So many great stories of average people thrust into history because of D-Day. One of my favorites involves Helen Kogel Denton, who died at 91 in Fayetteville, Ga. south of Atlanta.
She volunteered for the Army in her native South Dakota after Pearl Harbor was attacked and was assigned to the secretarial pool. Her boss told her he had been asked to make a big decision. General Dwight D. Eisenhower needed a special person from her pool to work in his London headquarters. She volunteered on the spot which set in motion her destiny with history.
In London, she typed Eisenhower’s invasion plans from notes from several sources. It took eight weeks working eight hours a day on a Royal manual typewriter. At the end of every day an MP officer came into the small room, took her typewriter ribbon and carbon paper — she made three copies that were places along with the original in notebooks — and burned them before she could leave.
She had never seen Eisenhower until officers ask if she wanted to go with them to deliver the document to the allied supreme commander. The general asked if she knew what she had typed. She told him she did. Eisenhower had trusted her with secrets that would change the war and the world.
He asked if she knew she had a brother in Europe. She had a brother in the military but because of need to be secret she didn’t know where.
Eisenhower told her the brother was with General George Patton’s Third Army and handed her a 3-day pass to visit him.
Mrs. Denton kept her assignment secret for 50 years, even from her brother and husband who also was a WWII vet. She said she was sorry they died without knowing but felt they would be together some day and she would fill them in.
In 2009, President Obama awarded Denton the Golden Merit Award for her duty and keeping the secret so long.
After the war until she retired, Denton worked in the maintenance department for Atlanta’s Delta Airlines and volunteered for the American Red Cross.
On Dec. 7 she was buried with full military honors — on the 72nd anniversary of the 1941 act that launched her military career.
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