Alaska environmental leader and decorated war pilot Virginia "Ginny" Wood died Thursday. She was 95. The longtime Denali resident was perhaps best known for her role in ferrying military planes to the Lower 48 during World War II, or her conservation efforts throughout the state.
Wood died peacefully in her Fairbanks home about an hour after midnight, according to Camp Denali's website, which Wood co-founded. Her friend Susan Grace sat by her side. Wood's eyes had been closed for days, the Internet post noted.
Wood's first passion was flying. Her journey skyward is described in a brief chapter of "Women Pilots of Alaska: 37 Interviews and Profiles." She learned how to fly in the Civilian Pilot Training Program during the Great Depression. Ginny was one of five women in a class of 50 at the University of Washington Seattle.
"When World War II started all my boyfriends were drafted and there was limited gas for cars. If I hadn't learn to fly, I'd have been building airplanes," the book quoted Wood.
She spent five months "learning to fly the Army way" and earned her wings through the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) branch of the military, one of the pioneering organizations for female pilots.
Flying fighter planes and bombers across the United States, Wood and fellow WASPs delivered the aircraft to bases used as launching pads. She flew planes from Long Beach to Newark, which were then shipped overseas to the Europe, Wood explained in Women Pilots. The military short changed the women at the end of the war, not giving them any benefits. But in 2009 Congress awarded the 300 or so remaining WASPs with its Gold Medal of Honor.
After the war, Wood became an Alaskan. She arrived in the state new years day 1947, according to the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame. Five years later, she co-founded Camp Denali, which the hall of fame credits for initiating ecotourism in the state. Wood and her friend and colleague Celia Hunter, also a famous Alaska conservationist, operated Camp Denali until 1975.
In 1960, before her departure from Camp Denali, she organized the Alaska Conservation Foundation in Fairbanks. Through the foundation, she spoke out about conservation issues, and her testimony contributed to the establishment of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She also was involved in campaigns against Project Chariot and the Rampart Dam, projects she viewed as harmful to the state's wilderness.
Wood received numerous awards for her efforts, including the conservation foundation's lifetime achievement award in 2001. Upon receiving that award, former Alaska Gov. Jay Hammond called her and Hunter "the grand dames of the environmental movement."
Old age failed to dull Wood's Alaskan spirit and love of the outdoors. She lived on the eight acres of woodland where she and her husband built their first cabin in 1952, north of Fairbanks, she told the author of Women Pilots in 2003. She apologized to the author for being hard to reach at the beginning of one interview. She skied for three miles in her neighborhood, and it took her longer than expected to return because she had to clear fallen tree branches off the trail. She was in her mid-80s at the time.