Recruitment of women Marines in the ’70s

This recruitment film, produced for the U.S. Marine Corps by Dallas-based Bill Stokes Associates, portrays the recruitment and training process for women in the Marines. The film starts with “Susie Smalltown” who joins the Marines for the “glamorous uniform”. The viewer then witnesses the transformation that takes place for women recruits during basic training and…

Our History – Our Service

By Rosa Osborn In 2010, as a warrant officer and several years in the Marine Corps, I thought I knew it all. I knew the history of the Marine Corps. We all do. I didn’t discover just how little I knew until 2010 while attending the WMA Convention in Denver. I was not only amazed…

Rosa Osborn

Julia Hamblet Awardee WMA extends congratulations to WMA Member Rosa Osborn as the 2022 recipient of the Julia Hamblet Award. I want to take this opportunity to announce the recipient of the Julia E. Hamblet Award as our own, Rosa Osborn, for her extraordinary efforts in the preservation of the history of women Marine uniforms…

Mary Palazzolo WMA Member of the Week

Mary Palazzolo is a life member of WMA joining first with the Motor City Chapter located in Michigan in the late 70’s. Her career started with 8A 1974 at Parris Island, SC WRTC. After active duty she joined the Marine Corps Reserves serving at Broadhead Naval Amory in Detroit and in Lansing. In 1990 she…

WMA Meet Our Member

Roberta “Randy” Tidmore Randy was one of 18,000 women who joined the Marines by that year. While comprising just 4 percent of the Marines, women worked as clerks, mechanics, and aerial gunnery instructors, among other jobs, and they helped pave the way for more than 1 million women who have since served in the U.S.…

WMA KY-1’s Marines: Serving from 1950 to 2021

WMA Winning Colors KY-1Submitted by Phoebe Riner  Marjorie Cox and I are KY-1’s oldest and youngest Marines.  Marjorie joined theMarines at the age of 19, during the Korean War, and I joined in 2010 at 33 after being grantedan age waiver.  Tasked with writing about our Marine service for women’s history month, ourstories are more…

Sgt Mary Frances Danaher Griggs WWII USMCWR

By Gary Griggs Mary Danaher was the oldest of 10 and born in St Joseph Mo on April 3, 1923. After High School she had a boyfriend and a good job. But when war broke out she felt someone in her family should represent the family in the war effort and with her brother not old enough she…

Corporal Germaine Laville

Corporal Germaine Laville   Laville lived in Plaquemine, La., graduated from LSU in 1942 with a bachelor’s degree in education and was a member of Chi Omega sorority. The oldest of seven children, she decided to represent her family in the World War II effort by enlisting in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve in July,…

Dorothy Schmidt Cole, oldest living Marine, dies at 107

BY THÉODEN JANES JANUARY 13, 2021 05:33 PM, UPDATED JANUARY 14, 2021 02:34 P Dorothy “Dot” Cole, who enlisted as one of the earliest female Marine reservists in response to the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor and was widely celebrated around her birthday in September as the country’s oldest living Marine, died of a heart attack…

Elizabeth Redfern Newberg USMCWR

Mrs Newburg is celebrating her 100th birthday and her family is requesting cards. Please join the Women Marines Association in wishing her a VERY happy 100th Birthday and thank her for her service. Elizabeth Redfern was born in Titus County shortly after the First World War. The family later moved to Marshall, where she attended…