GI Jill

Martha Wilkerson Werner (May 4, 1918 – February 9, 1999), known as GI Jill during WWII, was an American disc jockey and radio host best known for presenting the GI Jive music program on the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) for World War II soldiers. She is noted for the positive effect that her personality and music selections made on American troops' morale, and she was "universally credited with being the No. 1 overseas attraction" on AFRS. By the end of January 1945 she had made 870 broadcasts.

Early life Martha Wilkerson was born on May 4, 1918 in Roanoke, Virginia. Her father Sexton was a title artist and designer for movie studios including 20th Century Fox, and her mother was a screenwriter and theatre actress. Her brother was a lieutenant in the U.S Navy, and her inability to send him letters is what inspired her to develop broadcasts to soldiers that featured recorded music, personal updates, and friendly talk.

In addition to popular music, the broadcasts featured birth announcements and letters from soldiers' wives. Due to the program's popularity, AFRS officials moved Wilkerson to Los Angeles, where she began to broadcast GI Jive for 15 minutes daily over 400 Army radio stations. and Axis Sally but Jill said later that was not the point because American servicemen did not take broadcasters like Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally seriously. "Our men — those who listened to enemy propaganda — only listened because there was nothing else to do," she said. American diplomat and National Security Council member William Lloyd Stearman wrote in his 2013 memoir that GI Jill "did so much to bolster our morale. She came across like a wholesome girl-next-door who began each radio show with 'Hi-ya, fellas! This is GI Jill with the GI Jive.' ... We all loved her."

GI Jill built rapport with listeners, Many letters were requests for certain music records. Some listeners sent hand-made trinkets such as a bracelet fashioned from a crashed airplane's broken window, and a crudely inscribed heart-shaped pendant saying, "To Jill from Lou, 1944". Some listeners mailed her pictures of themselves, leading her to comment, "I think I was the only person in the world who had pinup boys." Wilkerson began second program, AEF Jukebox.

Following the war, Wilkerson wrote the screenplay for the film Hard, Fast and Beautiful (1951), and scripts for some episodes of The Virginian in addition to her continued radio career.

Wilkerson considered herself to be separate from her "GI Jill" radio personality, saying in 1966, "The men overseas created Jill. They made her what they wanted her to be — the girl back home." Reflecting on her experiences in broadcasting, she called her work as GI Jill, "the most important thing I've ever done in my life". They went on to have two daughters. In the early 1960s, Werner was president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. By the mid 1960s, he was vice president of NBC and the couple lived in Scarsdale, New York with their teenage daughter.

After she retired in 1975, the couple moved to Maui, Hawaii, where Mort Werner eventually died in April 1990 from kidney failure at age 73. Martha Wilkerson Werner died on February 9, 1999, aged 80.