Born: 28 August 1917, United States
Died: 28 June 2017
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from the Federal Aviation Administration. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Ola Mildred Rexroat, the only Native American WASP, was born on August 28, 1917, in Ogden, Kansas to a white father and an Oglala
mother. During her childhood, she and her family moved to South Dakota and she grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. After
graduating high school, she enrolled in a teacher’s college but dropped out to work at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Gallup, New Mexico. She returned to school in 1939 and earned a bachelor’s degree in art. She continued working at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
While working at an airfield, she decided she wanted to learn how to fly to join the war effort. She joined the WASPs for flight instruction and after completing her training, was assigned to Training
She never worried about getting shot down, stating “I never gave it a thought. You couldn’t worry about things like that. … You can’t live forever.” Her fellow WASPs knew her as “Rexy” or “Sexy Rexy.” After the war, Rexroat joined the Air Force and worked as an Air Traffic Controller during the Korean War, earning the rank of captain. Later on in her life, she worked for the Federal Aviation Administration for 33 years. In 2007, she was inducted into the South Dakota Aviation Hall of Fame. Rexroat died on June 28, 2017, at 99-years-old. She was the last surviving WASP in South Dakota and one of the remaining 275 WASPs (during 2017). After her death, Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota renamed their airfield operations building “Millie Rexroat Building.”