“I always give the same answer because it makes people laugh,” says Drake, a former VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System volunteer and World War II Veteran. “I say it’s the fact that I did not marry.”

Her response draws good-natured laughter, but Drake actually did have plans to marry after serving with the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) from 1944-46. But she and her fiancé, Ivor Jones, never got the chance because he died in a motor-vehicle accident.

Although heartbroken, Drake moved forward with her life.

“After that, I started to just have my own life,” said Drake, adding she never expected she’d one day be celebrating her 100th birthday. “And I loved it, dancing, playing tennis and traveling.”

Born in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1925 to Polish immigrants Alexander and Josephine Dziekiewicz, Drake was just 19 when she enlisted. She chose the Army because it offered servicewomen the best chance to be sent overseas. She lied about her age, though, because recruits had to be at least 21 years old, or 20 with a parent’s signature.

“My father did not want me to go, but my mother talked him into it, so he signed off,” says Drake, who changed her last name because Drake is easier to pronounce and spell than Dziekiewicz (pronounced jack-o-witz). “My mother said she was enjoying their new life in America, and she felt letting me join could be something she could give back to our country.”

Drake left home for the first time in her life in 1945 to attend eight weeks of basic training at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. It was January, she says, with early morning classes and trainings in cold weather that included, in the final round, gas-mask training in a chamber filled with tear gas.

“And then, of course, there was KP, and you’d be peeling potatoes for half a day, or slicing bread for half a day, and nobody enjoyed that,” says Drake.

During basic, Drake lost her two front teeth. The culprit? A mess hall pork chop.

“A bone got caught between my teeth and broke some,” Drake says. “In those days, they didn’t give you caps. They just pulled your teeth, so I was without two front teeth.”

The Army quickly fixed her up with a partial and shipped her off to Orlando Army Air Base. There, she worked as a stenographer, transcribing interviews with GIs seeking dependency discharges because military service created significant financial or personal hardships at home.

“I was just 19 and man alive, I grew up so fast,” says Drake. “I heard stories like I’d never heard before in my life. Most of it was because of wives running around and cheating on them, or children were not being taken care of…other than that, it could be all sorts of reasons, like a sickness in the family.”

Fluent in Polish, Drake dreamed of deploying overseas, but the Army had filled its quota for women in Europe. A sergeant suggested she try for a civilian job at the Polish embassy in Warsaw or Washington, D.C., and wrote a letter on her behalf to the one in D.C.

Drake had forgotten about working for the Polish embassy when a series of unexpected events while on holiday leave in New York ended with an interview for the D.C. job. She and a fellow WAC soldier had made reservations to stay at Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt’s mansion for New Year’s in 1945, only to arrive to find its doors shuttered.

“We took a cab out to the mansion, the driver dropped us off and when we got to door, there was a big sign that said ‘closed,’” says Drake. “They didn’t tell us. So here we are in New York, with no place to stay.” 

The pair “tramped the streets of New York all day and all evening” searching without luck for a room, Drake says, only to end up in the Bowery – better known at the time as Skid Row for its flophouses and cheap saloons.

“That was really an experience for two young women who had never been away from home, with all the bums around,” says Drake. “But we were so tired and exhausted, we took a room and piled all the furniture up against the door, and of course the mattresses were dirty, and the curtains were dirty, but we were so tired we just passed out, in our uniforms.”

They found cleaner accommodations the next day with the Salvation Army, where a sympathetic clerk got a message to their commanding officer advising they were stuck in the city because all trains to Florida were booked with snowbirds. The officer directed them to take a free troop commuter train to Bolling Field in Washington, D.C., where they were to catch a military flight to Orlando.

Drake never made the flight, landing instead in a Washington hospital after a train window “blew out” en route. Exposure to a steady stream of cold winter air for hours aggravated an infection she’d contracted after swimming in an Orlando lake that caused the left side of her face to swell. But the hospital stay worked out for the best because she was still in D.C. when she received a telegram to interview at the embassy.

“Lucky, lucky, lucky for me, I stayed at the hospital for four days, because on the third day, I got the message that I was to interview at the embassy in Washington, and I just happened to already be there,” Drake says. 

Drake got the embassy job and started in February 1946 after exiting the Army at the rank of sergeant. During her tenure at the embassy, she worked for Czeslaw Milosz, a Polish-American diplomat and poet who went on to win the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature, and she met President Harry S. Truman during a White House Garden Party for Veterans at Mt. Alto Hospital.

“I got the thrill of shaking hands with President Truman, and Mrs. Truman, and Margaret Truman,” says Drake. “And then the whole legislative staff, Secretary Byrnes at that time, and I don’t know who all else.”

In 1952, after Poland came under Communist rule, she resigned her embassy position because “the whole atmosphere became cold” with staff turnover. She went on to work all over the country and the world, including with VA at what is now VA Pittsburgh’s H.J. Heinz III campus, and with the U.S. Air Force in Germany. While overseas, she and her friends toured Europe.

“I had an Opel, a car, and we drove to Paris, and Sweden, and all the capitals,” says Drake. “In Copenhagen, I can remember Tiffany Gardens, one of the most beautiful gardens in the world.”

Upon retiring, Drake moved to California for 29 years. In 2010, she returned to O’Hara Township, near her native Aspinwall, to be closer to family.

During her travels, Drake always made time to volunteer at VA medical centers, including in Pittsburgh, where she was often found assisting Veterans in the H.J. Heinz III campus’s ceramics shop.

Volunteering at VA, she says, allowed her to be around her fellow Veterans.

“I enjoyed being among Veterans, and helping them in any way I could,” says Drake. “And I feel so at home because I also worked at the VA.”

Drake now spends her days visiting with family, dining out, attending meetings of various Veterans service organizations and traveling – she recently returned from New Orleans where she was the guest of honor at a National World War II Museum event.

As for the prospect of turning 100, Drake says she doesn’t feel much different.

“I gave myself until 85, so I never expected 100,” says Drake. “I can’t believe it.”

Editor’s note: to learn more about Emily Drake in her own words, visit Emily Drake Crestwood Oral History Project and the Library of Congress’s Emily Magdalene Drake Collection.