By Christopher Hoffman A version of this article has appeared in
The Huffington Post. It is in the light of the Pentagon’s lift
of the band on women serving in combat that we acknowledge March
21st, 2013 as the seventieth anniversary of the death of
Cornelia Fort, the first female pilot to die for the United
States military. Besides experiencing the bombing of Pearl
Harbor first hand and thwarting the discrimination against
female pilots by being one of the first to join the United
States’ Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squad (WAFS), Cornelia Fort
died for her beliefs and the country she loved. Cornelia Clark
Fort was born on February 5th, 1919. Daughter of Dr. Rufus Fort
and Mrs. Louise Clark Fort, Cornelia was born into a large
family in Nashville, Tennessee. With her father the founder of a
colossal insurance company, Cornelia’s life was planned out for
her. The family chauffer, Epperson Bond, would drive her from
Fortland Farms, the family’s 356 acre estate, to Ward-Belmont,
an exclusive private school for gi