What a magnificent piece of writing, Bill, and the story is something that hits very close to home for me. If I had known of Cornelia when I was growing up, she would have been my idol.
As an adult, I was very fortunate to know a woman who had been one of the instructor pilots during World War II. Kaye Housel was a truly amazing person. I knew her in the 60's and 70's, when she lived in a small town in the northwest corner Maine with her husband, Dale. They were theoretically reitred, but it's hard to count the businesses they were in. Kaye ran "The Silhouette Shop", where she used a teeny scissors and black paper to go snip-snip-snip while someone sat in front of her and in about 5 minutes she created a profile silhouette that was an incredible likeness. Dale made frames and other wooden items that were sold in the shop in his spare time - his business was flying customers on fishing trips into the wilderness or ferrying people to airports, in between giving sightseeing rides to tourists, They both loved canoeing and could often be seen in evenings, paddling around the lake. Eventually, they put a canoe rack in front of Kaye's shop and rented canoes. I vividly remember sitting in Kaye's kitchen, looking at the lovely embroidered (by Kaye, of course) map of the United States with a mark in every state they had spent time in - I think it was 41 or 42 of them. I especially loved to listen to her World War II stories..
