Everhart Family History & Genealogy

Fresh out of high school in Maryland, Nan Everhart was ready to see what the world had to offer and what she could learn. She selected to attend Northwest Institute of Medical Technology in Minnesota and study in the areas of x-rays and physiotherapy technical. This gave her satisfaction to be a part of the medical field. The development of the x-ray was a recent advancement in medicine and for dentistry. Nan's education would show her the latest developments and safety procedures to use. Her studies in Minnesota were completed in August of 1934. From there she entered George Washington University in late 1934. By 1935, Nan was at the University of Pennsylvania in the pre-medical program. She continued at University of Pennsylvania until mid-1937.
During Nan's pre-medical program at the University of Pennsylvania she had found several of her courses to be very difficult. She was questioning whether she could truly follow a medical career. By mid-1937 she made the decision, with her father's influence, to switch to the study of law. From 1937 to mid-1939 she attended the University of Maryland in their School of Law program. She was an excellent student and was able to ace most of the classes. Very few law schools were interested in admitting a female student but Nan investigated various schools of law and was finally enrolled from September 1939 to June 1941 in Eastern University, located in Baltimore, at their Mt. Vernon School of Law. After completing her law courses over the next couple of years, it was on June 7, 1941 that Nannie received her law degree (LL.B.). There were eight males in her graduating law class; Nan was the lone, sole female. She had crossed a major hurtle by showing the skeptics, that she was up to the demands of law.
Now, which way should Nan use her college education and law degree that she had acquired in mid-1941? Her father had always been active in the state Republican Party so she thought she would run for the Maryland State Legislature. This became her focus in 1941. Nan was on the Maryland ballot as the first woman to run for a seat in the Maryland House of Representatives. Being the first at anything can be an uphill battle. She only needed to win her district of Frederick County. She campaigned long and hard but the general public found a woman lawmaker difficult to accept. She lost by a narrow margin.
But this defeat did not discourage Nan. She had always loved Washington, D. C. from the family visits to her days attending George Washington University. So she went to Washington in 1942 to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) headquarters with all her qualifications in hand. She had a college education, training in the medical field and a law degree. Nan chose to apply for the position of a FBI agent. She had all the required schooling necessary for a rookie agent and she was willing to start at the bottom. But the director of the Bureau, J. Edgar Hoover, did not see things that way. He was not about to have a female agent, qualified or not in his bureau. Her application to become an agent was rejected.
Nan was unsure now of her future and what to do but world events had changed the scene at the end of 1941 and into 1942. The attack at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 and the United States entering the Second World War began to open some doors to women. The Women's Army Corp (WAC) was created to help fill positions of service within the U. S. Army and free up more men for military combat. With encouraging words from her father, Nan decided to join the WAC. She was sworn into the Women's Army Corp on October 23, 1942 at Ft. Myers in Virginia and received her 2nd Lieutenant commission in February 1943.
She now had the opportunity to put her skills and abilities to work. One of her first positions included serving as an instructor at the WAC Administration School. She later became an assistant director of WAC Administration School. She worked as an assistant to a Judge Advocate, an auditor in the finance department and then promoted to a 1st Lieutenant.
Nan had a special background check done on her by pre-CIA agents of the government, who questioned her hometown friends and family about her character. After being approved, she became part of secret military observation of new female recruits entering the Women's Army Corp.
Even at the close of the war in 1945 she continued in the Women's Army Corp serving, as an Adjutant in New York City and by 1947 was sent overseas to Austria. There she was as an assistant to a Judge Advocate, then as the only woman judge in a trial panel and also as the defense council (attorney) on a General Court Martial Court. Some of her duties even were tied in with the ongoing Nuremberg trials in Germany.
In August 1948, Nan applied for a regular U. S. Army commission and was given the rank of captain in the reserve of the Women's Army Corp. Nan became the first woman from the state of Maryland to receive such a commission and rank of captain. It wasn't until she met and fell in love in late 1948 with a captain in the US Air Force that she was ready to resign her military commission in March 1949. She now felt she had served her country to the best of her abilities and helped set the standards in the future for a woman's place and role whether it be in government, military or law enforcement.