Aenard “Ann” Compton left a remarkably small footprint during her life, much less during her time in Waco. Even so meticulous a researcher as Frank Jasek, who spent more than 11 years assembling his book, Soldiers of the Wooden Cross: Military Memorials, could only find a few facts about Compton.
Jasek’s ambitious, beautiful book is a marvelous mix of passion and painstaking research. In it, he documents portraits of every Baylor University veteran honored on the metal lamppost plaques on campus.
Five Baylor women are so celebrated: Pauline Bates, Lucille Hendricks, Evelyn Maureen Middleton (all three from World War II,) and Cynthia Campbell Brown, a U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
But there is no lamppost commemorating the sacrifice of the fifth, Aenard “Ann” Compton. Though no less deserving than the nearly 200 other heroes listed, her name can only be found on a bronze slab inside the Texas Collection.
Aenard was born on July 5, 1890, in the small community of Allen, north of Dallas, the daughter of Dr. Henry Compton, 41, and his wife Malta Z. Stansell, 20. A sister, Vivian G. Compton, was born a few years later. Henry was one of the first physicians in Allen, with an office above the Odd Fellows Lodge on Main Street. Aenard, an accomplished pianist according to some early newspaper clippings, graduated from Allen High School and entered Baylor University in the fall of 1907.
Baylor’s student body at the time numbered a fraction of what it is today, but Compton appears only once in The Lariat. On March 13, 1909, a headline on page one reads: “Class of ’12 Entertains: One of the Greatest Successes of the Season.” On March 6, the freshman class had presented what was apparently their traditional concert to entertain the rest of the campus. Remarks by the freshman class president were followed by performances by an array of musicians and singers. Aenard, who clearly must have possessed significant musical talent, was chosen to lead off the show: “This was followed by a piano solo so delightfully rendered by Miss Aenard Compton as to call for an encore.”
Jasek notes that, while at Baylor, she is recorded as having a rigorous regimen of science-heavy classes, including history of zoology, biology, and physiology, as well as Greek, French, Latin, and pedagogy.
From the Morrison & Fourmy Directory Co. Directory of the City of Waco 1911-1912, we know that she lived – at least for a time – with other young Baylor women in Burleson Hall because of this listing: “Compton Aenard, Miss, student Baylor univ, rms Burleson hall.”
Likewise, Compton’s name only appears once in The Round Up during her three years at Baylor. Yearbooks during the 1900s were remarkably amateurish affairs by today’s standards, dominated by bad poetry and artwork, long and lavish odes and paeans to the university, and too many catty, sometimes sexist, personal comments about their fellow students. In the 1910 Round-Up, Aenard’s name appears in at the end of column that lists the Baylor men who have been “caught” by the female students in the class. Conversely, “Misses McNeil, Compton and Frost have the position of ‘inspectors of unclaimed boys.’”
In that same edition, on page 71, is the lone known photograph of Aenard, a small three-quarter profile shot of a serious-looking young woman with dark hair. Unfortunately, the editors failed to get her name right – she’s listed as “Bernard” Compton.
Jasek’s research indicates that Compton did not complete her studies at Baylor, instead choosing to graduate from Sam Houston State College with a degree in (apparently) education. From there, she worked as a teacher in Allen High School before moving to a similar position in the Amarillo public school system. Very quickly, she became what was doubtless one of the only female principals in the state at Texas City High School. With that kind of trajectory, it’s possible that the pioneering Compton could have eventually accomplished the unthinkable, becoming a Texas public school superintendent.
And there the story might have ended – had the United States not entered World War I in April 1917.
Compton, along with tens of thousands of other men and women, responded quickly, volunteering with the Army Nurse Corps. In September 1919, she was assigned to the new Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington D.C. She was 28 years old.
The Office of the Surgeon General in 2008 published a slim volume titled Answering the Call: The U.S. Army Nurse Corps, 1917-1919. The Army Nurse Corps had been founded in 1901 with less than a hundred nurses. Then more than 11,000 women “answered” the call in 1917 alone.
As American losses overseas mounted, military hospitals were established both in Europe and in the United States. Soon, America was facing the kind of casualties it hadn’t seen since the Civil War.
Walter Reed Army Hospital became ground zero for the thousands of wounded soldiers suffering from a horrific array of injuries, including gas poisoning, as they arrived daily on overcrowded transport ships.
In addition to their nightmarish wounds and pain, the American troops brought something else with them – a deadly new virus, mistakenly dubbed the “Spanish Flu.” Doctors and nurses were helpless in the face of the country’s first pandemic and thousands died on the transport ships alone.
