Major US Army, Joy Evelyn Yeck Fincke McWilliams

Joy Evelyn Yeck (Fincke McWilliams) was in the first group of New Mexican women to join the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). ¹ The morning of March 16, 1942, she read about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s plan to form the WAAC and went to the Army Recruiting Office the same day. ¹ She was sent to officer training at the WAAC Officer Candidate School at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. ^{1, 2, 3} A Collier’s Weekly article by Octavus Roy Cohen on the new women recruits entitled “She’s in the Army Now” pictured Yeck in uniform. ³ In August of 1942, she became a WAAC officer and remained in Des Moines commanding a woman’s unit that was training to drive military vehicles. ⁴ Following her time at Des Moines, she was stationed at Fort Devens, Massachusetts and then went to Fort Oglethorpe. When the WAAC became a formal part of the Army as the WAC (Women’s Army Corps), her rank switched from first officer to captain. In 1943, she was stationed in Seattle, where she was the WAC advisor to Brigadier General Eley P. Densen at Seattle’s Port of Embarkation. ^{5, 6} She wrote of her initial experience there:

The soldiers were all on deck waiting to come ashore, and when they saw me, they said “Look a woman!” Then when I came closer, they added, “Look a WAC!” Pretty soon I heard, “Look, a captain!” It was the first time they had ever seen a woman in Army uniform. ⁵

She was promoted to first lieutenant in 1943, leading a group of 150 women.  ⁷ July 4, 1944, she received orders for overseas duty. As a captain, she commanded the 29^th Traffic Regulating Group, the first company of Transportation Corps WACS in the European Theater of Operations. ^{8, 9} Yeck was promoted to major in February of 1945. 1 She was decorated with the Bronze Star Medal, the American Theater Campaign Medal, the Victory Medal, the WAC Service Medal, and the EAME (European–African–Middle Eastern) Campaign Service Medal with a Bronze Service Star. ¹¹ In 1958, she published the article about her military experience, “The Way It Was with the WACs,” in Reader’s Digest. ^{1, 12}

Yeck was born in Walla Walla, Washington in 1913, the daughter of Opal Callahan and Edward E. Yeck. ¹³ She spent her youth in Pendleton, Oregon, and came to New Mexico in 1934. In the 1930s, she was a stenographer in Santa Fe, and in 1936, was hired as the office manager for the New Mexico State Senate. Later, she became the assistant director to Russell Vernon Hunter, head of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) New Mexico Federal Art Project. ¹⁴ Describing herself as “the solid, practical type” and Hunter as a genius, the two became lifelong friends. Her work with the New Mexico Federal Art Project involved coordinating artists with sponsors and arranging with Washington D.C. headquarters for artwork approval. ¹⁴ The intention of the project, as she put it, was, “to feed some hungry people, who were incidentally also artists.” ¹⁴ One of the most difficult parts of her job, she admitted, was denying artists supplies because of budget constraints. During the Great Depression, McWilliams and other WPA workers held fundraisers to provide Santa Fe families with food at Thanksgiving and candy for children at Christmas. ¹⁴ She was married to Harry Gilbert Fincke in 1938 and the couple moved to Springer, New Mexico. ¹⁵

After the War, Yeck was instrumental in re-establishing the Little Theater in Santa Fe, where she played several theater roles, worked backstage, and directed productions. ¹⁶ An early activist in the effort to bring moviemakers to New Mexico, Yeck founded Southwestern Talents, which for 27 years, supplied local actors and extras to movies and commercials. ¹⁶ In 1971, she married Francis Xavier “Terry” McWilliams, whom she had met in Paris while in the military. ¹⁶