Fae Margaret Adams died on December 16, 2022, at age 104, and was later interred in Arlington National Cemetery.
Fae Margaret Adams died on December 16, 2022, at the remarkable age of 104. Her death marked the passing of one of the last living pioneers of women's integration into the regular ranks of United States military medicine, a career that began during World War II and stretched across the Korean and Vietnam Wars until her retirement in 1977.
In recognition of her decades of military service and her historic status as the first female doctor to receive a regular commission in the U.S. Army, Adams was interred at Arlington National Cemetery, one of the nation's most hallowed burial grounds reserved for those who have served with distinction. Her interment there stands as a lasting tribute to her role in advancing opportunities for women in both medicine and the armed forces.
Adams's life spanned more than a century of American history, and her death prompted renewed attention to her groundbreaking 1953 commission, a milestone often cited in historical surveys of American women's achievements. Her legacy endures in the institutional acceptance of women physicians as full, permanent members of the U.S. Army Medical Corps, a norm that seemed far from guaranteed when she began her military career as a private in the Women's Army Corps in 1943.