Merrill Hart McGlamery, Sr. (December 1, 1924–November 19, 2000)

By Garrett East and Sarah Schneider

Early Life: Childhood in Tampa, Florida

Merrill Hart McGlamery was born in Tampa, Florida, to Joseph Edward and Hollie Lee McGlamery, née Townsend, on December 1, 1924.1 The youngest son, McGlamery had six siblings, five of whom were girls.2 His father, Joseph McGlamery, had a job as a tax collector in 1935, and a job as a city sanitary department superintendent in 1940.3 Merrill McGlamery grew up in a large family in the midst of the Great Depression; it is likely that when his siblings were old enough they were expected to contribute to the family income. In 1940, three of McGlamery’s older siblings worked: one as a license clerk at City Hall, another as a stenographer at the Circuit Court Courthouse, and a third as a checker at a shipyard.4

Service: Signal Battalion during World War II

Draft Registration Card for Merrill Hart McGlamery

McGlamery registered for the draft at the age of eighteen on December 26, 1942 in Tampa.5 He registered soon after the draft age limit for the Selective Service was lowered to include eighteen-year-olds; previously, twenty-one-year-olds were the youngest men who could be drafted.6 However, as his draft registration card (seen here) notes, rather than being drafted, McGlamery volunteered for the service less than a month later. On January 8, 1943, he enlisted in the Army, but by April 1943 he switched from serving in the Army to serving in the Marines.7 McGlamery was part of the Company A Signal Battalion and was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.8 In April 1943, he was a Private and took courses at Camp Lejeune in radio operations, according to a muster roll from that month.9 By the next year, April of 1944, McGlamery had advanced to the rank of Corporal.10

At the time of McGlamery’s service in World War II, signal battalions were a vital part of the war effort. Service members trained in radio operations collected information about enemy activity by interpreting radio signals and codes.11 Marines in the Pacific in particular were tasked with intercepting enemy information through radios.12 Though it does not appear that McGlamery was stationed in the Pacific, he may have fulfilled a similar role or trained others in radio operations while in the United States.

Certificate of Marriage for Merrill Hart McGlamery and Julia Jane Galloway

Before McGlamery left the service, he married Julia Jane Galloway in Williamsburg, Virginia on December 24, 1944.13 The couple was married by a Methodist minister, and at the time of his marriage McGlamery was living at the U.S. Naval Hospital at Fort Eustis in Virginia.14 McGlamery left the service on February 20, 1945.15 Also in 1945, Merrill and Julia’s son, Merrill Hart McGlamery, Jr., was born in Charlotte, North Carolina.16

College Attendance between Terms of Service

Following his first term of service in the military, Merrill McGlamery attended Davidson College in North Carolina. A yearbook photograph of McGlamery appears in the 1947 Davidson College yearbook, and he is also listed in the Roster of Students for the college in 1948.17 The 1949 Davidson College Catalog includes information on one of its first pages about the college’s efforts to educate Veterans through financial assistance programs of the Veterans Administration.18 Davidson offered an accelerated program geared toward the needs of Veterans, including summer coursework to allow students to complete their degrees at a faster pace.19 McGlamery appears to have taken advantage of this program because he was enrolled in two summer terms in 1948.20 He graduated Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Davidson College on August 27, 1948 with a Bachelor's of Science degree.21

Second Term of Service and Career as an Engineer

Four years after leaving the service, McGlamery reenlisted on January 29, 1949 and was later released from the service on June 14, 1973.22 McGlamery and his wife lived in El Paso, Texas in the 1950s (and perhaps longer) during which time McGlamery is listed as being a field engineer for Firestone Stores, engineer for Firestone, and assistant manager at General Electric.23 His career at General Electric also included work as an electronics engineer, and he contributed his expertise to the space program. General Electric was contracted by NASA to design products for use in space.24 GE created a Missile & Space Vehicle Department in 1955, and McGlamery may have eventually been part of this department.25 McGlamery lived near Fort Bliss and Briggs Air Force Base while in El Paso, so it is likely that he had connections with these institutions during his military service and/or work as an engineer.26 While in El Paso, Merrill and Julia had a daughter, Margaret Elizabeth, in 1951.27

By 1959, the McGlamery family had moved to Denver, Colorado.28 McGlamery worked as a manager at Martin Company—the Glenn L. Martin Company and later Lockheed Martin—which built a site in Denver around that time to create missiles and rockets, often as a contractor for the military.29 McGlamery eventually moved to Florence, Colorado, where he may have continued work in the field of electronics engineering and management.30

Post-Service: Move to Florida

McGlamery returned to his home state of Florida around 1985, and he was living in Dunnellon, FL, when he passed away on November 19, 2000.31 He and his wife had been married for fifty-five years before he passed away.32 His son, Dr. Merrill Hart McGlamery, Jr., lived in St. Petersburg, FL, and his daughter, Margaret Elizabeth Thom, lived in Florence, CO at the time of Merrill Sr.’s death.33 McGlamery was also survived by three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.34 He is memorialized at Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell, Florida.35

Endnotes

1 "Virginia, Marriages, 1936-2014," database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed April 20, 2017), entry for Merrill Hart McGlamery, Warwick, VA; Note: Many documents list Merrill Hart McGlamery’s birthdate as December 4, 1924.

