From the Men in the Armed Forces

Dorothy Swart in London

The following note was received by Geo. M. Swart of Oakley regarding a story which cleared through the Associated Press, February 15 and will be of interest to Miss Swart’s many friends on this community.
2-17-43

Mr. Swart
Here is a story from London you no doubt will be interested in. It came in Monday. Dorothy stayed overnight at our house two weeks ago. Judging from the elapsed time they must have flown over.
A. R. Shobaken
1516 East 50 Terrace
Kansas City, Mo

London, Feb 15 (AP) The mother of one of the most service-minded families in the Unted States has arrived in England as a WAAC Captain.

She is Mrs. Zelma F. Hanson, 40, of 424 south Columbus Avenue, Glendale, Calif.

She herself was in government service before enlisting int he Waacs, the Army Auxiliary, last July. Her husband is a government employe and she has two sons in the armed services.

With one of them she became the first mother to be sworn into the Army at the same time as her son.

The sons, Robert Holmes, 22, Naval Aviation Machinists Mate at Los Alameda, Calif., and Richard Holmes, 18, a Private in the Air Forces somewhere overseas, are by a previous marriage.

The husband, Clarence W. Hanson, is in the postoffice department at Los Angeles.

Also her brother, William Wyckoff, is in the Coast Guard at Wilmington, Calif., and her sister-in-law, Dorothy Hanson, is an Army Nurse some where overseas.

Capt. Hanson is a sister-in-law of A. R. Shobaken, Associated Press Traffic Chief at Kansas City.

She was accompanied here by a member of another two-ply service family. Lieut. Dorothy Swart, 25, daughter of G. M. Swart, an Oakley, Kans. wheat farmer. Her brother, an infantryman for two years, is now a cadet in the Air Corps training center at Santa Ana, Calif. She enlisted form Elsa, Tex., where she was a secretary for a vegetable firm.

Oakley Graphic (Oakley, Kansas) – 26 Feb 1943, page 15