Join Waccs
Pictured here are four young women who have volunteered to do their bit for Uncle Sam in the Waacs. Enlisted at the army recruiting station in the federal building by Sergeant H. J. Gossage, they are, left to right, Betty Ross Hollister, 1508 Nebraska Street; Margaret M. Mills, Argonaut Apartments; Joyce N. Anderson, 1901 Boies Street and Violette R. Hoag, 1014 Court Street. Auxiliaries Anderson and Hoag will report for induction Monday at Fort Des Moines. Auxiliaries Hollester and Mills will not be called until later.
Source: The Sioux City Journal-Tribune, March 26, 1943 (group photo included)
From Cosmetics to Life as Wac Radio Mechanic
Sioux Cityan Gives Up Powders, Perfumes for Job
It is radio tubes rather than lipstick refills now for Corporal Betty Ross Hollister, former Sioux City cosmetics demonstrator and sales women, now a radio mechanic at Turner field, Georgia. The change represents six months of WAC training and an aptitude for the work that differs so greatly from her former occupation.
Corporal Hollister is at home on furlough for a reunion with her sister, Miss Amy Marie Myrick, 1508 Nebraska Street, and another sister, Mrs. Richard Miller of Oakland, California.
“I love it,” exclaims the enthusiastic mechanic of the army air forces pilot school who “pre-flights” ships before they leave the ground and speaks of transmitters, dynamos, receivers and other radio terms with the same sparkle with which she formerly discriminated between shades of face powder and the odor of a perfume.
Betty’s story has been featured in Yank, Army news sheet, and in The Flying News of the air forces.
She enlisted in the W.A.C., last March and reported April 12 for basic training at Fort Des Moines. Later she was sent to the United Radio-Television institute in Newark, N.J., for a 12-week school in radio mechanics.
Betty herself can scarcely believe her present situation, she said, for never before has she evidenced any mechanical ability.
Source: The Sioux City Journal, November 8, 1943 (photo included)
