Margaret Utinsky didn't serve in the military, but she served her country, in my eyes she's an honored Veteran.
She was born Aug. 26, 1900, to James and Lydia (Horner) Doolin, and spent her childhood on a farm in Canada. In 1919 she married John Rowley, he died the following year leaving Margaret and their baby boy, Charles Grant Rowley behind.
Some 15 years later Margaret and her son traveled to the Philippines for what was supposed to be a 6 month visit. However, while she was there, she met and fell in love with a young Virginian by the name of John (Jack) Utinsky, an engineer who worked for the U.S. Government. They married in 1936. It would be many years, nightmares, scars, and ultimately triumphs before she would leave the islands for good. When she did leave, she wrote her story in a book entitled Miss U. Without this book, there's no doubt her experiences would have died with her.
Shortly before WWII swept into the Philippines, it was strongly suggested that the wives of Americans leave the country. While her son was back in the United States, Margaret Utinsky said,
"I was born Peggy Doolin, and having Irish blood, I don't like being told what to do."
She took an apartment in Manilla while her husband headed off to Bataan to work. Then the Japanese raided. She had no idea what had become of her husband, but she was determined to find him.
To avoid capture, she created a new identity. She became Rosena Utinsky, a Lithuanian nurse. As a volunteer nurse with the Red Cross, she was able to maneuver herself as close as possible to areas where Americans had fallen. On the way to Bataan, she came to the road where the infamous Death March had taken place.
"The dead bodies were everywhere", she wrote "I was sick with shock....after this trip through filth and nightmare, when everything seemed to be festering death, I knew I couldn't stop until I had given every ounce of my strength to help the men who still lived. And somewhere among them was Jack, I was sure of that."
While trying to find her husband, she took on a remarkable mission. She organized and led a secret network that smuggled food, medicine, money, shoes, anything that might help the American prisoners. Her code name was Miss U. While her work, and those of others, is credited for saving the lives of many injured, starving, Americans in death camps, her story is far from fairy-tale caliber. Suspected of helping prisoners, she was interrogated and tortured in a prison for a month. But worst of all, her search for her husband only yielded more heartbreak. She learned that he had survived the Death March only to die from starvation in a prison in 1942.
She continued to carry on with her work. Certain that she'd be imprisoned again, she joined the guerrilla efforts against the Japanese while waiting for the tide to turn in the war.
"If I had looked ahead, I would have never made it through those months", she wrote. "There are things you know beyond any question that are impossible. The strange thing is that human beings learn to do the impossible if they have to. What helped me the most was knowing I couldn't see ahead. At first, I lived from week to week. Then it was day to day, then finally minute by minute."
She lived to see the end of the war, and for her efforts, she was presented with the Medal of Freedom in 1946. Two years later her book was published. Margaret Elizabeth Utinsky died Aug. 30, 1970 from cardiac arrest at Pioneer Sanitarium in Lakewood, CA. She was buried 4 days later at nearby Roosevelt Memorial Park.
