Leah Weatherby

Sgt. Leah Weatherby, the daughter of Cecil T. and Iva Gingrich Weatherby, was one of fewer than 2,800 women in the United States Marine Corps in the early 1950s. After completing boot camp at Parris Island, she was assigned duties at Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia where the Marine Corps put her photographic skills to use taking pictures of VIPs in Washington, D.C. and at Arlington National Cemetery. As a civilian, she had been working in photography at Cornell University, and it was at this time that she did a bit of modeling as well. While visiting a Crosley automobile showroom in Ithaca, New York with a friend who was looking to make a new-car purchase, a photographer who happened to be at that dealership spotted Leah and offered her the on-camera 'Miss Crosley' part at the 1952 Waldorf-Astoria Auto Show. Another military assignment involved photographing aerial scenes of the nation's capital from a helicopter with only a strap across the door to keep her in the aircraft. A transfer to Quantico followed and Leah's camera skills then were utilized taking identification photos of students entering the Officer Candidate School, and since she considered that duty boring, her request for a transfer back to Henderson Hall was granted and Weatherby returned to Arlington and a one-week duty to the funeral detail at Arlington National Cemetery. On her first day there, eleven funerals - all Marines who had been killed in Korea - were held. In 1953, following a transfer to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, Leah met and married James Newcomb, a musician in the Marine Corps band, and though his hitch ended the next year they spent twenty-three more years together as a Marine Corps couple at bases in California, Pennsylvania, Hawaii and North Carolina. She always looked back fondly at her service years, naming her time in Hawaii as a favorite and specifying the years of camaraderie as most enjoyable, saying that the relatively few women in the military at the time were treated well.