SSG Gloria Tipton Oral History Side A

title:

SSG Gloria Tipton Oral History Side A

creator:

Tipton, Gloria (Cox) (1920 - )

subject:

Women's Army Corps (WAC) Air Forces

description:

Side 1 of 2. This is the original, unedited interview audio. Gloria Tipton (formerly Cox) was born in 1920 in Estill County, Kentucky. She was the oldest of three children, and her family moved to Dayton, Ohio when she was young. After graduating from high school in 1939, she worked for two years at a drycleaners before getting a job straightening airplane parts on a conveyor belt at National Cash Registers. One of her brothers was captured and held as a prisoner of war in the Pacific in 1941, which led to her enlistment in the Women’s Army Corps in 1943. She went to basic training at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, after which she was sent with two other women to Kansas City where they spent six months learning radio direction finding. Over those six months, she learned how to type; operate, take apart, and repair a radio; and Morse Code. From there, she was stationed in Madison, Wisconsin as a radio instructor. While there, she fell around 50 feet off a radio tower and was caught by two servicemen, bruising and bleeding on her side from the impact. She volunteered to go overseas, and was shipped out from New York in June 1944. Her first overseas station was in Ascot, England as a high speed radio operator. From there, she was one of 18 women radio operators sent to France after D-Day with the 8th and 9th Air Force. She lived and worked in Normandy for most of the rest of the war, although she ended up in Frankfurt, Germany by the end of the war. She returned to the United States in 1945 and left the service. She opened a laundromat with a friend but had to stop working there in 1946 after being hospitalized with ulcers. After her discharge, she worked again as a straightener a National Cash Registers, later opening a new laundromat and working there until her 1974 retirement. When she left the service Tipton had reached the rank of staff sergeant, and for her service she was awarded a Women’s Arm Corps Service Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with 5 bronze service stars, and World War II Victory Medal. No transcript of this interview is currently available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Binker, Mary Jo

date:

2002-09-26

type:

Audio

format:

Cassette

identifier:

934; 2002.934

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk

language:

English

relation:

110763

coverage:

World War II (1939-1945) | 1943-45

rights:

Unrestricted