Alice Katrina Lovell | Veterans Legacy Grant Program

Alice Katrina Lovell enlisted in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) on May 10, 1943, while living in Walla Walla, Washington. ¹ She completed basic training at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia, and in 1945 was stationed at the Air Transport Command at the Miami Army Airfield. ² Her job was to interview combat veterans returning from campaigns and to disseminate stories to newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and other media outlets. ⁴ When asked by the Miami Herald if she enjoyed it, she replied, “Heavens, yes!” ⁴

Lovell was born in San Diego, California, to David Joseph Lovell and Anna Maria Toft, originally from Denmark. ⁵ She married Charles A. Beal on September 24, 1917, in Los Angeles, California. ⁶ In 1920, she and Charles were living in Nogales, Arizona with their daughter. ^{7, 8} In the same year, she was the society editor for the Daily Morning Oasis in Nogales, Arizona. ⁹ Later, she married Wilfred Wright on September 3, 1927, and they divorced in 1931. In 1928 she was living in Tucson Arizona and was working as a rental manager. ¹¹

Lovell worked in radio, newspapers, and television as a writer and newscaster including The San Francisco Examiner, The Oasis in Nogales, Arizona, Martin Kane, Private Eye, Fireside Theater, Studio One, and The Lipton Tea and Palmolive Show, an hour-long comedy. ¹² She lived for ten years in Manila, Philippines working for four years as a feature writer for the Manila Herald and two years as a scriptwriter for Radio KZRH, known as “The Voice of the Philippines.” ^{2, 4,} ¹² She took a leave of absence from the station in 1941 to visit her daughter in California but was unable to return because of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. She explained to the Chattanooga Daily Times, “Everything I own is in the hands of the Japanese, so I have an added reason for wanting the war to be over.” ² The order for American troops to surrender to the Japanese was broadcast over Radio KZRH, which was then rebranded as PIAM (“Philippine Islands AM”) by the Imperial Japanese Army and used for disseminating propaganda. ¹³

Her nephew James Lovell was the captain of Apollo 13. ¹²