Betty Greene, a former Medina woman, has been honored with a Congressional Gold Medal for her wartime service.

Greene was a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) of World War II. She and 1,100 other women took on non-combat flying duties that often were hazardous, freeing up male pilots for combat.

She later became the first pilot for Mission Aviation Fellowship and became the first woman to fly across the Andes and the first woman to pilot an aircraft in Sudan.

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Greene died April 10, 1997, of Alzheimer’s at her Medina home. She was 77.

She wasn’t looking for publicity, and the last thing she wanted to do was brag about any of it. Had it not been for Greene’s parents sharing her exploits with the rest of the family, not even her closest kin might have known much about her work.

“I never got the feeling that any of the Greene siblings ever thought anything they did was heroic,” said Naraelle Hohensee, Greene’s grand-niece who represented her great aunt this month at a Capitol Hill ceremony that honored WASPs with the medal.

Greene’s fascination with becoming a pilot began in childhood. A devout Presbyterian who enjoyed ministering in her church’s youth group, she also sensed God had called her to use airplanes to further missionary work – even though at the time, there was no such thing as mission aviation.

While training at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, for the WASP program, Greene wrote a pair of articles for Christian publications about how flying could advance Christian ministry. Three American military pilots responded by sharing with her their vision for creating the Christian Airmen’s Missionary Fellowship.

After word came that WASP would disband in December 1944, Greene moved to California to set up an office for the fledgling group. It eventually connected with combat pilots of like vision in the UK, Australia and New Zealand to become Mission Aviation Fellowship. Greene flew MAF’s first flight, which was in partnership with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Mexico.

In addition to Peru and Sudan, Greene piloted MAF aircraft while based in Nigeria and New Guinea.

Hohensee noted “For her, WASP was really more of a means to an end: flying experience and to make her way into mission work.”