(1902-1998)
Officer in the U.S. Women’s Army Corps. Mary-Agnes Brown served as executive officer (1943-1944) to Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby, director of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), and as WAC staff director in the Southwest Pacific Area (1944-1945). She was awarded the Legion of Merit. A lawyer for the Veterans Administration, she joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942 and advanced to top leadership positions. She was among the first women officers promoted to the ranks of major and lieutenant colonel in the WAC during World War II. Once the war ended, Lieutenant Colonel Brown served as advisor to Veterans Administration head General Omar N. Bradley on matters pertaining to women veterans.
Born on February 13, 1902, in Washington, D.C., Mary-Agnes Brown was a graduate of George Washington University, where she also earned two law degrees. In 1919, she began a longtime career in veterans-related issues when she worked as a clerk for a predecessor agency of the Veterans Administration. She served as executive secretary to the medical director of the Veterans Bureau (1921-1931) and as an attorney for the Veterans Administration (19311941). Brown coedited Federal Laws Relating to Veterans of Wars of the United States (Annotated) August 1, 1932 and Supplement 1: July 21, 1932 to January 1, 1937 (U.S. Government Printing Office 1932, 1937).
In September 1942, she graduated from Officer Candidate School at the WAAC Training Center at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. Brown served as public relations officer for the Third Service Command and as Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps staff director for the Eighth Service Command (1942-1943) before she assumed her position as executive officer to Director Hobby in Washington, D.C. Colonel Hobby appointed Lieutenant Colonel Brown as WAC staff director in the Southwest Pacific Area, and in mid-March 1944, she arrived in Australia to prepare for the arrival of the first contingent of members of the WAC in May. There she confronted a lack of adequate clothing and supplies, as well as resistance from male officers to recognizing WAC officers’ authority over enlisted women. Several years later, Brown wrote, “In my opinion the service of WAC members was essential to the success of Army operations in New Guinea and the Philippines. I deplore the failure of those immediately over the Staff Director . . . to accept my recommendations on procedures to assure the well-being of WAC personnel, but the WAC mission was accomplished in spite of these and other obstacles and at not too great a sacrifice” (Treadwell 1954, 461).
After the war, she returned to work at the Veterans Administration as head of the women’s division (1945-1946), as chief of the legislative projects division (1946-1948), and as a member of the Board of Veterans Appeals (1949-1959).
On May 28, 1952, she married Dr. Gordon Lewis Groover, who had practiced medicine in Savannah, Georgia, before working at the Veterans Administration in Washington, D.C. Mary-Agnes Brown Groover died on July 22, 1998, in Washington, D.C., and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
