Troy woman recalls WWII after visit to D.C. memorial

Having received the American Campaign Medal and Victory Medal in 1946, Joan Legnard, 23, completed her tour of duty with the U.S. Navy and came home to Green Island.

Sixty-three years later and now Joan Houlihan, she was recently surprised to learn that her name and length of service as a Navy WAVE (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) had become part of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., which was dedicated in 2004.

A parishioner of St. Peter's Church in Troy for the past 25 years, Mrs. Houlihan was surprised because "I didn't do anything out of the ordinary."

Service

Mrs. Houlihan noted that "once you enlisted, you were in for the long haul. I had four brothers, and all of them had joined the war effort. I wanted to do the same but had to wait until I turned 20, the minimum age."

Right after her 20th birthday in 1943, she signed up.

She and other personnel at a training center in Bainbridge, Maryland, maintained the records of some 20,000 recruits assigned to specialized training as dental technicians, electricians mates, fire control technicians, gunners mates, hospital corpsmen, nuclear power specialists, quartermasters, radiomen and yeomen.

"We kept track of their records," she recalled. "They had to be 100 percent accurate and complete. If there was a fatality, their records were sent to Washington and home to their families."

Hope amid war

When Mrs. Houlihan and her daughters recently visited the Women's Memorial in Washington, the trip brought her back to when an entire country rallied in the name of freedom.

"So many died, and it was very sad," she said. "Yet we were young, so we found simple ways to have fun. I remember the USO shows, seeing Bob Hope perform. He made us laugh. He gave the [wounded] men lots of attention, which they needed.

"One Christmas Eve, he performed for us all, and everyone had tears in their eyes. All the wounded were brought out from their rooms; they filled the front rows of the audience."

Memories

On the way home from visiting the memorial in Washington, Mrs. Houlihan's memories of the training center unexpectedly surfaced.

"We passed the neighborhoods that we frequented while I was at Bainbridge, which was about an hour's drive north of Washington," she said. "I recognized the area immediately. Most of the places we went -- the restaurants and stores -- are all gone now, but I still recognized the area right away.

"The training center is all gone, too; they tore it down. It was very pretty there. They had a chapel, the hospital and several large recreation halls."

(The Albany Institute of History and Art has a current exhibition on WAVES. Go to www.albanyinstitute.org.)

(12/7/06) [[In-content Ad]]