TECH5 Joan Adelaide Furtaw Oral History Tape 1, Side A

title:

TECH5 Joan Adelaide Furtaw Oral History Tape 1, Side A

creator:

Furtaw, Joan Adelaide (Kimmell) (1921 January 26 - )

subject:

Women's Army Corps (WAC)

description:

Tape 1 of 2, side 1 of 2. Joan Adelaide Furtaw (formerly Kimmel) was born on January 26, 1921 in Keyser, West Virginia. In high school, she took a typing test and went to college for two years. After that, she got a job with the State Road Commission, which is where she worked when World War II began. This pushed her out of her job, and she moved to the Rationing Board where she worked as a secretary. She was there for two more years, then became a government girl and moved to Washington, DC in 1942. This was the first time she was entirely self-sufficient, and she lived in an apartment with four other women. She enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps while living in DC, and went to basic training at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia. After basic, she went to 90 days of basic nurse training and returned to DC to work at Walter Reed Hospital as a surgical tech. One day while she was working, she saw her brother who had been serving in France and Germany standing in the hospital. She was able to spend a day with him to see their family together. She also met and took care of survivors of the Bataan Death March and the Doolittle Raid. After World War II ended she left the service to get married, but was stood up. She returned home and did volunteer work for a little while before going back to Washington, DC with a friend and getting a job as a receptionist at a law firm. While there, she met a man who she thought she’d marry but was stood up again. She got on the first train out of DC and holed up for three days, not telling anyone where she was. She then used the GI Bill to go to the Ray Vogue School of Design in Chicago and “became a hippie.” She lived in a house with 7 other students and friends while in Chicago, which is also where she met her future husband. He got a job in Lansing, Michigan, and they got married in 1950. They had three sons an adoptive daughter. Furtaw also worked until, at the age of 45, she returned to school at Moorpark College using the GI Bill. She then worked as a librarian from 1973 until 1985, and thinks she got out at the perfect time as computers were first being brought in. When she left the service, Furtaw had reached the rank of technician 5th grade, and for her service she was awarded a Women’s Army Corps Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, and World War II Victory Medal. No transcript of this interview is currently available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Driver, Wanda

date:

2005-01-06

type:

Audio

format:

Cassette

identifier:

319.01; 2005.319

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk

language:

English

relation:

032412

coverage:

World War II (1939-1945) | 1943-46

rights:

Unrestricted