“Thanks!” to Mark Toten for befriending Dorothy Jean Boley and her legacy. She was part of a World War II hiring wave on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway that saw many women go to work for the railroad when huge numbers of male employees left their railroad jobs for the United States armed services.
Ms. Boley shared memories that included seeing German prisoners of war captured from the Afrika Korps, traveling west through West Virginia’s New River Gorge aboard C&O trains to stateside camps, as she hand-delivered paychecks to C&O road crews who were too busy in wartime to leave their trains.
Hired by the C&O in 1943, she would go on to serve 43 years on the railroad. She was believed to be the last living female wartime hire on the C&O Railway.
Thanks to Mark Totten, pictured here with Ms. Dorothy Jean Boley in her hometown of Hinton, West Virginia, during their final encounter.
