During World War II, Elizabeth “Bettie” Mae Scott joined a small group of women who took to the skies in support of the United States war effort. Scott served as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), a program that trained female aviators to perform critical flying duties within the United States while male pilots fought overseas.

Bettie Mae Scott spent her early life in Monrovia, California, a city in the greater Los Angeles area. She was born on July 26, 1921, to Frank L. Scott and Virgel (Cochran) Scott. Although relatively little documentation survives about her early years, the 1940 U.S. Census indicates that she grew up in a household with three siblings (two brothers and one sister) and her father served as the Police Chief in Monrovia. Scott remained in the community where she was raised until leaving California for Texas to begin training with the Women Airforce Service Pilots, marking the first time she had relocated away from home.

Bettie’s story emerged during a period of dramatic change in the American workforce. As masses of men departed for military service, an estimated 6.6 million women entered the labor force, taking on occupations that had previously been closed to them. Aviation proved no exception to these national trends, and the U.S. Army Air Forces soon faced a shortage of domestic male pilots.

Operating from August 1943 to December 1944, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program represented a significant development in the professional advancement of female aviators in the United States. However, its creation did not mark the beginning of women’s participation in aviation. Rather, WASP emerged from decades of effort by women seeking greater access to flight training and professional aviation opportunities. Applicants were required to already hold pilot licenses; many having trained through the federal Civilian Pilot Training Program established in 1938. Bettie Scott herself had earned a civilian pilot’s license before applying to the program. Administratively, WASP consolidated two earlier organizations, the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) and the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), into a single program. Its formation also reflected broader global developments, as both Great Britain and the Soviet Union had already incorporated women into wartime aviation roles, placing pressure on the United States to expand women’s participation in military aviation.

The WASP program was highly selective. More than 25,000 women applied, but only about 1,830 (roughly seven percent) were accepted for training at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. Of those accepted, 1,074 ultimately completed the program and served as Women Airforce Service Pilots, an achievement Bettie shared with just over a thousand other women. Such an accomplishment was comparable in selectivity to being accepted into an Ivy League university.

Affectionately known as “Scotty” among her fellow pilots, Scott trained for several months at Avenger Field before graduating on April 15, 1944. Upon graduation, the Army Air Forces assigned her to Blackland Army Airfield and Waco Army Airfield in Waco, Texas, where she served as an engineering test pilot. In this role, Bettie flew aircraft that had recently undergone maintenance to determine whether they were safe to return to operational service.

Test flying ranked among the most dangerous responsibilities in the WASP program because mechanical failures and structural defects could emerge only after an aircraft returned to the air. Many WASP pilots faced similar risks while ferrying newly manufactured aircraft between factories and military bases or towing aerial targets for training. By the time the program ended in 1944, thirty‑eight WASP pilots had lost their lives in service.

The inherent dangers of test flying became a tragic reality for Bettie on the morning of July 8, 1944, when Scott took off to test‑fly a recently repaired BT‑13 Valiant at Waco Army Air Field. The BT‑13 was a basic training aircraft used by the Army Air Forces to prepare new pilots for more advanced combat planes. Shortly after the aircraft lifted off the runway, it climbed too steeply and stalled at an altitude of roughly one hundred feet. The plane rolled and crashed upside down, killing Scott instantly as a result of severe head trauma. Investigators later determined that structural defects in the aircraft’s tail assembly had caused the sudden loss of control.

For many years after the war, the contributions of the WASP pilots remained largely unrecognized because the federal government classified them as civilian employees rather than military personnel. As a result, pilots who died on duty were not provided funeral or body transportation benefits, nor were they recognized as fallen service members. When Bettie Scott died in 1944, her fellow WASP pilots collected money to return her body to her family in California, sending her home in a simple pine coffin. Scott was later buried in her family’s plot at Live Oak Memorial Park Cemetery in Monrovia, California, near her parents. Only decades after the WASP program ceased operation did the federal government formally acknowledge the women’s service. In 1977, Congress granted WASP members veteran status, and in 2010 the pilots of the program were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of their contributions during World War II.

