You wouldn’t know she’s well on her way to 101.
Luta Mae “Cornie” McGrath still drives, makes 9 a.m. daily
Mass when she can and protests being dropped off at the curb
when going out to eat – she needs her exercise, after all.
The convert to the Faith has been a regular parishioner at
Queen of Apostles Church in Alexandria since the early 1960s
when she moved to Annandale with her husband, Thomas. Her
time in Northern Virginia has been her life’s second phase,
however – the one that followed her service in World War II
as one of the American military’s highest ranking female
officers.
Humble beginnings
Born in November 1907 in rural eastern Kentucky, Cornie lost
her father at age 5, leaving her mother “with three of us and
no money,” she said.
After high school, she was drawn to the Army and joined in
1943 – a year after Congress passed a bill allowing women to
serve, albeit still with many restrictions. It was in the
Army where her nickname, derived from her maiden name,
“Cornelius,” really stuck.
Soon after enlisting, Cornie was assigned to the Ordnance
Corps, the section of the Army designed to support the
development and production of weapons and weapons systems,
and was stationed for four years in Texarkana, Texas.
“I was assigned to anything the men were assigned to,” she
said, adding that she was treated with “the greatest respect
all the way through the Army” – though some of the male
officers at first were resentful of women taking their jobs.
In 1947, Cornie was sent to Frankfurt, Germany, where she met
her future husband, Thomas J. McGrath – who she still calls
“Mac” out of Army-day habit. A year later, she was in Berlin
during the Berlin Blockade and resulting airlift.
According to a publication by the Ordnance Corps, Cornie “was
called upon to plan and organize the storage, handling, and
airlift of precious ammunition into West Berlin to disrupt
this Soviet blockage.”
Upon her return to the United States in 1950, Cornie married
Tom in a Protestant service at Aberdeen Proving Ground in
Maryland.
After nearly 20 years of service, Cornie retired from the
Army in 1961with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and the
couple moved to Virginia.
A change of heart
Raised in a Protestant church, Cornie said her marriage to
her Catholic husband got her thinking about the Catholic
faith. Soon after their wedding, Tom was transferred to
Puerto Rico, and Cornie began attending Mass with her
sister-in-law.
Once in Virginia, the couple joined Queen of Apostles and
Cornie enrolled in the new parish’s first Rite of Christian
Initiation for Adults class.
“He never insisted that I become a Catholic,” Cornie said of
her husband, but he attended all the meetings with her and
served as her co-sponsor.
To this day, Cornie marvels on the difference in the cultures
of the Protestant and Catholic churches – especially how
Catholics are baptized at birth, instead of being left to
choose whether or not they want to join when they are older.
As she began to learn more about Catholicism, she felt
herself drawn to it.
“I liked everything about it,” she said. “It makes me feel
more a part of God than I ever did before.”
Her conversion began a dedication to the Church that has
lasted for more than 40 years. She served as an extraordinary
minister of the Eucharist and headed her parish’s altar
society. Before Tom’s death in 1991, the McGraths attended
daily Mass together every morning at 6:30. To this day she
still attends as regularly as she can – although she’s
switched to 9.
100 years young
Photos are everywhere in Cornie’s house. Large portraits of
her and Tom in uniform fill one wall; a framed portrait of
her as a young girl with baseball star Earle Combs (he was
her teacher before he signed with the New York Yankees) sits
on a table; the first photograph of her in uniform sits
across the room; and stacks of photo albums are laden with
photos from her horseback riding days, her induction ceremony
into the Ordnance Hall of Fame – the first woman – and
birthdays and anniversaries with friends.
If you sit down and talk to her, Cornie would have you
thinking her lifetime achievements – especially her time in
the Army – are no big deal. She paints broad strokes with her
words, using phrases like “I was just expected to accomplish”
whatever she started out to do.
“When I do something, I try,” she said simply. “I’m just one
of the many of us who paved the way.”
Married at 43, she never had any children – instead her
parish has filled that role. She proudly displays a scrapbook
put together by women at Queen of Apostles for her 100th
birthday. Its pages overflow with tokens from well-wishers –
manifestations that Cornie’s long life has touched many
others. And at nearly 101 years of age, Cornie knows it’s
been a blessed one.
