Warrior Women, Part Four
NURSE CORPS. – Floris Adele Neil, 20, 1st cousin once removed:
Lovely and loving, Adele, technically a cousin whom I knew as Aunt Adele, joined the United States Cadet Nurse Corps (CNC) training in 1943 at Providence Hospital in Portland, to serve under the U.S. Public Health Service.
The Cadet Nurse Corps began in 1943 after Frances P. Bolton, an Ohio congresswoman, sent a nurse training act to congress to address the anticipated and worrisome lack of nurses during the war. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt insisted that the act be administered in such a way as to prevent racial discrimination in the Corps. Roosevelt must have been heard, for also serving as Cadet Nurses were Japanese women recruited from relocation camps. The act provided funds to nursing schools to decrease the duration of training while improving their programs. Cadets–women between seventeen and thirty-five years of age–were obligated to serve either in the military or in an essential civilian role until the war was won. Sometimes that meant serving at public health clinics and the Indian Health Service.
According to her marriage license, Adele was still a student nurse when she and William Manly, Jr. married on January 6, 1946. Together they grew a family of seven boys, later adopting two infant girls. Having been discharged from the U.S. Army Postal Service as a Staff Sergeant, Bill served their community of White Salmon, Wash. as postmaster until he retired.
MACHINE OPERATOR – Betty May Lionberger, 21, 1st cousin once removed:
Friendly cousin Betty was listed in the 1943 city directory for Portland. Her occupation on the page is described as machine operator. Her employer is listed only as “IFMCo.” It appears that the company was probably the Iron Fireman Manufacturing Company (IFMC). The company was established in 1923 and in 1943 were instrumental in building engines and parts for the Liberty Ships produced at the Kaiser Shipyard. In a plant at a second location, the company would also support the airborne war effort when IFMC began to manufacture parts for Boeing Company airplanes.
At this time, Betty’s residential address was listed as identical to that of my grandaunt, Eva Ruth (Landis) Lionberger, whose husband Harold was away serving in the military. This arrangement between my cousin and our aunt echoes the situation of many women who decided to live with other women, sometimes including children, during the war years, reducing the cost of living. And, I imagine, offering benefits from the support and comfort that an environment more family-like could provide.
Our family was fortunate; everyone came home when the war ended.