Before They Were Students

World War II greatly impacted campus life at Bowdoin. The College hosted an Army-Air Force meteorology unit and a Naval radar school, and much of the student body served in the military. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Civilian Pilot Training Act to train civilian pilots at academic institutions across the United States. Bowdoin sponsored the program from 1940 to 1942, with the first course beginning in the summer of 1940. Shown here is a photograph of Ann Wood (D’Youville College), the only woman accepted into the program at Bowdoin, with George Davis (Williams College) and a seaplane on the New Meadows River. In 1942, Wood was one of twenty-four women pilots recruited by the British Air Transport Auxiliary to move military planes from factories to military bases.

Ann Wood (1918-2006) in the Civilian Pilot Training Program at Bowdoin, 1940