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. 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 …
