At Presbyterian hospital, Mrs. Elmer J. Kortmeyer, housewife and lieutenant, explains the night orders to four of the new aides. Seated at left is Miss Marcia Zickuhr, an arc welder at the John Deere Tractor plant while standing, left to right are the Misses Jean Slessor, an employee of the merchandise office at Montgomery Ward and Com and the Miss Doris Cool and Maxine Crow, both of whom are employed in the office of the Smith Candy company.
Source: The Waterloo Courier, December 12, 1943 (group photo included)
Marcia Zickuhr, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Zickuhr of Frederika, Ia., was sworn into the Wac as a private at headquarters in Des Moines on Jan 4, it was announced yesterday by recruiters at the Waterloo office.
Private Zickuhr, graduate of Frederika high school in 1941, had been employed at the John Deere Tractor Co. She will be called to active duty on Jan. 31 and on completion of her basic training at Ft. Des Moines she will receive training as a medical technician in an army general hospital.
Source: The Courier, Waterloo IA - January 7, 1945
Waterloo Veterans Champion, WWII Vet Marcia Courbat Dies
WATERLOO -- A longtime stalwart of Waterloo's veterans community, believed to be one of the few surviving local Women's Army Corps veterans of World War II, has died.
Marcia Courbat, who was a founding member of the city's Veterans Memorial Hall Commission, died Saturday at UnityPoint Health-Allen Hospital at age 98.
For decades, Courbat, a native of Frederika, oversaw Waterloo's Memorial Day observances, including organizing the Memorial Hall program and decorating veterans' graves with flags at Waterloo cemeteries -- more than 9,500 flags in all. She also was part of an ongoing Memorial Hall campaign to replace worn street flags to be placed on downtown light poles.
"She'll be hard to replace," said Black Hawk County Supervisor Craig White, chairman of the Memorial Hall Commission. "She was one of a dying breed, the ones that got involved. And if there was something she wasn't involved in and found out about it, she got involved!
Each year, Courbat compiled a roll of veterans who had died since the previous Memorial Day, read eachyear as part of the program. It came to several hundred names each year. It's a task she inherited from another longtime veteran volunteer, the late W.D. "Bill" Sizer. She also had a long history of work with Becker-Chapman American Legion Post 138, along with her late husband, Dale, both of whom were heavily involved in the Waterloo Chevaliers Junior Drum & Bugle Corps, sponsored by Post 138.
Courbat served stateside with the WACs during World War II in hospitals in Texas, Colorado, California and in Iowa at Schick General Hospital, an Army hospital in Clinton. Among her duties, she worked with emaciated American prisoners of war liberated from enemy camps, pilots and other personnel dealing with shell shock -- now known as post-traumatic stress -- and therapy with servicemen trying to recover the use of their limbs.
Courbat was a member of what she believed to be one of the few -- if not the only -- Women's Army Corps veterans chapters in the state. She chaired Chapter 89 of Army Women United, a group of military veterans of various eras and conflicts, from World War II up through the present day. The group supported Honor Flights and provided companionship for less-mobile aging women veterans. Under Courbat's leadership, the group's efforts were recognized in 2013 by Chapel of Four Chaplains in Philadelphia -- named for four military chaplains who died together in World War II -- with that organization's "Legion of Honor Humanitarian Award," given "in recognition of your service to all people regardless of race or faith."
She was grand marshal of the 2016 Waterloo Memorial Day parade. In 2003, she received the Leonard Katoski Service award from the city of Waterloo.
Courbat continued working at veterans recognition events into her mid-90s and beyond, even when hampered with mobility issues.
"There's a big pair of shoes to fill," White said of Courbat's passing.
Funeral services for Courbat will be 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 21, at Hagarty-Waychoff-Grarup Funeral Service on West Ridgeway, with burial in Garden of Memories Cemetery. Visitation will be from 5 to 8 p.m. Wednesday and for an hour before services on Thursday.
Source: Courier Obituary, January 2021
