The Women of Framingham Who Served in World War II

On this page you will see women I have gathered that have served or contributed to WWII. All of these womens names were found in the Gatepost and put to this page. Some of this information is also taken from the Framingham State yearbookThe Dial. Each section features a picture of the women, a desciption, and a map of where they were located. At this bottom of this page you will see a more indepth explanation into how the infomration was gathered, along with some additional notes about this page.  - Ella Reddin

Mrs.Harriet Clark

Mrs.Clark's classmates described her as spirited, courageous, and kind person. She has a degree in The Household Arts with a specialty in Nutrition. She was part of the home economics club and was Chairman of the Christmas Basket Community. Her time in the war was spent at Dartmouth College. There she used her degree to be a dietician and serve as a nurse. She assisted in the naval unit as part of the V-12 Program

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Cpl. Sylvia Welch

Cpl. Sylvia Welch was a part-time student at Framingham State. While Balancing the life of schoolwork, she also worked as a nurse. At Cushing hospital, She treated patients that just got home from war. While the hospital no longer exists, you can visit the park and the memorial where the hospital once was.

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Nancy Todd

Nancy Todd was Red Cross leader at FSU. She obtained a Home Economics degree and a Chemistry degree. She was May Queen her sophermore year. Nancy was a lover of nature, and concerned for the fat squirrels on campus. She was on the Athletics Association and played on the team Harvard for Harvard vs. Yale games.

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Phyllis Welsh

Phyllis Welsh was a Red Cross leader at Framingham State University. Phyllis played on Yale's team for the Harvard vs. Yale basketball game. Her brother served in the marines. Phyllis's husband was a minister. They got married after college. She also served as a hostess on Salem-end weekends at Framingham state.

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Lt. Sarah Cummings

Sarah Cummings was a faculty member at FSU before joining the war effort. She taught history and was a mentor to the women at Framingham State. She served her time in Africa as a nurse. There is no specific location on the map based on the data recovered. Based on the gatepost article, she enjoyed her time in Africa. While also being worried about her hair.

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Emily Climo

Emily Climo was The Class President Of 1942. As well as a student assistant for Crocker Hall. She is mentioned through the Gatepost as a lively person, and someone people want to be around. As well as writing some articles for the Gatepost during her time in Framingham. In Greenland, she was an American Red Cross Hospital Recreational Worker. She has been quoted as enjoying her time  in Greenland. She also kept up with her friends at Framingham as well as the President Martin F O'Conner

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Francis Kiel

Francis Kiel served at Lawson General Hospital In Atlanta, Georgia, as part as Army Student Student Training Comission . She got a Home Economics Degree at FSU. She was more known by her peers as"Fran"and is described as capable and a dynamite gal. 

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Loretta Haley and Kathleen Walsh

                                 There is no location as to where these two served. It is known that they were Army Students Training for Commission.

Loretta Haley gained a degree in Household Arts And Nutrition. She is described as having good manners and successful goals. She was Junior Prom Decoration Chairman. Loretta also assisted the Student Government Dance, May Day, and Junior Weekend.

Kathleen Walsh holds a degree in Household Arts and Nutrition. She was known as "Kay." Kathleen was known as being the pillar of her class by her peers, which led to her unanimously being elected class president one year. During her time on campus, she was Stunt Night Chairman, Chemistry Council Secretary , Student Co-operative, Dance Chairman, and Club Council Chairman

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How It Was Done

1. A collection of PDFs were gathered from the years 1939-1945 ( WWII years) of the issues that were published. Using Gale Scholar Lab I was able to run different anaylsis of the gathered PDF's. When Using the Ngram analysis, a graph of terms were presented that are commonly asscoited with women. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           2. When looking at this chart I decided to explore the names that were associted with these terms. Upon running a Name Recgconition analysis, these were the names that popped up and explored further. ( this is just one example of what came up.)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          3. After that the list was narrowed to show only names. Then looking at the results the names were mixed in with other irrelevent names,as you can see in this chart. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       4.When gathering some names I needed a way to get more and narrow it down. This is when I ran a Topics Modeling analysis.  There, I was able to gather relevent topics and serach within them for more names. Some examples are below. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           5. Finally after gathering all the names, they were put into an excel spresdsheet. From there the infromation was translated into items and put on this page. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   With the time alotted to finish this porject, I was not able to gather all the women who could of possibly served in WWII. If future students wish to add on to this they they can.  Just let me know before you start editing the page. I am happy to be of assitacne to any future students!