Westchester Women & War Portraits 1943-1945

As World War II raged, Yonkers women took a first-time chance to soldier for their country - they enlisted in the Women's Army Corps, the WACs.  Before embarking for posts around the world, the Hudson River Museum joined forces with artist Francis Vandeveer Kughler and army officer Lt. Joanne Coates, to capture their likenesses in oil and pastel.   

Rachele Caione worked at GM Eastern Aircraft in Tarrytown before she enlisted. She spent part of the war stationed at Fort Slocum, New York.

The memorable image of “Rosie the Riveter” overshadows the historical reality of blue-collar labor for families with modest resources. Yonkers was a factory town and there had always been women in manual jobs, especially immigrants and first generation Americans. The war just meant that there were more openings and for a wider range of jobs than had previously been offered to women.

One of the earliest Army women in Yonkers, Mary Neary joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in January 1943—several months before it transitioned into the WAC. She went to Iowa for elementary training, where she and other WAAC enlistees received equipment, classification tests, and drill exercises. Then, they were shipped off for “more detailed military training preparing them to replace a man in a non-combat Army job.” For her, that was an airplane mechanic at Turner Field in Georgia.

After her WAAC service, Neary did inspections at Yonkers’ Habirshaw Wire and Cable factory (a division of Phelps Dodge) and acted as an air raid warden. Kughler painted her in October 1944, when she signed up with the WAC for another tour of duty. She wanted to return to her old job and continue servicing planes.

Marguerite Chase, like a few of the other Yonkers WACs, first worked at GM Eastern Aircraft in Tarrytown. But, a year after her brothers joined the armed forces, she “just wasn’t content to be safe at home working in an aircraft plant.”

She joined the WAC in January 1944, and became known as “a girl with a star-spangled heart.” She was assigned to Douglas Army Air Field, where she inspected B25 Mitchell bombers used in training. The Herald Statesman ran an article about Chase, with a photograph of her inspecting an airplane window.

Civil Rights were at a crossroads in the armed forces of World War II. Many aspects of living quarters and assignments were still segregated, yet the Army made an effort to recruit African American women and gave them many opportunities and rewards not yet offered in the civilian world.

In a poster to promote the WAC as a career choice, the Army claimed to have 239 kinds of jobs for women. These ranged from typist and telephone operator to motor pool driver and code breaker. Anne Schall Bodian was a cryptographic operator (working with codes) at the U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service in Virginia.

Anne grew up in Yonkers, but was married and working at the Home Owners Loan Corporation in New York City when the United States entered the war. Her husband, Sgt. Albert Bodian, was with the U.S. Army.

Myra [Sessions] Zarcone recalls that she passed the WAC recruiting table every afternoon on the way home from work at the telephone company. Myra 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.

Camille Olgee’s work in World War II inspired lifelong service in the American Legion as a commander of the Yonkers Women’s Post and Moses Taylor Post 136 in Mount Kisco.

Educated at Columbia and with a background in public relations, Olgee joined the American’s Legion’s “Pilgrimage for Peace.” which traveled to Europe in 1957 to strengthen the bonds of friendship and understanding among the nations. She stated “I’ve always been interested in both American Legion work and travel and I’m looking forward to this trip for opportunities to talk face-to-face with peace-loving people, the women especially, on our mutual problems.”

No stranger to sacrifice for her country, Dorothy Spaulding lost her soldier brother, Sgt. Ralph Spaulding, killed in action in October 1944, just a few months before she enlisted.

Their mother had died before the war, and before Spaulding signed up for the WAC, she was living at the Y.W.C.A. and working at the Commodore Restaurant in Yonkers. She told her enlistment officer “I chose the Medical Department because I feel that their need is the greatest and I can do more good there than anywhere else.”

Frances Depole was sworn into the WAC the day before her younger brother Henry took his physical exam for the Army. Their brother Albert was already overseas. At time of her enlisting, Private Depole was quoted in the Herald Statesman as saying, “I want my brothers home again, that’s why I’m joining the WAC.” Tragically, Albert died in combat in Italy later that same year.

Prior to enlisting Frances Depole was employed by the North American Philips Company, Inc., in Dobbs Ferry. In 1949, she married Army veteran Frank Stangarone.

Jennie Lee’s husband, half-brother, and father were already part of the war effort when she joined in 1944. Her husband, was a warrant officer in the Merchant Marine; and her half-brother, William Robinson, Jr., was a Navy seaman serving abroad. Her father, Corporal Harry C. Green, was stationed in Virginia. She was first based at the Air Service Training Command Center.

Lee was born in Mount Vernon and moved to Yonkers as a child when her mother remarried. Before joining the service, she worked as a layout operator for the GM Eastern Aircraft Division in Tarrytown.

