To Live and Die a WASP: Mary Ann “Marian” Toevs

WASP Mary Ann “Marian” Toevs

#The38

Class 43-W-8

 13 May 1917 – 18 February 1944)

Marian Toevs’ parents, John and Nelle, were at their daughter’s graduation, proudly pinning on Marian’s silver wings. After the ceremony, they

returned to Aberdeen, Idaho, where Marian had a week to relax in her girlhood home. On January 1, 1944, she reported to LeMoore Army Airfield, an

BT-13

Army flight training school in California’s Central

Valley. Her primary assignment was to test fly BT-13 and BT-15 airplanes, recently repaired by the field’s maintenance crew. …

Marian was born May 13, 1917, in Aberdeen, Idaho, where her father, John, owned a grocery store and ran a successful wholesale dry goods business. For a number of years he was also the superintendant of Aberdeen’s Agricultural Experiment Station. Marian had four brothers and

WASP Marian Toevs

was her parent’s only daughter. Marian graduated from high school in 1935, and that fall began studies at Albion State Normal School, a small teachers college in Albion, Idaho. Two years later, with a teaching certificate in hand, Marian spent the next three years teaching. …

Early in the morning, Friday, February 18, 1944, Marian checked out a parachute, walked to the flight line, and climbed into a BT-13. She fired up the engine, completed her preflight check, then taxied out to the runway. Sources say she was

BT-13s

flying to Fresno, California, and perhaps that was her ultimate destination, but Fresno is barely 30 air miles from LeMoore, hardly enough time in the air to fully checkout a previously damaged or faulty airplane. Add the fact that Marian’s BT-13 finally wound up nearly 125 miles northwest away from Fresno, in the eastern foothills of San Jose, California, and a simple flight to Fresno just doesn’t make any sense. If Fresno was her ultimate destination, she was first flying a much longer cross-country flight.

Twenty-six-year old Marian crashed just a block away from where her Uncle Otto Toevs lived in a San Jose, California neighborhood. 

She had visited with Otto and his wife just two weeks before and it was Uncle Otto who ultimately identified her body for authorities. “The motor was still going when it hit,” Anthony Gullo said. He had been only 75 feet from the crash. …

After Marian’s crash, Marian’s body was returned to Aberdeen for her funeral. 

As she was laid to rest, Edgar Toevs, Marian’s cousin, was one of the speakers.

 

 “She had given everything she had,” Edgar said, “and she did all she could.”

 RIP