Patricia Kenworthy Nuckols

Kenworthy enlisted in the WASP program during World War II despite falling short of the requirement that pilots have a height of five feet two inches (1.57 m).[2] She managed to pass muster by "standing up exceedingly straight and generally brazening it out."[2] She claimed to be five feet two-and-a-half inches and, training in the back seat of a Steerman, she used three pillows to see over the training pilot in the front seat.[2] She was one of 1,800 women who were accepted into the WASP program.[2] She was assigned to the Blytheville Army Air Field.[3]

The WASP pilots were not recognized as military pilots until the 1970s.[2] In 2010, Nuckols and approximately 200 other WASP pilots received the Congressional Gold Medal for their wartime service.[4] The Vermont Legislature also passed a resolution honoring Nuckols for "her extraordinary military service as a World War II flying WASP."[5]

Kenworthy was also a star field hockey player. In November 1940, she was selected as a first-team left back on the All-America women's field hockey team.[6] She was also selected as a reserve player on the 1939 All-America team and as a first-team All-American in 1941.[7][8]

She resumed playing field hockey as a center halfback after the war and traveled to Europe in 1948 as part of the U.S. national team.[9][10] In 1988, she became one of the charter inductees into the USA Field Hockey Hall of Fame.[11]

Kenworthy Nuckols was born on June 21, 1921, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1][12] She was married in 1948 to E. Marshall Nuckols,[13] who became a senior executive at Campbell Soup Company.[14] She died in Manchester, Vermont, on January 17, 2022, at the age of 100.[12]