Pvt. Myra Sessions

In 1943 artist Francis V. Kughler, Hudson River Museum Director H. Armour Smith and Women’s Army Corps recruiter Joanne Coates conceived a plan to encourage women of Yonkers to enlist in the army and honor their contribution. Every Yonkers woman who joined the WACs would have her portrait made in oil or pastel by Kughler.

Myra Sessions Zarcone (interviewed by the Hudson River Museum in 2012) recalled that she passed the WAC recruiting table every afternoon on the way home from work at the telephone company. Her father, Clyde Sessions, had died when she was 11, and she went to work after high school to help her mother support four daughters and two sons.

Deployed to Whitehorse, in Canada’s Yukon Territory, the private was put to work as a phone operator. Whitehorse was part of a route to ferry planes from Russia to the United States. She met her husband, military policeman Joseph Zarcone, when both were working the graveyard shift, and their union was celebrated as the “first WAC wedding” on the base.