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Marian (Mac) McBurney Kilgore Photograph Album

WVHP

Collection finding aid (offsite)

Marian I. Mac McBurney Kilgore (1916-1999) served in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) as an aviation machinist during World War II. Marian I. Mac McBurney Kilgore born in 1916 and raised in Washington, Pennsylvania. She worked as an elementary school teacher before enlisting in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service)in March 1943. She did her basic training at United States Naval Training Station on the Bronx campus of Hunter College in New York. She was then sent to the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Memphis, Tennessee to be trained to as an aviation mechanist. Kilgore was then stationed at Anacostia Naval Air Station in Washington, D.C. where she was one of the first women to be assigned as an aviation mechanist. In addition to performing maintenance on navy airplanes, she was also a member of a singing trio of female airline mechanics who called themselves The Merrie Mechs. They performed at other Naval Air Stations and Naval Hospitals. Kilgore met George Linson Kilgore , another airline mechanic at Anacostia, and married him in 1946. They lived in Rockville, Maryland and raised three children. Kilgore died in 1999.

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