One of the few women instructors in the CPTP later wrote about her experiences. With the threat of war rising on the horizon, Opal Kunz renewed her pilot’s license after taking a refresher course at Hagerstown, Maryland, and began teaching aviation students at the Arkansas State College (now Arkansas State University). She later moved to Rhode Island, and at the start of World War II became an instructor at the Rhode Island State Airport Terminal for Navy cadets and the government sponsored “Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP)” during the war, teaching over 400 young men how to fly for the Air Corps. This was her old dream of the Betsy Ross Air Corps come true, as she helped train the men who would fly fighter aircraft in combat. An account from the time shows the work she was doing by saying: “Mrs. Kunz has been in Providence since January as a member of the staff of E. W. Wiggins Airways. She has a mother’s confidence in her ‘boys’ and they reciprocate with respect and enthusiasm. Nothing gives her greater joy than to see them solo, to know she has taken them one step nearer to Uncle Sam’s aerial defense line.” Later, at her home in California, she would recall her experiences with fondness. “I trained about 400 boys and it was easily the highlight of my career. I really became a sort of foster mother to them. You would be surprised how many of my boys brought their wives and children to see me after the war.” She also indicated in a letter that she had trained combat pilots. “...I was a flight instructor all during the war. Had over three hundred students who served as combat pilots in the war.”