From Director Matia Karrell: Why Crowd Funding for FlyGirls; Why Your Participation Matters.
Over 20 years ago, I began my research for FlyGirls. It's gone through many forms, first a film script - people told me no one would ever watch a film with only women - to a play performed in Provincetown, Cape Cod, which featured Bee Haydu, 44-7, making a grand entrance in her original uniform at the end - to what is now an epic Mini Series.
We begin our story with the first 25 American women that Jackie Cochran recruited to go to England, to serve in the British Auxiliary Transport Authority. Having secured the rights to Pauline Gower's memoir, the woman who was in charge of the woman's division of the ATA, we have her first-hand accounts of what it was like. I am also obtaining the rights to Anne Wood Kelly's diaries: an account of her day to day life flying in the ATA. She was an American pilot that was Jackie Cochran's second in command in the UK.
Additionally we have the rights to Byrd Granger's On Final Approach, which we credit in our trailer. Granger was a WASP, and later a college professor, who collected many of the documents that helped the WASP prove their military status in Congressional hearings during the 70's. On Final Approach recounts the events of 1942-45 on a daily basis.
Over the years of getting to know these women, attending reunions, memorials, the Gold Medal Ceremony, and truly getting to know them as friends, the sense of injustice I feel that the world doesn't know about them has carried me through all of the "No's" all these years. The sense of duty I feel to get their story told - in a way that is true to them.
There are various stages that developing a television mini-series demands: the monies we raise will allow us to start the pre-production process: hiring a writing team, and other pre-production costs. We've come this far with people volunteering their time, and with this much needed start up money, we can continue.
Our primary goal is to remain independent so we can maintain the integrity of this project, by keeping the creative control with us, thus ensuring that we will fulfill the promise I made to Violet Cowden with some of the best TV we have ever seen.
We are ten days away from launching our crowdfunding campaign, on Thursday, October 22nd. Your participation, no matter the amount, shows that we have an audience behind us. It shows there is a demand for this kind of programming. With your help, we can make this project a reality, and bring the story of the first women pilots to fly in the military to the world.
I knew Dr. Byrd Granger as a wonderful English and Folklore (Peoplelore) Professor at the Univ. of Arizona, 1969-1970, and later worked for her in her U of A Office, also caring for her animals and home when she was hospitalized. Nothing ever kept her down for Long, I might add - she had incredible energy and loved to tell a good Story. Later, I worked for her again and was involved in her Peoplelore Seminar. She told me a few stories of her time as a WASP, and on later visits to Arizona told me of her intentions to write On Final Approach. While living in Washington DC I was able to consult files and documents for her that were kept in the Library of Congress. It was a great privilege to be asked to help her out with this Project. Now, it is heart-warming to hear of this series, and to read of the Tributes to her. I look Forward to seeing the program very much.-Charlotte (Cookie) Jacob-Hanson, Tucson, AZ and Bad Soden, Germany.
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