Opal Wells Wayland was born to William R. and Annie Graybeal Wells in Knox County on August 28, 1912. She attended Halls High School after which she not only worked as a sewing machine operator at Standard Knitting Mills but also took lessons at the Tennessee School of Beauty. In March 1945 during the closing months of World War II, Wells enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps in March 1945 and was trained to serve as a surgical technician for six weeks at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. She was then transferred to the 9956th Technical Service Unit inSan Francisco, California, where she served as a medical technician until her discharge in November 1946.
After her service, Wells returned home to Knoxville and married James Robert Jeffries, a Navy veteran, and resumed her work at the knitting mill. She later worked as a clerk at Fort Sumter School in Halls. She and Jeffries divorced in the early 1950s. She married Army veteran Robert B. Wayland in 1958. Opal died in 1993.
Knox County Archives, located on the second floor of the East Tennessee History Center, is proud to honor those who have served our country in the armed forces by preserving the history of their service. Team members at Knox County Archives are digitizing military discharges (military form DD-214) that were registered in Knox County, Tennessee. These permanent records represent every conflict from the American Civil War through the Vietnam War and reveal a great deal about a veteran’s service. This biographical and historical information may not exist in any other form due to a fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1973; it destroyed an estimated 80% of United States Army discharges from World Wars I and II. Using these rare and important DD-214s, Knox County Archives hopes to share the stories of some of East Tennessee’s veterans.
If you have questions about accessing the DD-214s registered in Knox County, please call 865-215-8800, email archives@knoxlib.org, or visit Knox County Archives at the East Tennessee History Center, 601 S. Gay St., Knoxville, TN 37902.
Research by Zachary Keith, County Archives Digital Assistant
