Perhaps it all started with Philip, her twin who died at birth back in July 1923.
Phyllis Harvey admits she’s always been a tomboy – likely picking up many of the traits of the infant brother who never got a chance to climb a tree, throw a baseball or fly a plane.
With a grin on her face, the petite 92-year-old Yorkville woman admits she was very good at all three.
It was a co-worker at Sherwin-Williams Paint, where the Chicago-born then-Phyllis Geib worked after high school, that encouraged her to get her pilot’s license, despite the fact those lessons at Harlem Airport in Oak Lawn ate up her entire $25 a week paycheck.
“Nature talked me into it,” she said of her passion for aviation. “From the time I was a little kid, 5 or 6, I’d look at the birds and planes and think … if I could fly, I’d not have to go around things but just be able to fly over.”
With a war on, it wasn’t a great leap for this pilot enthusiast in 1943 to join the Civil Air Patrol, an auxiliary born a week prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor that consisted of thousands of volunteers who wanted to help perform critical wartime missions.
At the time she was awarded the rank of sergeant from the Office of Civilian Defense and assigned to Squadron 613-1 at Harlem Airport, according to official papers.
While many memories can fade in nine decades of life, Harvey quickly recalls those 18 months co-piloting airplanes that flew “from Canada on down,” patrolling rivers to make sure no enemy vessels were making their way in from the coastal waters.
Her love for airplanes only continued into 1944, when she took a job with Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corp. in San Diego, doing flight research for B-17, B-24 and B-29 bombers.
The following year, she joined her sister and brother-in-law, Lt. Col. James Fleming, in Tampa and worked at Drew Field as a civilian with the 327th Army Air Force. Here, Harvey said, she helped with security clearances and flight plans for pilots guarding the borders against enemy submarines. One evening, she admitted, she got aboard one of those planes sent out to look for those German subs, despite no authority to do so.
“I don’t think I could still get in trouble for that. Do you?” she asks, that impish grin taking over her face again.
While the hazel-eyed young woman never got to solo in any of these aircraft, she was well aware of the importance of what she did during the war, including her volunteer hours with the Civil Air Patrol, where missions also included search and rescue, disaster relief and emergency transports.
According to the Civil Air Patrol website, these volunteers logged more than a half-million flying hours, sunk two enemy submarines and saved hundreds of crash victims during the war. At least a couple dozen members were killed in the line of duty.
Yet, the efforts of all those volunteers went unrecognized for decades. It wasn’t until 2014 that Harvey – along with thousands of other Civil Air Patrol volunteers – was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, this country’s highest civilian honor along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in “recognition of their military service and exemplary record during World War II.”
In late 1945, Harvey was transferred from Tampa to Barksdale Field, Louisiana, where she remained until after the war. Eventually, Harvey made her way back to Chicago to help her widowed mother. She traveled extensively before getting married in 1952 and settling down on the Oswego family farm of husband Robert Harvey, where they raised three children.
Harvey chuckles at the idea of trading an airplane for a tractor. Yes, she often found herself looking up at the clouds and recalling the thrill of flying. And even today, she recalls the spectacular images she saw from the sky in the time she spent with the Civil Air Patrol. Although she never again piloted an aircraft, her eyes still light up at the memory.
When she gets a chance to fly these days, noted daughter Carol Gardner, “she always wants to sit by the window seat, gazing out.”
“I don’t know why,” Harvey said of her lifelong passion. “I just love to fly.”