Today, Bettie Mae Scott is remembered as part of a pioneering generation of women in military aviation. During wartime pilot shortages, WASPs stepped into roles that had previously been closed to them. They undertook missions despite the known dangers of the work and the knowledge that they lacked the official status and benefits afforded to military personnel. Women like Scott accepted the risks by pursuing their ambitions as aviators while contributing their skills to the wartime needs of the U.S. military. Their service expanded opportunities in aviation and helped shape the future of women’s participation in the United States armed forces.

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Manuel "Manny" Sustaita was a Vietnam veteran, civil activist, and the founder of Waco Citizens for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Though an insurance salesman by trade, he spent most of his life advocating for veterans and their families, Hispanic communities, and other underserved groups in Waco.

Sustaita was born in 1944 in Waco. As a boy he sold newspapers, shined shoes, and did other odd jobs to help support his family. In his free time, he played sports with the Waco Boy’s Club and especially enjoyed playing basketball. Though his parents did not speak English, they required their children to learn it, resulting in Sustaita and his siblings speaking what he called “neighborhood Spanish,” a mix of Spanish and English. Sustaita struggled with academics, and he dropped out of high school when he was fifteen.

Sustaita joined the National Guard at age sixteen, partially because of a desire to travel, and partially because of his love for movies like To Hell and Back and The D.I. Popular in the fifties and sixties, these movies depicted life in the military in a thrilling and heroic light, and Sustaita was moved by the example of the heroes in these films. For someone under the age of eighteen to join the military at that time, they had to have written parental consent. His father could not write, so Sustaita forged his signature. In 1963, Sustaita enlisted in the Marines. After training in San Diego, he went to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and then to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. After this first deployment, he served in Costa Rica and the Mediterranean before volunteering to join reconnaissance in Okinawa. With reconnaissance, he toured in the Philippines, Thailand, and finally went to Vietnam in 1965. Sustaita’s battalion operated out of an American air force base in Da Nang. Their primary objective was to scout for the division, and they chiefly had contact with Viet Cong guerilla units. Sustaita did one tour of duty in Vietnam before returning to the United States and serving at Camp Pendleton in California. He finally left the Marines in 1966.

When he returned to Waco, Sustaita became a life insurance salesman, drawing on his sales experience from his childhood jobs and love for interacting with people. After working for MetLife Insurance for a while, he started his own insurance company, called Multi Services Associates. He married Patricia Rivera Sustaita, and they had two daughters before getting divorced in 1981.

Sustaita made a name for himself in Waco as a civil activist. He was a founding member of the Cen-Tex Mexican American Chamber of Commerce, and he later served as its president. He served on the board of the Waco Boys’ Club and was involved with the Red Cross, but perhaps his most memorable contribution to the Waco community was his work on the Waco Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Sustaita was deeply moved the first time he visited the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. Knowing that there were many people in Waco who had lost brothers and sons in Vietnam, as well as a significant number of other veterans, he resolved to build a memorial for the people of Waco. He, along with the Waco Citizens for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial, began the planning process in 1987, but due to a series of delays, the memorial was not dedicated until 2004.

After a lifetime spent serving his country and community, Manuel Sustaita died peacefully on May 20, 2020. He left behind a legacy of activism, having worked tirelessly to aid veterans, the Hispanic community, and all who needed help in the Waco area.

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Elvis Presley is a name that hardly needs explanation. The king of rock-and roll stands as a cultural icon to this day, but few people know of his connection to Waco and Central Texas. In 1958, at the ripe age of twenty-two, Elvis joined the United States Army and moved to Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, for basic training.

Elvis had been to Waco before, doing what he knew best—performing. In 1956 he graced the Heart O’ Texas Coliseum and performed in front of a full house. But when he came back two years later, his calling was much different. Though Elvis had been part of the Reserve Officers Training Corp (ROTC) at Humes High School in Memphis, he could have easily avoided combat military service when the time came. Having already achieved a good level of fame with his hits “All Shook Up,” “Hound Dog,” and others, Elvis could have been excused from military service or served in a non-combat role. But his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, thought that serving in the army infantry would boost Elvis’s career and paint him as a true American, not just as a hip-gyrating, rock-and-roll youth. Elvis, being the humble man that he was, agreed and was assigned to a tank division at Fort Hood.

