SHINGLETOWN -- Irene Castro played a vital role in a historic -- but little known -- event that quietly marked the end of an era and launched another.
Castro, who joined the Women's Army Corps in 1975, was a member of a detail with the last WAC company in Europe to lower the WAC flag for the final time when the corps was deactivated in 1978. Its members were then integrated into the regular U.S. Army.
But there were no TV or newspaper reporters there to film or capture the moment, she said.
"It's a little bit of lost history," said the 60-year-old Castro, a Shasta County resident since 1999 and the co-founder of the Nor-Cal Chapter 111 of the Women's Army Corps Veterans Association.
Although greatly overshadowed by their male counterparts, more than 150,000 American women served in the Women's Army Corps during World War II and they are credited with making a major contribution to the national war effort.
Castro is a Minneapolis native whose father was at Omaha Beach during the 1944 D-Day invasion. He died when she was only 21/2 years old.
These days women in the military -- past and present -- are slowly but surely starting to get the recognition they deserve, she said.
But a lot has changed for women veterans since Castro ended her military career as a master sergeant in 1995.
They now fly fighter jets, drive tanks and perform other dangerous jobs that were unheard of only a few years ago.
"The ladies are out there," she said.
Raised in South Dakota, Castro worked in a number of dead-end jobs after graduating from high school and was 27 when she enlisted in the Women's Army Corps. She said she enlisted to try to get money for college and to travel and see a bit of the world.
"I wanted to better myself," she said, adding that she enlisted as a finance specialist and that her first duty station was Heidelberg, West Germany. She later worked at the Pentagon for two years as a re-enlistment and career counselor.
She liked the Army so much that she decided to make it her career and earned a bachelor's degree in business management from the University of Maryland during her different assignments in the Army.
But it took her 15 years to do so.
Among the most memorable events of her years in the Army were three visits to the Berlin Wall, starting in 1977.
She gave a 20-minute speech in high school on the Berlin Wall, but she never imagined that one day she would visit it and pound on the wall with a hammer.
At her Emigrant Trail home in Shingletown, she keeps pieces of it as souvenirs, including a hunk of barbed wire.
Castro said she also visited the Dachau concentration camp, which made a lasting impression on her.
"These events made me realize and appreciate the freedom America offers to our citizens," she said. "They also increased my pride as an American soldier."
Castro and her husband, Rod, whom she met while they both worked in the Army as recruiters in the Reno and Carson City areas, were stationed together for the remainder of their Army careers.
After retiring, Castro moved to Shasta County, where she met Jan Hoof of Anderson. The two started a chapter of the Women's Army Corps Veterans Association, which welcomes women veterans from all branches of the military.
And what tales the members have to share about their lives in the military.
"I love to hear their stories," Castro said, especially those of the women who served during World War II.
Although small in number, the association's 17 members do a lot of work.
They have sent packages to troops overseas for the past six years, including 38 boxes to Iraq recently. The association also gives out annual college scholarships and a Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps award, holds yard sales and fashion shows, and its members visit women veterans in retirement facilities and nursing homes.
Her association also was the first group in the north state to sell the yellow magnet ribbons for vehicles that are now so prevalent and is in the midst of compiling recipes from women veterans for a cookbook.
In addition to her work with the association, Castro works on the Nor-Cal Think Pink Breast Cancer Awareness campaign and at the polls as a volunteer on election days. She also does a little freelance writing and has written a few unpublished children's books.
Reporter Jim Schultz can be reached at 225-8223 or at
jschultz@redding.com.
