Planes, Trains & Heroes: A Story of Warner Robins and the Robins Region

OPAL DENT LASSITER SMITH
Opal Dent Lassiter Smith was a Rosie’s Riveter
who came to Middle Georgia for a defense job.
She loaded detonator caps at the Naval
Ordnance Plant south of Macon with other
young women who lived in supervised dormitories
at Wesleyan College’s Music Conservatory.
She remembers the dorm mother encouraging
the women to attend dances at the USO and to
“be nice to the young soldiers because they are
just as homesick and frightened about the war as
you are.” On July 4, 1942, Opal married C. G.
Smith at Camp Wheeler. As he went off to World
War II, she returned to her work loading munitions.
At closing each day, she and others pushed
small rail cars on narrow gauge tracks into earthen
bunkers to prevent explosions. The building
in which these women worked had a detachable
roof. Opal says, “That was so the roof would go
straight up if there was an explosion during our
work day. The explosion would annihilate
everything in the building, but it wouldn’t
destroy the structures around it.” At Robins,
Rosie’s Riveters performed aircraft maintenance
and other tasks.
ADA JACKSON LEE
Ada Jackson Lee helped found the Warner
Robins Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
She was born on the Feagin property which
became part of Robins Air Force Base. She
became politically active early. She helped integrate
the Warner Robins. Latasha Ford wrote a
Houston Home Journal article about Mrs. Lee in
2017. In it, she quotes Ada Lee: “The freedom
you see here in Warner Robins, my family
helped bring what we have here.” Her wish for
future generations is that they show respect for
themselves and each other, grasp their educational
opportunities, and find value in the
church. One of her final quotes in the article
says, “We need to be our brother’s keepers as
we” once were (qtd. In Ford). Mrs. Ada Jackson
Lee worked for The City of Warner Robins, to
help people, most often from Jody Town, move
from substandard housing into better homes for
twelve years. Then she worked with the recreation
department. She was active in the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) and Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC). She is a Warner
Robins hero.
ROBERT
L. SCOTT
Robert L. Scott, World War II hero and
author, was born on April 12, 1908, in
Waynesboro, Georgia and died on February 27,
2006, in Warner Robins, Georgia. He wrote God
Is My Co-Pilot, Flying Tiger: Chennault of China,
and The Day I Owned the Sky. He helped found
The Museum of Aviation, which is now the second
largest of its kind. After Scott began his lifelong
dream of flying, he delivered air mail as
part of a United States Army Air Corp experiment
devised by President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, and later, General Claire Lee
Chennault “made Scott the commander of the
renowned Twenty-third Fighter Group. By
February 1943 Scott, having shot down at least
thirteen Japanese aircraft, was sent home to
make speeches and sell war bonds” (Head). Also
in 1943, “the Pentagon brought him back to the
United States for a nationwide tour exhorting
war-plant workers to greater efforts. Near the
end of that tour, Colonel Scott was asked by the
Scribner publishing house to relate his experiences
in a book. But he had only three days to
do so before he had to report to Luke Field in
Arizona as its new commander, so he simply
spoke his recollections—90,000 words—onto
wax cylinder recording devices” (Goldstein).
Goldstein’s New York Times article goes on to
say that Scott’s “recollections became God Is My
Co-Pilot, which provided the American home
Above: Opal Dent Lassiter Smith.
Below: The Robert L. Scott Exhibit
Hangar at the Museum of Aviation.
Warner Robins Heroes ✦ 59