Luckily, when Elvis arrived at Fort Hood, he already had a friend close by. In the early 1950s, when Elvis was just trying to break into the music world, he met a Dallas radio DJ named Eddie Fadal. In 1956, Eddie lived in Waco and went to Elvis’s show at the Coliseum to see if the star remembered him. After navigating around a crowd of fans and convincing Elvis’s bodyguards to tell Elvis a man named Eddie Fadal had come to see him, Elvis welcomed him with open arms. Eddie offered to have Elvis over after the show for a midnight snack, and he took him up on the offer. Elvis and the band rolled up to Eddie’s house—located at 2807 Lasker Avenue—late that night with their instruments strapped to the roof of their car, and a surprised Mrs. LaNelle Fadal scrambled to serve the boys a delicious meal. Little did the Fadals know, that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Though a willing soldier, Elvis disliked life at Fort Hood, maybe because he could never be just one of the guys. For that reason, he left the base whenever he could and drove to Waco to spend time with Eddie and his family. The Fadals’ home quickly became his home away from home, and they began to expect Elvis every weekend. They even built a den and stocked it with records and music equipment for Elvis to enjoy during his stays. The den was of course painted pink and black, Elvis’s favorite colors. He usually stayed up late into the night listening to music and would sleep most of the day, truly relaxed around the Fadal family.

Soon enough Elvis also decided to rent a home in Killeen for his parents to stay in while he was in Texas, so Vernon and Gladys Presley became regulars at the Fadals’ as well, along with Elvis’s girlfriend Anita Wood. Gladys even taught LaNelle how to cook Elvis’s favorite foods, including burnt bacon, purple-hull peas, and sliced tomatoes. Eddie would also pick up cream pies for Elvis from the Hickory Stick or Toddle House, and Elvis would claim a whole pie for himself in one evening.

But Elvis’s presence did not go unnoticed around town. Word sometimes spread quickly if a neighbor caught a glimpse of a black Cadillac pulling up to the Fadals’ home. Kids would come from all over town demanding to see Elvis, sometimes even climbing the roof and threatening to break in. Other times people would camp out on the lawn and refuse to leave or threaten violence until they got to see the young Presley. Elvis did not want to cause his friends any trouble, so he would go out and talk to crowds of people and spend time with them until they were satisfied and left of their own accord. Eddie quickly had to unlist the family’s phone number.

Yet Elvis’s courteous response to these crowds did not mean he welcomed them. He was by nature a shy, simple man who just wanted to spend time with his true friends. He always sought to fly under the radar and spend quality, private time at the Fadals’. He would not even allow Eddie to have any family over during his visits. In fact, Elvis hated the idea of surprise visitors so much that when he arrived at the Fadals’ he would take a quick lap around the entire house to make sure no one was hiding and waiting to see him. It became his ritual, after entering through the back door. This behavior stemmed from Elvis’s fame, but also his constant fear that his friends might be using him for his status. In fact, the only family member of Eddie’s that Elvis liked was his brother Louis, because Louis had ignored Elvis the first time they were in the house together, passing him by to go speak with his brother. This fear of being used was strong in Elvis, but Eddie proved himself a true friend and a father figure to the young star.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck while Elvis was at Fort Hood. Gladys Presley went back to Memphis for medical treatment, and Elvis received a call that things were not looking good for his mother, from whom he was inseparable. When Gladys passed away on August 14, 1958, Elvis was crushed. After being granted a month of leave from the army, he and Eddie spent time in Memphis grieving. For the rest of his life Elvis would often sing gospel songs in the quieter moments and remember his mother.

