‘Leap and Hope You Grow Wings’: WWII Woman Aviator Speaks About Her Journey

Alyce Stevens Rohrer is one of the few living Women Air Service Pilots of WWII. Rohrer grew up impoverished with two brothers and two sisters in Provo, Utah, squished into a two-bedroom home on a tiny farm. Everyone worked the farm as soon as they could walk. 

“I knew I wanted more,” she told me. “I wanted freedom. As a little girl I would work the fields and watch a plane fly over. The first time I saw one I lit up. I knew I would be a pilot one day, and no one could stop me.”