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Lady War Hero Obit Reads Like An Adventure Story

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By: Bob Boyer

 

The heroics of Florence (“Betty”) Finch provide the stuff of adventure or spy stories more often than obituaries, but this obituary is both moving and exciting. Betty Finch managed to get a job working for the Japanese in a “Liquid Fuel” company during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II. She successfully collaborated with the Philippine Resistance, “diverting” considerable fuel resources to them. She then added a side-line, smuggling food supplies to American POWs. The Japanese caught her at this, imprisoned and tortured her repeatedly. She never broke. When GIs freed her on Feb. 10, 1945, she weighed 80 pounds. She joined the U.S. Coast Guard “to avenge her husband.” He was a PT Boat crew member who was killed trying to supply the soldiers who were holding out on Corregidor.

Betty received numerous honors, including “the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Ribbon,” the first woman to do so, and the Medal of Freedom, “the forerunner of today’s Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest award to a civilian.” She has been recognized in the “Women in Military Service for American Memorial” in Washington, D.C. “The Coast Guard named a building on Sand Island in Hawaii” after her in 1995. Then “in 2015, the Coast Guard’s official blog said of Mrs. Finch, ‘Of the thousands of women who have served with honor in the United States Coast Guard, one stands out for her bravery and devotion to duty.’” That was Betty.

I am grateful to Sam Roberts who wrote Betty’s obituary published in the Saturday April 29, 2017 edition of “The New York Times” (all of the above quotes are from this article). Mr. Roberts clearly got caught up in his material and succeeded so well that Betty’s picture, in her Coast Guard uniform, and the beginning of the obituary appeared on page one. That’s celebrity treatment for the Times. Deservedly so. He captured Betty as an American and a Filipina.

Betty got her fighting spirit from her father and her quiet strength from her Filipina mother, quite a combination. Her father, Charles Ebersole arrived in the Philippines as one of the American soldiers sent in 1898, supposedly, to fight the Spanish but who ended up fighting the freedom-seeking Filipinos. He made the Philippines his home, met Maria Hermosa, and they had a daughter whom they named Loring May Ebersol. Roberts doesn’t say they married, but I assumed they did, especially since after she was freed in February, 1945, she joined her father’s sister in Buffalo, N.Y. When she married Robert Finch after the war, the family moved from New York City to Ithica in Up-State New York, not too far from Buffalo and her Aunt. She worked as a secretary at Cornell University and raised a family. She is survived by a daughter, a son, six grand-children and two great-grandchildren.

Interestingly none of the neighbors in Ithica or her co-workers at Cornell knew about Mrs. Finch’s wartime exploits or her honors, not until her daughter, “Betty” (of course) Murphy took a hand in matters. When the Coast Guard flew Betty senior to Hawaii for the dedication of the building they named after her in 1995, Betty junior decided “it was time.” She notified the press and the secret was out. As Betty junior puts it, “when she came home and people met her at the bus station, she was flabbergasted.”

It’s nice to know that Betty senior kept in touch with people in the Philippines. A Filipino journalist, L. Lola, wrote on her blog (yomyomf.com) after reading the Times obituary that “My great aunt, who also served as part of the Philippine Resistance, knew her from back then. In fact, whenever she made trips to New York, Finch allowed for her to stay over at her home. Much like Finch, my great aunt was also very modest when speaking of her efforts as part of that movement.”

As some readers may remember, I have written about “strong Filipino women” in this column several times, though not recently. I welcome hearing from anyone who would like to share such stories and would be happy to collect them in future columns.

Contact Bob Boyer at Robert.boyer@snc.edu or <anamericaninmanila. com>.

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