When Jane Mooney enlisted in 1944, her siblings, were already in the Army. Like many WACs, Mooney was first shipped out to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, for training and job placement. She chose to join the Air-WACs, a division under the Army Air Forces, and worked as a clerk typist at Rosecrans Field, in St. Joseph, Missouri, only 75 miles away from her sister’s post in Topeka, Kansas.

On furlough she told the Herald Statesman, “Army life is wonderful...just tell the Yonkers girls to enlist and find out for themselves—they’ll love it too, just as every other WAC does.”

On July 1, 1944, the Herald Statesman published an article encouraging families to strive for total participation in the war effort: “Army families join ‘All-out’ for Recruits.” The families of Dupree and Jane Mooney (also part of the Museum Collection) were both listed.

Dupree was working for the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Comapany in NYC when she enlisted, and had a brother enlisted as well. The following week was designated WAC week in Yonkers, with activities including the special programs for mothers whose daughters were serving overseas and stateside. Dupree’s mother, Mrs. Charles Mayerhofer, attended and was one of the mothers who went to Steadman’s Music Shop to record “voice letters” to their daughters. They then visited the Museum to see a display of the WAC portraits completed thus far.

In 1944, the Herald Statesman ran an article on the Topolosky family: “They’re Serving the Nation on Land, Sea and in the Air.” Her older brother, Michael fought with the Army infantry in the Battle of the Bulge and was reported missing in action. The Nazis had captured him but then released him after several months. Julie’s younger brother Joseph was a Navy seaman, and her WAC station was with the Army Air Forces, at Biggs Field, Texas.

There were eight Topolosky children. The eldest, Mary, had been born in Slovakia before the parents emigrated and was the mother of Yonkers WAC Marie O’Buck, also in the collection. In 1946, Julie married New Jersey Air Force veteran Harry Morere.

Retta (Henrietta) Shaefer was not the first in her family to join the war effort. Her brother was also in the Army, Pvt. Ross Shaefer of the Signal Corps in the South Pacific and her sister, Cpl. Nancy Shaefer, was a WAC with the Intelligence Department of the Army Air Forces.

Most of the Yonkers WACs had full-time jobs before they enlisted. Retta Shaefer left a position at Prudential Life Insurance Company. Like other Army women, she stated that she hoped their efforts would help end the war sooner.

Irene Crimmins was a Yonkers librarian before enlisting in the WAC in 1944. Her brother Col. Thomas R. Crimmins, was serving with the U.S. Army in India.

Lt. Catherine Perry administered the WAC enlistment oath to both Irene Crimmins and Retta Shaefer. Lt. Perry, the WAC recruiting officer who came to Yonkers after Lt. Coates transferred, asked the girls their reasons for their enlisting. Both answered that they hoped they would help end the war sooner. Crimmins added "I think if our grandmothers could go across the continent in covered wagons and help our men to settle this country, the least the women of this generation can do is enlist in the Army and stand behind our boys."

The age requirement for WACs was 21 to 45, and Yonkers recruits represented the full range of those years. Marie O’Buck was only 20, but women that young could join with their parents’ permission. Sworn in to the WAC on her birthday, she said, “I’m happy to be a member of the Army, because I think that that is where I can do the best for the good of the war effort.” She had family members serving: Joseph O’Buck, her brother, was stationed at Pearl Harbor, and her aunt, Julie Topolosky, was also a WAC.

Before enlisting, Marie O’Buck took an aeronautical program at the vocational high school in Yonkers, to prepare her for home-front factory work, and she worked at Eastern Aircrafts in Tarrytown.

One of the oldest WACs, Gerda Thomas was born in Germany 1897 and was past the stated enlistment age of 45 years. Before the war she vacationed in America and decided to immigrate. She then operated a cross country ski school in upstate New York and became a citizen in 1935.

Thomas had done photographic work for the AGFA Film Corporation in Germany, and in the WAC, attended a specialist school for training as an X-Ray technician. She was assigned to the Wakeman General Hospital at Camp Atterbury, Indiana. After the war, she remained in WAC service until 1948.

At age 39, Lois Wilson had experience as a teacher and artist that qualified her to start as an assistant occupational therapist with the rank of sergeant. She was from Fayette, a small town in Alabama, and originally came north to study art in Boston. Before the war she traveled to the major art centers of France and Italy, as well as took architecture classes at Alabama Polytechnic Institute. After leaving the WAC, she became a prolific Yonkers folk artist, who donated all of her work to her hometown.

Several of the Yonkers WACs, like Rose Untener, were born in 1925 and not old enough to sign up until the last year of conflict. They had spent their teenage years under the cloud of war.

Before joining the WAC, Rose worked as an inspector at the North American Philips Company in Dobbs Ferry, where her mother and Pvt. Helen Harrison’s mother also worked. Helen and Rose were sworn into the WAC together, in a ceremony in the Post Office building in Yonkers. They both choose careers in the Army Medical Department.