Delta E. Hagan papers, 1918-2012

Delta Eve Hagan (1892-1963) was one of 223 women selected to serve as telephone operators during World War I (WWI). More commonly known as ‘Hello Girls,’ the operators served with the Army Signal Corps charged with setting up communication in France between commands. Born in Hiawatha, Kansas, on December 1, 1892, Delta was the second of four children born to Andrew Jackson Hagan and his wife, Anna Rosene Barr. Following her parents’ divorce in 1904, her mother married Asariah Moore, and the family moved to Monticello, Minnesota, in 1912.

In response for a national call for telephone operators, Hagan enlisted in the Signal Corps on August 16, 1918, and was assigned to the Sixth Unit of the Signal Corps Telephone Operators (Female). Hagan had four years of switchboard experience with the Northwestern Telephone Exchange in Minnesota. Female operators displayed greater speed and dexterity for managing the switchboard than their male counterparts which was critical for rapid communication. Operators typically handled over 250 calls per hour. Hagan served in Chaumont, France, at the headquarters of General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, from September 1918 to July 1919. She returned to the United States following the Paris Peace Conference and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 29, 1919.

Following the war, Hagan returned to work as a telephone operator in Minnesota where she regularly gave lectures on her experiences in France. She married Albert August Kruger on October 10, 1920, in Monticello and their only child, daughter Rose Ann Kruger was born the following year. The family later moved to Portland, Oregon, where Hagan was active in the Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary.

After the war ended, the U.S. government claimed the female operators has merely been contractors, rather than enlisted members of the Signal Corps, and denied the women veteran’s status. Fellow Hello Girl Merle Egan Anderson teamed with Seattle Attorney Mark Hough in pursuit of federal recognition for their service. The passage of the G.I. Improvement Bill in 1977, nearly six decades after the end of World War I, finally brought the operators the recognition as veterans they had long been seeking. Only eighteen the operators lived to officially receive their WWI Victory Medal and veteran’s status they had been denied for so long. Sadly, Delta Hagan Kruger was not among them having died in Portland on January 11, 1963, at the age of 70