Alumnae in Military: 1920s-1930s

Captain Margaret Peters ’31 received RN certification from Columbia Presbyterian School of Nursing after graduating from Wilson. During WWII she entered the Army Nurse Corps and went abroad as a nursing supervisor at Army hospitals in England and France. After the war she earned a Master’s of Public Health from Yale University and was part of a research team which determined the properties of radio-active isotopes and their use in medicine. 

Elizabeth McGeorge Sullivan ‘38 took classes in journalism at the University of Baltimore after graduating from Wilson. She was a secretary for the Coordinator of the Ground School of the Pilot Training program which was offered at the University of Baltimore. While there, she learned to fly. In 1943 she was accepted for training at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas as part of the Woman’s Airforce Service Pilots. Having already earned her private and multi-engine pilot’s license, she received further training in instrument rating. In the fall of 1943, she reported to the Ferry Command at New Castle Army Air Base in Delaware. The WASP pilots were deactivated in December 1944 and Elizabeth went to work for the Glenn L. Martin Co. working in new plane research.

Commander Elaine Toms ‘39 joined the WAVES and studied at the Naval Training Station at Harvard and MIT where she completed radar training. She earned a Master’s in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1947. She was a research physicist in the Betatron Section of the Nuclear Interactions Branch of the Nucleonics Division of the Naval Research Laboratory.