Wilma Ophelia Spears certainly was beautiful. And her rose-colored headstone at Lone Mountain Cemetery bears a single, tantalizing line: “OSS Veteran WW II.” But her life? Well, that’s something of a mystery.
Born in November, 1922, in Mecklenburg, North Carolina, Wilma was the third of five children (though only four survived; a younger sister died in infancy in 1927). Her father, Matthew “Mack” Spears (Sr.) was a lawyer. And her 18-year-old self was still living with her siblings, parents, and an aunt at 306 Maple Ave in Rutherford, NC, according to the 1940 Census.
Wilma apparently had good writing skills; brief newspaper columns show her as a “reporter” for her 11th grade high school class, dishing details of various school-related activities for the Charlotte Observer.
As for exactly how Wilma Spears wound up working for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) after graduation, there’s one strong clue: her older sister, Shirley Spears Rosenblatt, also was employed by the OSS. So perhaps Shirley was instrumental in securing a similar job for the younger Wilma. But there’s still one more mystery: while Shirley’s name clearly shows up in online OSS personnel records, that same list somehow doesn’t include Wilma. Sister Shirley was a CAF-4 – translation: a civilian employee doing “administrative/fiscal” work. Perhaps Wilma performed similar tasks.
The timing makes sense. Wilma would have been twenty years old when the OSS was formed, in 1942. A predecessor of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services was formed to improve intelligence during World War II. Between 1942 and 1945, it would employ some 13,000 personnel, roughly 4,000 of them women.
Women were often recruited for OSS positions through civilian contacts, rather than military channels. A bright young woman with strong writing skills like Wilma might have been seen as a good fit for the “Research and Analysis Branch,” doing clerical or communications work. And Washington D.C. would have been an exciting place for a young woman just out of high school.
We don’t know, of course, exactly what Wilma did. But in addition to clerical work, female OSS employees might work as researchers, communications specialists, cryptographers, and counterintelligence specialists. Some OSS employees even served as undercover spies; one of the Allies’ most celebrated war-time spies in France was the OSS’s Virginia Hall. Cooking celebrity Julia Child (then McWilliams) was employed at the Washington D.C. office in 1944 as a civilian research assistant and clerk, later working overseas in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and China.
Wilma likely spent no more than two or three years in Washington. By September, 1945, with the war over, President Truman abolished the organization, transferring its security functions to other government agencies. The usefulness of its intelligence work, however, did not go unnoticed. The Central Intelligence Group was formed in 1946, and in 1947 Congress authorized creation of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Although both her parents spent their whole lives in North Carolina, Wilma did not decide to stay there. By March, 1949 she had made her way to California; son Daniel M. Howard was born there that year. Her relationship with Daniel’s father, was apparently soon over; the 1950 census-taker found a divorced Wilma living in a San Francisco apartment. She was 27 at the time, caring for one-year-old son Daniel, and unemployed. She remained in San Francisco in 1951, according to brief newspaper mention.
She may have remarried; a second son, Stephen Smith, was born in 1954. The rest of Wilma’s life, however, remains a mystery.
Wilma’s older sister, Shirley, wed a US Army Air Force major; Shirley passed away in 2004 and is buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.
Wilma died in Carson City seven years later, at the age of 88, in April, 2011. She left behind her two sons, Daniel and Stephen, seven grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, one great-great grandchild — and for those who visit her stone, two mysteries. What’s the full story behind her OSS service, and how exactly did the rest of her life unfold, once the War was over?
Two things we do know: she was loved. And someone valued her war-time OSS service enough to make sure it was recognized.
