The visit to Fort Des Moines Friday of Col. Oveta Culp Hobby (center), WAC director, was the occasion for a reunion of four Iowa majors, members of the first WAC officers training class. From left they are Jean Melin, Osage, Marion Lichty, Waterloo; Mary S. Bell, Cedar Falls; and Kathleen McClure, Iowa Falls. Colonel Hobby is wearing a new style jacket.
Source: The Des Moines Register, February 17, 1945 (photo included)
Little Cedar -- Mrs. August Schmarzo, has received word from her sister, Major Jean Horner Melin, saying that she ahs been transferred to Purdue university, Lafayette, Ind., where she will be on the faculty. The university has been made an advanced training school for the Wac officers. For the last year she has been serving as an inspector of the Wac posts and her travels have taken her from coast to coast.
Source: The Courier, Waterloo IA - April 19, 1945
Jean Elizabeth Horner Melin was born Mar. 9, 1907 to Daniel Martin and Beulah May Cole Horner. She died June 20, 2002 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery, Mitchell, IA.
Maj. Melin served in World War II with the U.S. Army, Jean was in the first contingent to go to the first WAAC training center at Fort Des Moines in 1942. She and 15 other WAACs were selected to go to Command and General Staff School in Fort Leavenworth, KS. 15 women were First Lieutenants; the 16th a Captain. She then seen time in the Pentagon, selecting women for various assignments both stateside and overseas.
She then was taken into the regular Army. The WAACs had been an auxiliary to the Army, and the second “A” was eliminated as the WAC became The Women’s Army Corps. At that time, she was promoted to Capt. and assigned to the Army Ground Forces Replacement School, Birmingham, Alabama, where she was staff director. She was promoted to Maj. in 1944. After 22 months in Birmingham, she was assigned to Purdue University at West Lafayette, IN, to assist in establishing a school for WAC officers. At the end of WWII she returned to civilian status and worked in the War Assets Administration and in the Pentagon, only to be recalled to service as staff director of WACs in the First Service Command at Governor’s Island, NY. She left the Army for the second time in 1948.
Source: ancestry.com
