children were growing up. After their retirement, they regularly took their boat up and down he inland waterway between Maryland and Florida. They also sailed their boat to Puerto Rico and back in the early 1970's.

Polly and John also loved to travel. John was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1958, which took them to live in Heidelberg, Germany for 4 months and near Liege, Belgium for 4 months.

After retirement, they traveled extensively around the world. They spent multiple months a freighter and visited China three times, once a decade, until 2005.

John passed away in 2009 while they were living in Florida and several years later, Polly moved back to Baltimore to be near her children.

At the age of 91, Polly parasailed for charity in Florida; a video of the event is on You Tube if you search for "91 year old parasails".

Polly had many accomplishments in her life. In 2010, she and the other WASPs were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in Washington, DC. In 2016, she and a Tuskegee Airman pinned the bars on the uniform of Staycee Harris when she was promoted to be the first female African American Lieutenant General in the Air Force. In 2017, she and others who broke barriers in military service were honored at a concert held at Andrews Air Force base.

Polly will lovingly be remembered by her children; Barbara "Bobbie" Miyasaki, John "Jack" White IV and his wife Martha "Marty" White, and Richard "Dick" White and his wife Leslie White; her grandchildren; Alan K. Miyasaki and his wife Christine Miyasaki, Lisa S. Miyasaki, Andrea Miyasaki Collier and her husband Tom Collier, John "Josh" White, and Christine White; and her great grandchildren; Aaron Miyasaki, Andrew Miyasaki, Olivia Miyasaki, and Lillian Collier. She was preceded in death by her husband John White, III.

Funeral services are being planned for a later date, where she will be interred in Arlington National Cemetery with her husband. In lieu of flowers, her family is requesting that donations be made in her honor to the WASP museum (https://waspmuseum.org/).