Family's Fight Pays Off With Arlington Cemetery Burial Rights for WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots) - VOA

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Family's Fight Pays Off With Arlington Cemetery Burial Rights for WASPs

A rare bipartisan effort by Congress "righted a terrible wrong" last week with the president signing a bill allowing female World War II pilots to be inurned with full burial honors in Arlington National Cemetery outside the nation's capital.

The policy that allowed the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) veterans to receive burial rites at Arlington had been revoked in 2015.

Tiffany Miller and her sisters, who started an online campaign to give their grandmother Lieutenant Elaine Danforth Harmon the right to an Arlington burial, were elated by the news, they told CNN.

It was her last wish to be in Arlington," Tiffany Miller told CNN. "We haven't been able to hold a funeral for her because we wanted to honor that wish."

Harmon died in April at age 95. She served in WASP.

Miller told The Washington Post that her family would now apply at Arlington for a new funeral date, which she estimated would take about a year.

Signed into law

On Friday, President Barack Obama signed the bill, which was passed unanimously by both the House and the Senate.

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