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Community Corner

WWII Veteran Reunites With Navy Sisters

Oak Park's Gladys Foster and three other members of the World War II naval Women's Reserve honored at recent ceremony.

Gladys Foster, among the first women enlisted in the U.S. Navy, calls herself “no hero.”

At a recent honorary event for senior veterans in Chicago, the 90-year-old Oak Park resident joked, “I think I got on the wrong bus.”

But Foster, a resident at Oak Park's Holley Court Terrace senior living community, was among the guests of honor at Tuesday's program at the Chicago History Museum. She was selected for a small, surprise reunion of WAVES, or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service in World War II.

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WAVES was an ad hoc naval division established in 1942 to enlist women for non-combat services within national boundaries. The women in WAVES held equal rank with men in the Navy and were given the same pay. The equivalent women's Army division was WAAC.

Foster served as an instrument flight instructor in Memphis, teaching male pilots how to operate machinery in aircraft cockpits. “Same old everyday work,” she said of the experience. Describing men's relations with women in the Navy back then, she said men were “always respectful.”

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Tuesday's reunion was the wish of Elizabeth Harness, a 91-year-old Niles resident and fellow WAVES veteran. Harness, Foster and two other women were part of the impromptu celebration. In addition to reuniting with other WAVES, Harness was also awarded two war medals that had never been delivered, and was informed she would be flown to San Diego this spring to attend a meeting of the WAVES National unit.

The event was sponsored by Brookdale Senior Living, which owns Oak Park's Holley Court Terrace, and Jeremy Bloom's Wish of a Lifetime, a nonprofit that grants wishes to seniors. Bloom, an Olympic skier and former NFL player served as the event's emcee.

Some 110 veterans attended.

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