It was 1944, and most of the nation’s male pilots had left for military duty.

Nancy Dunnam took to the skies, flying non-combat missions with the Women Airforce Sevice Pilots (WASP).

Thousands of ladies joined the group, each freeing a male pilot for combat duty.

They ferried planes, transported cargo, towed targets, and flew every type of military aircraft around, logging over 60 million miles along the way and losing 38 lives.

Nancy tends to downplay her part in the war effort, swearing she was just a temp. Her role was really that of a pioneer.

WASP set the tone for women to participate in military flight training – something that was banned until the 1970s.

Female pilots now fly every type of mission in the military – combat not excluded – and they also take part in space flights.

The WASP women never gained full military status, and it wasn’t until 1977 that they became official veterans.

The group still hasn’t received formal recognition from the government for its service.

A newly proposed bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray of Bothell, could change all of that by awarding each of the WASPs a Congressional Gold Medal.

“These brave pilots have empowered and inspired decades of women service members who have followed in their footsteps,” Murray said in a statement. “They took flight at a time when the idea of women aviators was thought not only improbable, but impossible.

“As trailblazers for our nation’s military, these women belong in the company of The Tuskegee Airmen and the Navajo Code Talkers as Congressional Gold Medal Award recipients.”

Around 300 WASP women are still alive today, and 12 of them live in Washington state.

Nancy, 86, reunites with those who live in the Puget Sound area several times a year.

The lifelong Bellevue resident joined WASP in 1944, during her senior year at the University of Washington.

Only women who already had pilots licenses were allowed to join the group.

Nancy started flying at the age of 16 with her father, who founded what used to be Bellevue Airfield in Eastgate.

“It was just something different,” she said. “I enjoyed it very much.”

Nancy earned a pilot’s license after her junior year of college and then dropped out of school to become a WASP.

“What I was doing at the University of Washington wasn’t important,” Dunham said. “I was just taking general studies classes, but there was a war.”

Over 25,000 women applied for WASP service, but only 1,900 of them made the cut.

Of those, only 1,078 completed training in Sweetwater, Texas.

Nancy was eventually assigned to Moore Field in Mission, Texas, where she worked for one year towing targets with a North American T-6 for $100 a month.

“It’s wasn’t anything too exciting,” she said. “Most of it was kind of just work.”

Nancy recalls only one life-threatening incident during her time as a WASP. It came during an engine fire that broke out during one of her supervised check flights.

“The instructor said ‘Out you go,’ and he pushed me out onto the wing,” she said. “I argued all I could, but he insisted.

Nancy parachuted to safety while her teacher tried to salvage the aircraft.

“He got the fire out by diving down and pulling up, but he’d already dumped me,” she said.

Nancy would meet her husband, the late Jim Dunham, while serving at Moore Field. He worked as gunnery director at the base.

“He was my boss,” Nancy said.

The couple moved to Bellevue after the war and built a home on the city’s west side. Jim went to work helping Nancy’s father manage Bellevue Airfield.

Nancy traded her pioneering job for the more traditional role of raising children, and she stopped piloting planes altogether after the war.

“It was too expensive,” she said. “I just focused on my kiddies.”