This was originally published as a column in the Salt Lake Tribune on 25 August 2012.

Soon after America’s entry into World War II, the nation realized that America’s women were vital to wartime success. Most would serve on the home front, conserving resources, raising Victory Gardens and keeping the country’s social fabric strong.

Others built the ships and packed the parachutes needed by soldiers, or entered the civilian workforce to replace men called into service. Nurses were needed everywhere, from battlefields abroad to convalescent hospitals at home.

Some American women — more than 350,000 by war’s end — entered the service as uniformed members of the Army (WACs), Navy (WAVES), Coast Guard (SPARS) and Marine Corps (Women’s Reserves) or in support positions with the Air Force (WASPs).

Resistance to women’s participation was initially strong. “I was violently against it,” Gen. Dwight Eisenhower said after the war’s end. But his attitude changed. “Every phase of the record they compiled during the war convinced me of the error of my first reaction.”

Women were barred from combat duty, although some, especially nurses, served and died under fire. Most, however, were assigned to “safe” positions as secretaries, quartermaster’s clerks, mail sorters and truck drivers. By performing these essential services, women relieved men — whole battalions of them — for combat duty.

Norris Dolvin, of St. Louis, Mo., was 21 when she enlisted in 1944. She visited the various recruiting stations, and after having a Marine recruiter bark at her that she would have to earn any benefit she received, Norris decided that the Marine Corps was the service for her. After boot camp in North Carolina, she was assigned to office duties in the Marine Corps’ Washington, D.C., headquarters.

One day a photographer snapped her picture. Months later, her commandant told Norris that her image, revealing her pride in being an American servicewoman and a Marine, would be used on a recruiting poster.

“There’s a place for you,” the poster’s caption assured patriotic women across the country. Americans saw Norris’ image everywhere, on magazine covers, on postage stamps, on billboards.

One, several stories tall, was mounted on the Golden Gate Bridge, where it greeted ships returning from Pacific duty. And that’s where Woodruff (Woody) Deem, coming home at the end of the war, first saw the picture of the woman he would marry. He continued to see her face on smaller posters as he traveled by train across the continent to his home in Washington, D.C.

None of the posters, of course, identified the blue-eyed redhead in the Marine Corps uniform — so imagine Woody’s shock at coming face to face with the living model when he attended a church service in Washington where Norris was the featured speaker.

He wasted no time in introducing himself, asking if he could call her sometime. Norris was willing but didn’t expect to hear from him; she warned Woody that there was a single telephone serving the four-barracks compound where she lived.

Woody persisted, and early in February 1947, he and Norris (by then a sergeant) traveled to Utah for their wedding.

In the years that followed, the couple raised eight children, living in Washington, California and Hawaii before they settled in Utah in the 1970s, where Woody taught at BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School. They later retired to St. George, where Woody died in 1999.

Norris, who left the Marine Corps soon after her wedding, never stopped her patriotic activities. Celebrated as the woman in the famous poster, she was often invited to speak to civic groups. She enjoyed participating in the American Legion.

In 2003, she took part in a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery recognizing 60 years of women’s Marine Corps service. Presenting a copy of her poster to Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael W. Hagee, Norris told him that, “My greatest honor is that with this poster, I am part of Marine Corps history.”

Norris Dolvin Deem, 89, died last week in Provo. With her passed another of our links with the courageous men and women of the World War II generation. She leaves behind a record of honorable service, one memorialized, in part, by an image assuring the American woman of a place in the service of her country.