WWII Female Marine "Determined not to stay behind"

Boston honors female WWII marine
Veteran cited as inspiration
Boston Herald
Dan Atkinson
November 25, 2016

Family portrait of World War II veteran Elizabeth Mackay Howden Denekamp

In 1943, Betty Denekamp watched the men of West Roxbury going off to war, and was determined not to stay behind.

Denekamp joined the United States Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, and more than 70 years later, friends and family are going to see her service permanently commemorated outside the house she lived in nearly all of her life.

“That was the thing I always admired about her, she couldn’t hang around doing nothing,” said Edwin “Bud” Waite, a fellow World War II veteran and longtime friend of Denekamp who led the charge to memorialize her. “She had to do something.”

Her daughter Linda Denekamp said, “I thought it was so outstanding that a woman in those times would leave home at her age and go off and join the Marines. Everyone said the Marines were the best and that’s what she wanted to be.”
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