Elvis returned to Waco and shipped off to Germany soon after. He cried the night he shipped out, as he would not only miss his friends and family, but he feared his fans would forget him while he was gone. Of course, that did not happen. But regardless, Elvis’s time in Waco had come to an end. Eddie remained his faithful friend, even when they went their separate ways in the coming years. The Fadals still refer to those months in 1958 as the “Elvis days,” and tell even more stories of their time with him.

Eddie’s son Dana still owns the house where Elvis stayed, and his sister Janice manages the property. It can be rented on Airbnb, so Elvis fans from near and far can come experience the home. They decorated the home in mid-century style reminiscent of the 1950s and recreated the pink and black den Elvis spent so much time in. Janice has also put together a book of her father's writings about those times called "Elvis Days." To order a copy of the book or see photos of the house, check out the website theelvishouse.com. Since many remnants of 1950s Waco that Elvis enjoyed have closed down, the house remains one of the last testaments to Elvis in Central Texas.

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With the possible entrance into World War II on the horizon, McLennan County officials and local city leaders lobbied the federal government to build a military installation in the Waco area. By August 14, 1941, officials learned about the construction of a military base seven miles north of Waco. From the 1940s onward, James Connally Air Force Base was used for multiple purposes and underwent several name changes. Throughout its use, thousands of airmen learned basic training and pilot skills there. Today, the former James Connally Air Force Base is the location of Texas State Technical College.

After receiving news of the commission of a military base, the county acquired 1,162 acres for the construction of Waco Army Air Field. The attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 sped up the construction of the base, and Waco Army Air Field welcomed its first basic training pilots in the spring of 1942. Citizens of Waco accepted the establishment of the base with high hopes for the future and welcomed the soldiers to the community. During World War II the air base trained 236 soldiers in basic military skills and tactical flying. After the conclusion of conflict, the facility remained inactive for three years.

After the establishment of the United States Air Force in 1947, the military base reopened as Waco Air Force Base in 1948. Waco Air Force Base acquired a new training mission in response to the international tensions building during the Cold War. A year later, the base changed its name once more to Connally Air Force Base, and then was finalized as the James Connally Air Force Base in 1950 in memory of James T. Connally. Connally was a Waco native killed during a bomb raid in World War II over Japan when his aircraft was hit by artillery and exploded.

Throughout the 1950s, the focus of training taught at James Connally Air Force Base changed frequently. The facility trained soldiers in helicopter and liaison piloting that was soon replaced with navigation, radar observation, and bombardier training. Later, training of single-engine pilots began. In 1958, the United States Air Force Instrument Pilot Instructor School moved to James Connally for three years with a mission to train air force students from many different countries. During this time, James Connally took pride in its active force of Mitchel B-25s that helped to train radar intercept officers.

Along with long hours of training, soldiers called Connally home. Men and women from every state as well as around the world lived, socialized, and carried out their daily routine on the base. Equipped with classrooms for high school and college education courses, residents could fulfill their academic needs. Men and their families lived in housing on or off the base, used on-base facilities such as the cafeteria and dining halls, commissary, laundromat, barbershops and salon, and more. Residents received news through a weekly published newspaper, and had access to clinics and hospitals for any health-related needs. For leisure, residents enjoyed locations such as the library, snack bar, malt bar, and theater, as well as recreational activities that included baseball, bowling, swimming, and more. Children of soldiers attended Teen Town, a Saturday night chaperoned event, and wives of soldiers formed the Air Force Wives Club to get acquainted with one another and the community.

In 1965, to meet the state of Texas’ workforce needs, the James Connally Technical Institute was founded on the base through Texas A&M University. Soon after the establishment of the technical institute, students of navigation training moved to Sacramento, California, and the state purchased the base for $5.2 million and the technical institute thrived. In 1969, the school separated from Texas A&M University and changed its name to Texas State Technical Institute, and finally named Texas State Technical College in 1991.

Through its years of operation, the James Connally Air Force Base served as a setting for the training of thousands of soldiers, as well as a place where citizens worked and families mingled. The base made a great impact on the training of military soldiers and the Central Texas economy, and classes are continued today under the operation of Texas State Technical College.

