Cpl. Rosemary Corbalis

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.

Millions of women entered the workforce during World War II. Rosemary Corbalis had a job in the Controller’s Office of the New York Central Railroad before she became a WAC. Desk jobs may have been more available with men gone at war, but women had done clerical work for decades. The big push was for more women to fill men’s jobs in factories with government defense contracts. The WACs whose portraits hang on this wall were some of those workers.

As a WAC, Corbalis worked in the medical corps and was deployed Wiesbaden, Germany, at the end of the war. Both of her brothers were in World War II: Robert, a lieutenant senior grade in the U.S. Coast Guard and James, Jr., in the Navy.