2 “Florida, State Census, 1867-1945,” database, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed April 20, 2017), entry for Merill McGlamary sic, 1935.

3 “Florida State Census, 1935,” database, FamilySearch.org (https://familysearch.org : accessed June 23, 2017), entry for Joe E McGlamary sic, Tampa, FL; “United States Census, 1940,” database, FamilySearch.org (https://familysearch.org : accessed June 23, 2017), entry for Joe E McGlamery, Tampa, FL.

4 “United States Census, 1940,” database, FamilySearch.org(https://familysearch.org : accessed June 23, 2017), entry for Joe E McGlamery, Tampa, FL.

5 “Draft Registration Cards for Florida, 10/16/1940 - 03/31/1947,” database, Fold3.com (https://www.fold3.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for Merrill Hart McGlamery, Tampa, FL.

6 Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, World War II: The Encyclopedia of the War Years, 1941-1945 (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2012), 725.

7 “U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010,” database, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed April 20, 2017), entry for M. McGlamery.; "U.S. Marine Corps Muster Rolls, 1798-1958," database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for Merrill H McGlamery, Apr 1943.

8 "U.S. Marine Corps Muster Rolls, 1798-1958," database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for Merrill H McGlamery, Apr 1943.

9 Ibid.

10 U.S. Marine Corps Muster Rolls, 1798-1958," database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for Merrill H McGlamery, Apr 1944.

11 Gordon L. Rottman, U.S. Marine Corps World War II Order of Battle: Ground and Air Units in the Pacific War, 1939-1945 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 234.

12 Ibid.

13 "Virginia, Marriages, 1936-2014," database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed April 20, 2017), entry for Merrill Hart McGlamery, Warwick, VA.

14 Ibid.

15U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010,” database, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed April 20, 2017), entry for M. McGlamery.

16 “North Carolina Birth Index, 1800-2000,” database, FamilySearch.org (https://familysearch.org/ : accessed June 21, 2017), entry for Merrill H McGlamery Jr.

17 "U.S., School Yearbooks, 1880-2012," database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for M McGlamery, Davidson College, 1947.; "U.S., School Yearbooks, 1880-2012," database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for M H McGlamery, Davidson College, 1948.

18 “Davidson College Catalog, 1949” (Davidson, NC: Davidson College, 1949), accessed on June 21, 2017 https://archive.org/details/davidsoncollegec19491950, i.

19 Ibid., ii.

20 Ibid., ii, 142, 146.

21 Ibid., 119.; “Miscellaneous Citrus County, Florida Obituaries…Merrill McGlamery Sr., 75, of Dunnellon,” GenealogyBuff.com, accessed June 20, 2017 http://www.genealogybuff.com/fl/fl-citrus-obits22.htm; https://archive.org/stream/davidsoncollegec19491950/davidsoncollegec19491950_djvu.txt.

22 Ibid.

23 "U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995," database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for Merrill H McGlamery, El Paso, Texas, 1954.; "U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995," database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for Merrill H McGlamery, El Paso, Texas, 1955.; "U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995," database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for Merrill H McGlamery, El Paso, Texas, 1956.; "U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995," database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for Merrill H McGlamery, El Paso, Texas, 1957.

24 Joan Lisa Bromberg, NASA and the Space Industry (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 57.

25 Ibid., 24.

26 "U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995," database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for Merrill H McGlamery, El Paso, Texas, 1957.

27 “Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997,” database, FamilySearch.org (https://familysearch.org : accessed June 21, 2017), entry for Margaret Elizabeth McGlamery.

28 “U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995,” database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for Merrill McGlamery, II, Denver, Colorado, 1959.

29 Ibid.; “U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995,” database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for Merrill McGlamery, II, Denver, Colorado, 1960.; Joan Lisa Bromberg, NASA and the Space Industry, 23.

30 “Obituaries…McGLAMERY, MERRILL HART SR,” St. Petersburg Times, November 21, 2000, accessed April 20, 2017.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.; “Miscellaneous Citrus County, Florida Obituaries…Merrill McGlamery Sr., 75, of Dunnellon,” GenealogyBuff.com, accessed June 20, 2017 http://www.genealogybuff.com/fl/fl-citrus-obits22.htm; https://archive.org/stream/davidsoncollegec19491950/davidsoncollegec19491950_djvu.txt.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

35 “U.S. Veterans Gravesites, ca. 1775-2006,” database, Ancestry.com, (https://www.Ancestry.com : accessed June 12, 2017), entry for Merril sic H McGlamery;

© 2017, University of Central Florida

×
×
© 2017 UCF