Margaret Irene Vajda

U.S. Naval Reserve

Pharmacist Mate 3rd Class

Service # 4494242

Margaret Irene Vajda was born in East Chicago, Indiana, to Julius and Helen Vajda on June 20 1923. Julius had been born in Szatman, Hungary in 1892. After immigrating to the United States as a young man he settled in Hammond, Indiana, and found work as a watchman. He married Helen Scerpes and in the early 1920s they started a large family which by 1940 included seven children: Helen, Margaret, Julius, Rose Marie, John, Geraldine, and Ernest. About 1935 Julius moved the family to the Washington, D.C., area where he found work as a machinist in the Navy Yard.

Margaret finished high school at Maryland Park High School in Capitol Heights, Maryland, about 1941, and went to work as a stenographer at an insurance company. On July 21, 1943, one day after her 20th birthday, she enlisted in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services) in Washington, D.C., and trained—probably for 6 weeks—at Hunter College in New York City before being sent to the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Hospital. She earned the rank of Hospital Apprentice 1st Class (Ha1c) during these months. Training completed, she reported for duty at the the Naval Air Primary Training Command Station at Fairfax Airport in Kansas City, Kansas, on October 23, 1943, and a few months later, on the 1st of January, she was promoted to Pharmacist’s Mate 3d Class.

While in Kansas she met and became engaged to Mllton Webster, an airman in the U.S. Navy. While he was training in California, she lived with his parents in Kansas City. She traveled to the Olathe Naval Air Station hospital for dental surgery and follow up treatments in February, usually going by car, but on February 26, 1944, she decided to avail herself of a flight aboard a Lockheed Lodestar (R-50-5, #12480) that was doing a transport training flight from NAS Olathe Field to Fairfax Airport. The plane crashed while attempting to take-off, rising 75 feet before falling, pancaking on the runway, and bursting into flames. Five of the officers and enlisted men were thrown from the plane upon impact and survived. Eleven others, including 3 WAVES, perished in the flames. Among the latter was Pharmacist’s Mate 3d Class Margaret Vajda.

Margaret Irene Vajda was buried with full military honors on March 3, 1944, in Arlington National Cemetery, initially in grave 5069-A-1 of section 18. Four years later, when the remains of her brother Private 1st Class Julius M. Vajda were returned from Europe, the Vajda family elected, at their own expense, to have Margaret’s remains moved to a grave adjacent to his. She is buried in Section 18 grave 5586-H; brother Julius is in grave 5586-G.

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 421,000+ of the US WWII fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? These stories will be accessible via smartphone app at any war memorial or cemetery. If you noticed anything erroneous in this profile or have additional information to contribute to it, please contact me at ceheditor@aol.com or email feedback@storiesbehindthestars.org

Sources:

Ancestry. com

U.S. Federal Census 1940

City Directories, Hammond Indiana 1910, 1920s

City Directories, 1930s, Washington, D.C.

U.S. National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928-1962

Fold3. com

War Diary 1 Feb 1944-29 Feb 1944, Nav Air Prim Tr Com Kansas City http://www.fold3.com/image/272846477

Muster Rolls, 1943-1944, Naval Air Primary Training Command Station, Fairfax Airport, Kansas City, Kansas

Newspapers.com

Evening Star, Washington, D.C., February 27, 1944; February 28, 1944

Wyandotte County Record, Kansas City, Kansas, March 3, 1944

SBTSProject/Maryland/Prince George's County

Vajda, Margaret Irene