“My mind leaped for joy at the thrilling thought of combining flying with my love for God.” —Betty Greene
Do you remember the first time you flew in an airplane? For many of us, air travel is just a normal part of life, something we take for granted as we fly for business or vacations. But for people like Betty Greene, cofounder of Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), air travel was an innovation few had access to and even fewer women had opportunity for.
Betty Greene’s Early Years
Betty Greene was born in Seattle in 1920. Her parents were devout Christians who attended a local Presbyterian church and started a neighborhood Sunday School. She had a twin brother and two older brothers, and the Greene children learned about Jesus from their parents who nurtured their children’s faith in the Lord.
Interest in airplanes and flying was common among the youth of Betty’s day. Betty was only seven years old when Charles Lindbergh made the first nonstop transatlantic flight, which made children and teens everywhere dream of flying high above the world. After Betty’s brother Joe learned to fly, Betty decided she also wanted to take to the skies. Sadly, this was during the Depression, so the Greenes had no extra money for Betty’s flying lessons. But for her sixteenth birthday, a generous relative gave her a gift of one hundred dollars—a lot of money in 1936! She put some of the money toward flying lessons and earned her pilot’s license at only sixteen years old.
Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP)
Betty’s love for flying was rivaled only by her love for the Lord. She knew she wanted to put her skills to use as a missionary, but only a few years after earning her license, the United States entered World War II in 1941. The majority of male pilots were deployed to the front lines, so the Women Airforce Service Pilots program was formed. The WASP program was made up of over a thousand civilian women who took up noncombat duties like ferrying planes, towing targets for ground-to-air target practice, and serving as flight instructors.
Betty served her country by joining this program. During that time, she flew many kinds of military planes and volunteered for high-altitude test flights. She even flew a plane towing a target that her twin brother, Bill, shot at from the ground.
While she was in the WASP program, she wrote an article in HIS magazine titled, “A Gal, A Plane, and A Dream.” The article’s subtitle read, “By a girl who plans to use her flying talent on post-war mission fields.” She shared her witnessing opportunities to the girls at Camp Davis in North Carolina and wrote of her desire for the Lord to use her flying skills for missions. It was this article that got the attention of a man named Jim Truxton.
MAF Founding
Jim Truxton was a fellow Christian military pilot who wanted to go into missionary work after the war. He read Betty’s article and wrote to her, inviting her to join him after the war to collaborate on his plans to establish a ministry that would aid missionaries around the world. The organization was originally founded as the Christian Airman’s Missionary Service, but they changed the name to Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF).
Much of the early success of the organization was due to a woman, Betty, who courageously used her God-given gifts in a male-dominated world. Betty not only flew the first mission, but in her time as a pilot with MAF she also flew in twelve countries and touched down in twenty others.
Later Years
Betty worked for MAF as a pilot for sixteen years before she hung up her wings to work at MAF headquarters in 1962. She never married, believing that having a husband and family would distract her from the work the Lord had set before her. After she officially retired from MAF, she remained an advocate for the organization until she died in 1997.
Betty Greene is a picture of courage, not only in being one of the few women in a man’s world, but in serving the Lord wherever He called her—at home or abroad, in a cockpit or in an office, on the ground or in the sky.
How might Betty’s fearlessness and confidence in the Lord inspire us in our seemingly mundane day-to-day lives as well as our apex mountaintop experiences? Whether we’re sharing the love of Christ in the remote jungles of the world or sharing His love by cutting the crust off a PB&J, may we courageously serve the Lord, wherever He’s placed us!
“There is nothing like being able to cast all my care upon Him whenever I step into an airplane. Not only is my mind at peace but it means I act more sensibly.” —Betty Greene
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