NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
First Lt. Theodore Elias Corprew was the 320th’s medical officer. In 1936, he graduated from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, where black doctors were not allowed to treat white patients. He completed his Army training in 1943, the only African American in an all-white class. Officer training was a rare mixed-race preserve in the U.S. Army. After the war, Corprew moved to Washington, D.C., where he spent a long career as an obstetrician. He and his wife, Daisy, had one child, Barbara. Corprew died in 1991 at age 86.
First Lt. Theodore Corprew
Photo: Courtesy of Barbara Corprew
First Lt. Theodore Corprew poses with other officers in February 1943 at the Army's Medical Field Service School at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania.
Photo: Courtesy of Barbara Corprew
Barbara Corprew is pictured in 2011 with Dr. Alvin Robinson, a longtime friend of her father, Theodore Corprew. After the war, Corprew shared few details of his service. "Most of those guys who were in the service, they didn't want to talk about it,” Robinson said.
Photo: Linda Hervieux