Kathryn Conkling (Lawrence)

Kathryn "Katie" Conkling graduated from East High School in Wichita, Kansas, in 1939.  Nine months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Katie answered a newspaper ad for the new Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). She received a bus ticket to Milwaukee for a weekend of apptitude and physical testing. Katie was among those asked to stay, and she was immediately sworn in, on September 18, 1942.

As an Administrative Specialist in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, that would later become the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), Katie was stationed in Miami and Orlando, Florida with the aircraft warning service, tracking aviation traffic.  After a brief stay in Fairfield, California, Katie was assigned to the Air Transport Command Pacific at Hickam Field in Hawaii. There, she operated the post office, handling mail and intelligence reports, and was sworn to secrecy. Katie was at Pearl Harbor to celebrate the Japanese surrender.

After the war, Katie married John Conkling, an Army Air Corps B-26 co-pilot in the European Theater. Katie also became a private pilot .

Kathryn "Katie" Conkling shared with the Eisenhower Foundation her story of serving in World War II as a Staff Sergeant with the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, WAAC. This interview was conducted in Abilene, Kansas, on June 6, 2019, as part of the Ike's Soldiers program and the 75th Anniversary of the Commemoration of D-Day at the Eisenhower Presidential Library. 

Katie (Lawrence) Conkling passed away in 2025 at the feisty age of 104.