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LT Josephine Clapp Osbun Oral History
Publication date: 31 July 2024
File metadata
Dublin Core Metadata
title:
LT Josephine Clapp Osbun Oral History
creator:
Osbun, Josephine (Clapp) (1922 July 10 - )
subject:
US Public Health Service (USPHS) Reserve Corps
description:
This is the original, unedited interview audio. Josephine “Jo” C. Osbun (formerly Clapp) was born on July 10, 1922 in Toledo, Ohio and grew up in Savannah, Georgia. She was a senior at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts studying pre-medicine in the spring of 1944, and was hoping to get a job that would assist in the war effort. Although her advisor recommended she work at a lab in Washington, DC or New York City, she wanted to be near her mother in Savannah and began working at a US Public Health Service Reserve Corps lab that was recently opened there. The lab was built to study the insecticide DDT, the first insecticide ever synthesized, and the potential of using it for mosquito control around the Pacific theater to lower the rates of malaria, dengue fever, and typhus among the troops. After two months, she was promoted and assigned as an assistant to Captain Richard Fay, where she was one of four women and around fifteen officers on his research team. Captain Fay became a friend and mentor for her, offering her co-author credit on all of the required papers, which was not common practice among other men in his position. Everyone on the team had great camaraderie, working and socializing together nearly every day. In the fall of 1946, as the lab and larger military structure was transitioning from wartime to peacetime, she was offered a captaincy and a raise, but she chose to marry her husband instead. After the war, the lab she worked in was given a permanent location and began reporting to the CDC office in Atlanta, Georgia. When she left the service Osbun reached the rank of lieutenant, and for her service she was awarded an American National Red Cross Meritorious Service Certificate. A transcript of this interview is available.
publisher:
Military Women's Memorial Foundation
contributor:
Grotz, Dorothy | Board, Barbara
date:
1988-04-23
type:
Audio
format:
Cassette
identifier:
51.043
source:
NSCD | CLIR - Recordings at Risk
language:
English
relation:
121497
coverage:
World War II (1939-1945) | 1945-46
rights:
Unrestricted