We are sad to announce the passing of our author, Anita Bloom Ornoff. She died peacefully at her home in Poinciana, FL February 13. She was 86. Her inspirational story of struggle and triumph was told her memoir, Beyond Dancing: A Veteran's Struggle, A Woman's Triumph.
Anita was born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1921 and grew up vivacious and high-spirited in Suffern, New York, a small town twenty-six miles northwest of New York City. After graduating from Suffern High School in 1938 she worked a series of retail jobs before her sense of adventure and excitement took hold. In 1943 when she was twenty-two, Anita defied her families wishes and enlisted in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corp (WAAC). She shone brightly during her basic training in Fort Oglethorpe, however her career in the Army would be short lived.
One night she woke up with an acute pain in her thumb. The doctors and nurses on base passed it off as a simple infection. They told her the pain would go away if she kept her thumb clean with peroxide and Epsom salts. But it didn’t get better— the pain only got worse. It soon moved from her thumb to her back, eventually severing her spine.
Through months of challenging physical therapy and determination, Anita eventually reclaimed the independence she lost when she became paralyzed. She would later go on to receiver her Bachelors of Arts in Psychology from Loyola College in 1971. She was also the first person in the state of New York to pass their driving license test using hand controls.
It took nearly ten years for the government to fully acknowledge her service to her country. She fought for herself and the other women who served in the WAAC to have the same veterans benefits as men in the military. Her struggle led her to fight for bill HR8041 in Congress. The bill which was eventually ratified into law by President Eisenhower in 1954 and gave the women in the WAAC full veteran benefits.
At the end of Beyond Dancing, Anita wrote about what she wanted her story to accomplish. “I hope that my life and the challenges that I have faced will inspire others,” she wrote, “especially young men and women, to overcome adversity and go forward in life with a positive attitude to conquer any misfortune.”
Anita is survived by her husband Harold; two daughters Ellen Treem and Naomi Willey; and five grandchildren. She was preceded by her first two husbands—John Muller who died in 1957 and Theodore J. Friedman who died in 1959.