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General Tire & Rubber Company came to Waco in late 1944, the company’s second plant after its Akron, Ohio, headquarters. The company originally constructed the plant in order to supply equipment for the US Armed Forces during World War II. By January of 1945, workers began production. According to William O’Neal, General Tire’s president, the new Waco location acknowledged that “the war [had] dissipated the old idea that all manufacturing had to be done in the North, that the South could hope to be no more than an agricultural area.” Congressman W. R. Poage of Texas guided O’Neal in his decision to open a plant in Texas.

The Waco plant produced products such as truck tires for the US Army and Navy, as well as other rubber-based equipment such as rafts and specialized balloons for wartime use. After the war, the company acquired nearly full control of the plant from the US government and began to switch from military production to consumer- and industrial-based products. In November of 1945, the first passenger-car tire was built, and soon after, 2,500 were made daily. By 1954, the plant had doubled in size and was building 6,000 passenger-car, truck, tractor, and farm-service tires.

A large surge in tire production occurred in 1955 when the company received a contract to make original equipment tires. Cars made by General Motors rolled off of the automaker’s assembly lines equipped with tires made in Waco. At the same time, some models of General’s tires included the innovative tubeless design called the “Dual 90.” Other domestic automakers used Waco-built General products, and the plant produced millions of tires that rolled on American roads and beyond.

Due to demand, the Waco plant completed a 40 percent expansion in production capacity in the 1950s, and by 1984, continued success had enabled the size of the plant to grow considerably, with building space covering 49 acres under roof on 139 acres of land.

When the facility in Waco celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 1984, reference was made for the next forty year celebration, but this was not to be. In November of 1985, General Tire & Rubber Co. announced the closure of the Waco plant, which had a staff of more than 1,400 personnel, had an annual payroll of $42 million, and was responsible for $18 million monthly in expenditures into the area’s economy. Despite the plant’s closure, GENCO, the federal credit union chartered in 1953 to meet the financial needs of plant workers, expanded its field of membership and remains in operation in Waco today.

After the closure, an editorial in the Waco Tribune-Herald stated, “The announced closing of Waco’s General Tire plant leaves a cavernous void in Waco’s economy. It could be compared only to Baylor University pulling up stakes.” The number left without jobs from the plant’s closure numbered nearly 10 percent of the area’s manufacturing workforce. The last employees to leave the plant were 130 workers who remained at the General Tire & Rubber mixing facility, making bulk rubber to supply other General plants, until December 1990.

General Tire & Rubber Co. provided livelihoods for thousands of Wacoans throughout the plant’s forty-one years in operation. However, sudden and drastic changes in the automobile industry, the company’s inability to adapt machinery to keep up with changing tire designs and demands, and competition from imports all contributed to the demise of what was once Waco’s largest manufacturing facility.

The General Tire plant remained in disuse for many years, but some saw potential in the empty facility. In 2010, Baylor University heavily renovated the main building for the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative (BRIC). Baylor University, Texas State Technical College, and leading industries use this space for advance research in fields such as engineering, air science, and quantum optics. Students are able to experience some of the latest innovations in these fields and get hands-on experience in their fields of study—helping Waco continue to innovate and train a new generation well into the future.

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The McDermott Motors building is a prime example of the way in which many of Waco’s notable architectural structures have been adapted throughout history in order to continually serve the city.

Wilford Dees McDermott opened a Buick dealership in Waco with the help of his father-in-law, Robert Buchanan, in 1926. Buchanan hoped running a business would help McDermott and his daughter settle down and become more responsible, and thus provided McDermott with the funds to construct a brand new building for the dealership on Washington Avenue which opened to the public on November 1, 1928.

The McDermott Motors building reflected the extravagant tastes of its owner and namesake. McDermott commissioned renowned Waco architect Milton Scott to design a Spanish Colonial Revival-style building, complete with a flat red tile roof, Mediterranean-influenced transom windows, and terra-cotta details. The showroom featured decorative spiral columns and scrolled metal balconies, as well as an embellished fireplace. McDermott filled the state-of-the-art facilities with the newest available technology and overbuilt the front portion of the store to accommodate future expansions.