By 1919, more American servicemen and women had died of the waves of this particularly virulent influenza than had died in combat in World War I. By mid-October 1918, the armed forces reported 206.4 deaths per 1,000 people from influenza and pneumonia.
Without vaccines while tending to their charges in close quarters and dangerously overcrowded wards, nurses and doctors suffered as well, dying of influenza and pneumonia.
Aenard “Ann” Compton was one of them, almost immediately contracting the flu, briefly rallying, then succumbing to pneumonia on October 6, 1918, just a month after arriving in Washington D.C. She never married.
There is no way of knowing if Compton, a “volunteer,” was counted among the 127 official deaths of nurses, or even if she had begun (or completed) her nursing training. We don’t know how she died, only that it was at Walter Reed. The official cause of death was listed as “pneumonia,” though doctors at the time could rarely differentiate between influenza and pneumonia. We just know that she died.
Nurses attached to the American Expeditionary Forces who died during their service abroad were buried with military honors. By year’s end, a plot in Arlington National Cemetery had been set aside for members of the Army Nursing Corps, if the survivors so desired.
Compton’s father (her mother Malta had died in 1897) instead decided to bring her home. She was buried in the family plot in the small Allen Cemetery off Main Street in her hometown of Allen. The simple marker reads, “Aenard Compton, July 5, 1890, Oct. 6, 1918.”
Initially, at least, her loss was not forgotten. A year after the end of World War I, The Lariat’s November 19, 1920, paper featured the headline, “Slab in Memory Baylor Heroes Soon to Arrive”:
The Overseas Club of Baylor University has purchased a memorial slab to be erected to the memory of the Baylor men who gave their lives in the world war. It will arrive in December and will be hung in the main auditorium of the Carroll Chapel and Library building.
The writer adds that bronze plaque will be adorned with the words “In Memoriam, Dedicated to the Baylor Men who gave their lives in the World War” and feature the names of L.D. Christian of Mart, who was the first Baylor man to die in the war, and “Miss Aenard Compton, Allen.”
The next time we find her name is in the August 1920 edition of A Directory of Ex-Students of the College of Arts & Sciences of Baylor University, Vol. XXIII, No. 4-August 1920, which contains this short, poignant line: “Compton, Aenard, 1907-1911, Allen; Deceased.”
By the fall of 1926, famed Baylor professor Dr. A. J. Armstrong annually placed a wreath on the plaque during Homecoming. While Compton is not named, a Lariat article on Armstrong’s ceremony from November 15 adds, “There were 20 Baylor University women in war work or government positions.”
It is not until May 14, 1941, that Compton’s name re-appears in an issue of The Lariat. Gripped by war fever as the United States edged closer to what will be called World War II, an uncredited writer penned an editorial titled “They Died for Democracy,” and again listed the 24 Baylor “men … who have deserved well of their Alma Mater and in the minds and hearts of clear-thinking Americans must be termed benefactors of their own, this, and all succeeding generations.” Alas, in the ensuing years since the plaque had been installed, the editors clearly hadn’t realized – nor did they check to see – that the name “Aenard” might refer to a woman.
And that’s the last reference we could find in the Baylor archives.
Fortunately, others have determined that Compton’s sacrifice was worth cherishing and honoring. In 2015, artist Colin Kimball painted portraits of the men and women from Collin County who died as part of their military service. Someone remembered Aenard and Kimball included her portrait, taken from the small photograph in the 1910 Round Up. The finished portraits were then hung in the Collin County Courthouse in McKinney.
Additionally, Compton’s name was added to the Wall of Honor memorial in Corporal RD Foster Veterans Memorial Park in McKinney.
Today, the only place to see Compton’s name at Baylor is on the original bronze plaque from 1920, which now hangs in a hallway off the main reading and research room in the Texas Collection.
Aenard’s lone sibling, her sister Vivian, died on October 14, 1985, after decades of service to Allen public schools. She was 92 and chose to be buried near her sister.
In Aenard’s October 1918 obituary in the McKinney Courier Gazette, the uncredited writer proclaims, “She had the spirit of patriotism and wanted to ‘do her bit.’ She gave her life for her country just as willingly and courageously as the boys who meet the enemy and fall on the battlefield.”
Perhaps now is the time that Baylor University further honor Aenard “Ann” Compton, who selflessly left a promising career, defied expectations her entire life, and sacrificed everything for her country.
