Mina C. Harrison - Red Cross volunteer and Charitable Fund Raiser

Mina 1945 Mina 1965

"It's funny how I met Bill during the war. We were in England of course before the landing and I met, I mean, I was assigned to a field hospital with no patients - yet - and he was assigned to an army with a General Staff Headquarters and no soldiers. Or so I thought. He had already met Patton but he was sworn to secrecy. Turns out later on the Continent he would spent a lot of time trying to track where my hospital unit was and how I was doing in a front line combat field hospital but I didn't know. He had trained for battle. I was a volunteer. Well, they gave me $200 a month later.

Never thought at the time that I would end up marrying him after the war."

"So where this all started was we Red Cross women were bivouacked together but we weren't deployed, everyone was just waiting for the invasion and we were running out of, should I say, supplies we needed and I heard no one was listening at the Quartermaster's so I took it upon myself to find the head of that show and give him a piece of my mind.

So after making some enquiries of my own, and believe me, every GI was a girl's best friend then, I found out the place to go was the General Staff Headquarters. So I made my way there and found the door marked Supply and went in to make my case. The guy at the desk out front did not want some red-haired young girl telling him his business but that just made me even more than a little heated so maybe we got a little loud and then this door on the back wall opens and out comes this handsome young colonel who says, "What's all the racket about?" and then we locked eyes and that was all I could say. The clerk mumbled something to him and he said, "Your request is duly noted, young lady." I must have identified myself and my unit and left gritting my teeth about those asses I had just met. I thought that would be the end of it. How little I knew. But as I found out months later, he had turned to the clerk at the front desk after I walked out and said, "I'm going to marry that woman".

But getting back to reality, by the time I got back to my tent my superior, for some reason was waiting for me. Before I could get it out how I had met this complete jackass and how horribly he had treated me, she said, "You'll be going out with Colonel Harrison tonight. He just called and wanted to meet you under better circumstances. Be ready at 5PM". When he came to pick me up in his Jeep he saw how we were living in all that mud at the bottom of a hill and the next day we got moved."

Following her heroic WW II contribution, Mina continued her Quaker school (Friends Academy, Philadelphia) work as a volunteer, adding momentum to her charitable work with her conversion to Catholicism by Msgr. O'Neill.

- starting the volunteer Candy-Stripers at Children's Hospital,

- starting the St. Louis Children's Zoo Zoo's Who ("Adopt-Your-Favorite-Animal" Badges) fundraiser ($1.2 million) with Zoo Director Marlin Perkins (opened 1969, closed 2020) to make it possible,

- starting the Washington University Faculty Club restaurant in the Whittemore House for faculty, staff, and friends,

- starting the James S. McDonnell USO at the STL Airport

- all the while keeping her Red Cross membership active and raising money for various charitable functions,

- For young people starting their first jobs, after hearing repeated complaints from employers, through the Tandy Substation (in Tandy Park) she starting the "Alarm Clock" program for kids who showed up for work hours late because no one in the house had an alarm clock. Mina was never an "Isn't everybody rich?" socialite. Instead, as ridiculous as this may seems to some in the suburbs, being poor but on time could have lifetime results. Nowadays everyone has a cellphone, but back then, it was a Big Deal.

Always one for working without credit, this gravestone in Jefferson Barracks is all that commemorates her many efforts. Ironically, because she had altered her sister's birth certificate to join the war effort, she could not get a passport or Social Security in her old age. Her own death insurance from WWII, still a valid policy 42 years later, paid for her funeral so she could be interred with her husband in Jefferson Barracks. [Historical note: Mina served as the president of the Valle Mining Company from 1983 until 1987.]