Jean Moore Fasse (seated)

Image: Jean Moore Fasse (seated) and other Special Services members participate in craft activities with two Army soldiers, circa 1955.

Fasse joined the American Red Cross in 1944 and was sent to Washington, D.C., for training. She was assigned to a unit prepared for overseas duty and traveled to California to depart for Calcutta, India.

Photo and narrative source: Gateway - Triad Digital History Collections M. Jean Moore Fasse Collection.
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Mayme Jean Moore Fasse was born in Lillington, North Carolina, in 1908 and was raised on a farm nearby. She attended Hillside High School in Durham, North Carolina, where she lived with families as a nanny until she graduated in 1931.

She then worked in a tobacco factory and a local hospital. Fasse enrolled at Fayetteville State Teachers College (now Fayetteville State University) and earned a teaching degree.

Her first teaching job was in a one-room school in Goldsboro, North Carolina.

After deciding she didn’t want to teach, she returned to FSTC and attended summer school. She and a friend then decided to move to New York.

After only a year she returned to Fayetteville and teaching. Fasse worked at the Robeson County Training School in Maxton, North Carolina, in the late-1930s and early 1940s .

Fasse joined the American Red Cross in 1944 and was sent to Washington, D.C., for training. She was assigned to a unit prepared for overseas duty and traveled to California to depart for Calcutta, India.

Fasse was stationed along the Lido Road, including a short time in Burma. After the jungle bases were closed, she became the head of the Cosmos Club, a Red Cross club in Calcutta. She returned to the United States in August of 1946, landing in New York City.

Fasse immediately signed up for the U.S. Army Special Services in order to run recreation clubs in Europe.

She was sent to Frankfurt, Germany, for training, she was assigned as a club director in Mannheim.

Almost six years later she was transferred to Füssen for a few months, and then Höchberg, and then Munich.

In the early 1950s Fasse was sent to France, where she worked in clubs in Tours and Toul.

Fasse married in 1963 and left the Special Services. The Fasses remained in Europe until 1990. Jean Fasse died on 21 June 2008.

Link to source: https://gateway.uncg.edu/islandora/object/wvhp%3AWV0390