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Last updated on Saturday, March 21, 2015
(UNDATED) - An Indiana native who was the nation’s oldest woman to have served in the armed forces has died at the age of 108.
Lucy Coffey was born in Martinsville, Indiana in May 1906, but while she was a young woman, she moved to Chicago and later to Dallas, Texas.
The military newspaper Stars & Stripes says Coffey was working at an A&P Supermarket there when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Two years later, the Women's Auxiliary Corps was created, and Coffey quit A&P to join the service, spending time in the Pacific theater and eventually occupied Japan after the war.
Coffey returned to Texas after living in Japan for 10 years, living much of the rest of her life in San Antonio.
Stars & Stripes says that last year, she got to travel to Washington on an Honor Flight, visiting the World War II Memorial. As the oldest living female veteran, Coffey also visited the Women's Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery and the White House, spending a short time with President Obama and about a half-hour with vice-president Joe Biden.
Coffey died in her sleep Thursday according to a veterans services officer in San Antonio.
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