Unfortunately, the McDermotts’s extravagant spending combined with a tough economy led to the business’ end at the onset of the Great Depression. After Robert Buchanan passed away in 1930, McDermott struggled to keep the Buick dealership afloat. The shop closed, but McDermott refused to sell the building, instead choosing to lease it to Waco’s National Guard unit.

Prior to the 1930s, the National Guard made use of the grounds of Waco’s famous Cotton Palace for their training and storage facility. Yet the demise of the cotton industry concurrent with the Depression led to the closure of the Cotton Palace. The vacant McDermott building—with its spacious, sturdy structure which lent itself to vehicle maintenance and storage—proved to be an ideal replacement. After the lease began in 1931, the National Guard temporarily renamed the structure Fort Fiske Wright, to honor a revered local officer who died heroically in World War I. In addition to its utilitarian purposes, Fort Fiske Wright served as a sort of civic center where veterans gathered to smoke and play dominoes and their sons brought dates to dances.

The advent of the Second World War led to the building transitioning from military use to wartime aviation production. Few National Guardsmen remained in Waco, and in 1941, Fort Fiske Wright closed. In 1943, McDermott leased the property to North American Aviation, one of the US military’s main suppliers of aircraft. The company painted over the windows and the army supervised the assembly site, but despite these efforts at secrecy, Wacoans discussed the airplane wings which were constructed there and shipped elsewhere for assembly. 

At the conclusion of World War II, the McDermott Motors building served once again as an automobile dealership for a short time when leased to D. T. Hicks, before entering a period of twenty years of disuse. Although McDermott received several offers from prospective buyers, he refused to sell the property until 1978. For a short time, a Christian bookstore resided in the historic building, and beginning in 1988, the charitable organization Caritas ran its operations there. Yet after a furnace fire resulted in enormously high repair costs, the building once again sat vacant.

The turn of the century brought about new uses for the McDermott Motors building. Texas physician Len Dippel purchased it in 2001, completing some renovations on the building as well as an application to list the building on the National Register of Historic Places. However, his plans to adapt the building into loft-style apartments were never realized, and in 2014, local entrepreneurs Joel and Josh Peel, owners of Hole in the Roof Marketing and Sticker Universe, respectively, bought the property. The brothers plan to complete renovations on the historic building and move their growing businesses into the unique and spacious structure.

This recent revival and repurposing of the McDermott Motors building ensures that the building will continue its legacy of adapting to meet the needs of the city.

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Among the names of the many individuals who served valiantly during World War II, Waco’s own Doris Miller was a hero of national and international acclaim. Although many noted the valor he displayed during the war, some argue he still has not received the honors due him.

Born as the third of four sons to Connery and Henrietta Miller on October 12, 1919, Doris, named for the midwife present at his birth, grew up on a small sharecrop farm just outside of Waco in Speegleville, Texas. Years later, Henrietta Miller admitted that she had hoped for a baby girl, and her wishful thinking led to the feminine name, despite her husband’s protests. 

Along with his siblings, Doris worked to support the family farm from an early age. In his youth, he became an excellent marksman as he hunted for small game with his brothers. Doris also had a successful school career at A. J. Moore High School. His tall stature gained the attention of the football coach at the school who recruited Doris as a fullback on the team.

However, as Doris became older, and as war loomed on the horizon, he longed to join the armed forces much to the chagrin of his parents. After several attempts to join different sectors of the military, Doris Miller enlisted in the US Navy in Dallas, Texas, on September 16, 1939. Unfortunately, at the time of his enlistment, discrimination limited the areas of service for African Americans in the military. After training, his assignment was as a mess attendant, third class. It was from this station that Miller answered the call in extraordinary circumstances.

