On a crisp fall day in a cemetery in Queens, a Marine Corps honor guard blew taps over the country's oldest female Marine.Sgt. Miriam Cohen did not die jumping on a hand grenade, or storming the beaches of Normandy or battling the Japanese on Iwo Jima.
Most appropriately, she died on Veteran's Day, one day after the 234th birthday of the United States Marines Corps. Cohen lived nearly half as long: She would have been 102 on Dec. 13.
When World War II threatened civilization, this beautiful, gutsy Brooklyn gal answered the call of a bugle, just like the one that played over her coffin Tuesday.
"Miriam was born in Sheepshead Bay and graduated from Smith College, where she was the only Jew in the school," says her younger sister Marine Roberta Eaton, 86, of the Women's Marines Association of New York.
"On Feb. 13, 1943, Miriam graduated in the first class of WWII women Marines. At 35, she was one of the oldest women to ever join the Marines."
Cohen did six weeks of basic training at Hunter College, (where Lehman College stands today) honing her secretarial skills to fulfill the Marine Women's motto: "To Free a Man to Fight."
"Unlike the WACS and WAVES, Marine women have no acronym," Eaton says. "We were Marines. Period. Marines for life. Miriam told me she was stationed at USMC headquarters in Washington during WWII. She had special clearance to handle sensitive documents."
In those days, Marine women did not live on base with the men. They got "subs and quarters" allowance to live in boarding houses. Pay was less than $50 a month.
Miriam also served in the Korean War, traveling with generals to Virginia and San Francisco.
"Miriam never owned anything besides a dog and a cat," Eaton says. "Always rented apartments. Never drove. Always took the subway. Never married. Had no children. She had a brother who died many years ago."
After retiring from the IRS, where she worked after 10 years of military service, Miriam Cohen refused to collect Social Security.
"I told her she was nuts," Eaton says. "Miriam said, 'My government needs the money more than I do.' I'm telling ya, she was a real character. I'd call her avant-garde, an independent thinker in the tradition of Amelia Earhart ... and Susan B. Anthony."
Cohen volunteered at Brooklyn's VA Hospital, where she pushed wounded G.I.s in wheelchairs into her 90s. Every Saturday she went to New York Foundling Hospital to read stories to the city's forgotten children.
Unless the Women's Marine Association had a meeting.
"Her sister Marines were like family to her," Eaton says. "She was also a helluva sketch artist and a member of the Art Student's League. She adored museums and Broadway shows and if you went out with her she'd have a glass of wine and always insist on buying you dinner.
"She was incredibly generous. She also enjoyed a beer with a hot dog at a barbecue. Miriam must have had a few bucks, but she never talked about money. She followed the beat of her own drum: She'd eat chicken for breakfast and scrambled eggs for dinner, and pickled herring on a holiday.
"If I had to sum up Miriam Cohen in a single word, I'd say she was a pisser. " Cohen was so impulsive that when her Brooklyn landlord gave her grief, a friend told her Tucson was a nice place to live, so she just packed up, at 93, and moved.
"When I visited her I asked how the hell a Brooklyn girl could live in 3,000-degree desert heat," Eaton says. "She said, 'I like it.'"
Four years ago Cohen finally moved into a private nursing home, still insisting on taking a long Marine march each day.
"It was no coincidence that stubborn old Miriam chose Veteran's Day to salute the world goodbye," says Eaton, who stood graveside in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Glendale as a USMC bugler played taps over the flag-draped coffin of our oldest lady Marine, who heard a similar bugle call her to duty 66 years ago.
Semper Fi.