Dorothy May Miller (1922-2005) of Lakeland, Florida, was a medical technician and mail clerk in African American units of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and the Women's Army Corps during World War II. Dorothy Thelma May Miller was born 11 February 1922 in Sandersville, Georgia, and raised in Lakeland, Florida, by her mother, a schoolteacher and domestic. Miller attended Washington Park High School in Rochelle, Florida, but dropped out to have her first child. She enlisted in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) on 1 March 1943. Miller entered active duty on 20 April 1943 and was sent to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, for basic training. When the WAAC became the Women's Army Corps (WAC) in the spring of 1943, Miller was sent to Fort Des Moines, Iowa, for advanced basic training. She became a medical technician at Camp Forest, Tennessee, and worked in the hospital operating room. One year later, she was transferred to Fort Benning, Georgia, where she was assigned to the post office as a mail clerk. Miller was discharged as a corporal from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on 6 January 1946. Shortly after the war Miller got married. When her husband died in 1948, she went to the Don Thompson Vocation School in Tampa, Florida, on the GI Bill. There she met and married Dan Miller. While raising their two children, Miller also worked as a teacher's aide, a switchboard operator for the city of Tampa, a receptionist with the Tampa Department of Sanitary Sewers, and in a crippled children's clinic. She retired in 1983. In her retirement, Miller was active in several veterans' organizations and known for her handmade African American dolls.