Assigned to the USS West Virginia anchored at Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, Doris was collecting laundry in the hull of the ship when the attack began, according to some reports. As the air raid sirens started, Doris Miller burst into action. When he ran to the deck of the ship, he saw his captain sprawled, fatally wounded, on the ground. Miller pulled the wounded captain to safety before racing back to an unmanned antiaircraft gun in the midst of low-flying planes and a rain of bullets. Despite discriminatory policies that forbade Miller or other sailors of color to man heavy artillery, Miller seized control of a .50 caliber machine gun to fire at attacking Japanese planes. He committed his efforts to the defense of the West Virginia until superiors ordered all to abandon ship. Conflicting accounts exist of Miller’s actions that day, but the most widely circulated reports won him quick and international attention. 

After the attack, the military awarded Miller with an unprecedented honor. He became the first African American recipient of the Navy Cross, the highest decoration the navy can offer besides the Congressional Medal of Honor. The navy leveraged Miller’s new status by returning him to the home front for a short time to act as a recruiter. In 1943, Miller received a promotion to petty officer, ship’s cook third class, and was assigned to the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay. That November, in the Battle of Makin Island, a Japanese torpedo struck the Liscome Bay and the ship sunk within minutes. Miller did not survive the attack.

While awarded the Purple Heart posthumously, Doris Miller never received the Congressional Medal of Honor, which many believe he deserved. Those who fight for his legacy still lobby for its award.

Though his life was cut short due to the call of active duty, Doris Miller lives on in public memory. Throughout the nation, streets, schools, and parks bear his name. In Waco, his hometown, stands the Doris D. Miller Park and the Doris Miller Family YMCA, active reminders of one African American man’s willingness to serve his country despite its discriminatory practices. Cultural Arts of Waco is currently raising money for a Doris Miller Memorial to be located on the east bank of the Brazos River.

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Ten weeks after the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, Waco was chosen as the site for a military training camp. The United States initially lacked the military manpower needed to fight in the war and needed to rapidly increase the number enrolled in the armed forces. Cooperation between Waco businessmen and the federal government allowed construction to begin on a troop training complex on July 20, 1917. Spread out on 10,700 acres of cotton fields and blackland farms, the military camp cost five million dollars to construct.

The site was named for Lt. Gen. Arthur MacArthur, a Medal of Honor recipient who served in the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. Eighteen thousand troops arrived to begin their training in September of 1917. These National Guardsmen, primarily from Wisconsin and Michigan, boosted the Waco population, stimulating economic growth for the city. Though Camp MacArthur possessed the capacity to hold around forty-five thousand troops, no more than twenty-eight thousand resided at the Waco training compound.

The camp consisted of administration offices, a tent city, a base hospital, and a number of other military buildings. Loretta Johnston, a nurse at the hospital in 1918, described the base as “very pleasing to the eye” and the hospital as a “pleasant place for [the] sick and convalescent soldiers.” Johnston also wrote of a recreation hall in the hospital which housed parties and dances for the nurses and officers on weekends.

The troops from Wisconsin and Michigan formed the Thirty-Second Infantry Division of the National Guard. After receiving basic training in Waco, these troops joined the American Expeditionary Forces near Langres, France, on February 24, 1918, where they received more training and ultimately became a front line unit.

After the deployment of the Thirty-Second Infantry Division, Camp MacArthur became an infantry replacement and training camp, as well as an officer school. Recruits from Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, and New Mexico arrived in Waco to receive their training until the camp became a demobilization center following the armistice of November 11, 1918.

The military center affected Waco in a number of ways. The population boost stimulated a period of economic prosperity which continued until the Great Depression. After the war’s conclusion, many soldiers returned to Waco. Even the annual fair held at the Texas Cotton Palace came to reflect the military presence in Waco. The Cotton Palace Exposition of 1917 catered heavily to soldiers, including exhibits such as a bullet-ridden German biplane. Additionally, the US Army’s insistence upon decreasing distractions for soldiers led to the closing of Waco’s red-light district known as “The Reservation.”

Camp MacArthur officially closed on March 7, 1919, and the land it formally encompassed was incorporated into the city of Waco. Portions of the materials from the camp were then used to construct a portion of the US-Mexican border; others were used to build houses in the Edgefield neighborhood in Waco.

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