Hear a 98-year-old Marine veteran tell her story

'I've been a helper all my life': Hear a 98-year-old Marine veteran tell her story

River Towns
By Hannah Black
May 29, 2019

In 2017, Fremont was honored for her service at an annual Marine Corps birthday ball in Washington D.C. She was the oldest Marine in attendance and shared a piece of cake with the youngest Marine at the ball, a tradition meant to symbolize the passing of knowledge on to a younger generation.

June Fremont is pictured at Woodbury Senior Living on May 9, 2019, in Woodbury. Photo courtesy of Margaret Wachholz1

WOODBURY — Sitting in an armchair in her apartment at the Woodbury Senior Living villas, June Fremont flipped through a scrapbook, landing on a page that featured group photos of four young women. On the bottom left, the women stood in front of a backdrop of palm trees, all wearing grass skirts. In the photo above, they all held coconuts, one jokingly holding it up to her ear as if listening to it.

"When we got off the train, they ... took us all over Hawaii doing publicity shots," Fremont said.

It was 1945 and she was stationed at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, just four years after the Japanese military had attacked the naval base. Fremont, 98, had volunteered to be part of the first wave of U.S. Marine Corps women to serve "overseas," as Hawaii wouldn't become a state until 1959.
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