Elizabeth P. Hoisington, who led the Women's Army Corps through a period of dramatic change in the 1960s and '70s and was one of the first two women in the U.S. military promoted to the rank of brigadier general, died Aug. 21 of congestive heart failure at the Aarondale assisted living community in Springfield, where she lived. She was 88.

At a Pentagon ceremony June 11, 1970, Gen. Hoisington and Anna Mae Hays of the Army Nurse Corps became the first two women in the United States to have a brigadier general's star pinned on their shoulders.

Their promotions were a public relations coup for the Army. A photograph of Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the Army chief of staff, kissing Gen. Hoisington at the ceremony was featured in newspapers and in the World Book encyclopedia. She and Hays appeared on the Dick Cavett, David Frost and "Today" shows, and Gen. Hoisington -- who possessed a bright smile and an outgoing personality -- was a guest on the popular game show "What's My Line?"

Gen. Hoisington, who came from a military family, enlisted in the old Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942 and quickly proved to be a talented, organized and well-liked officer. In 1966, during a period when the role of women was changing as much in the military as in society at large, she was named director of the Women's Army Corps.

She was proud that during her five years leading the WAC, the number of women in the service rose from fewer than 10,000 to almost 13,000. Their duties, once largely secretarial and supportive, expanded to include intelligence, electronics, personnel administration and air traffic control.

"She was a great leader," Hays, her fellow brigadier general, said of Gen. Hoisington in an interview this week. "She was really well-loved. She was held in great respect."

The Women's Army Corps remained a distinct branch within the Army until it was abolished in 1978 and women assumed duties alongside men. Gen. Hoisington sternly maintained that the women under her command were never second-class military citizens.

"We were always just as much officers as any other officer," she said in 1988. "To those who say we weren't, hell to them. I wasn't in the Salvation Army. The WAC was just like any other corps."

While presiding over a time of fast-moving change, Gen. Hoisington also saw herself as a guardian of the traditions and honor of the women's corps. As the Vietnam War progressed, married women were allowed to serve in the WAC, pregnant women were granted leave and some legal infractions were overlooked. Previously, any of these circumstances would have led to immediate discharge.

Gen. Hoisington was furious about what she saw as a capitulation to lax moral standards.

"The recent acceleration of the women's liberation movement and the publicity it attracts from the news media, in my opinion, threatens to overwhelm good sense and perspective in the management of Women's Army Corps personnel," she wrote in a 1970 memorandum. "I feel a deep moral conviction and obligation to make my objections known and understood."

She was equally adamant that women should never play an active role in combat.

"The women libbers," she said in 1990, "are still a little vocal as to why they can't go into combat. I don't think the people of the United States want that."

Elizabeth Paschel Hoisington was born Nov. 3, 1918, in Newton, Kan. Her grandfather had helped found the Kansas National Guard, and her father was an Army colonel and a marksman.

Something of a tomboy, young Elizabeth rode horses and learned to shoot with her father. She played tennis in college and taught riflery at a girls' summer camp. She graduated in 1940 from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland in Baltimore with a degree in chemistry, and remained devoted to the school throughout her life.

When the women's corps was established in 1942, she was eager to enlist but had to persuade her reluctant parents.

"The minute she heard about the WAC, she wanted to join," her sister, Nancy Smith, said. "She went in as a private and came out as a general."

An older brother, Perry M. Hoisington, was a major general in the Air Force, making them the country's first brother and sister generals.

Sent to Europe in 1944, Gen. Hoisington was among the first U.S. women to set foot on French soil after the D-Day invasion. She heard gunfire in the streets of Paris as Nazi troops retreated. At the Potsdam peace conference after the German surrender in May 1945, she helped organize the telephone system.

While in Germany, she grabbed a stash of candy bars and cigarettes and visited one prisoner-of-war camp after another until she found her younger brother, Robert, who had been taken captive.

"She told my parents before the military could notify them," Gen. Hoisington's sister said.

She was executive officer of a WAC battalion in Tokyo from 1948 to 1950, then served at the Pentagon and at a post near San Francisco until 1964. She was commandant of the Women's Army Corps School at Fort McClellan, Ala., before assuming command of the corps.

When she retired in 1971, she became only the third WAC to receive the Distinguished Service Medal. Her other decorations included two awards of the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal and Army Commendation Medal.

Although she was long opposed to the admission of women to the service academies, in 1985, Gen. Hoisington was the first woman named to the board of visitors of the Virginia Military Institute.

In retirement, she had speaking engagements across the country and raised money for the U.S. Army Women's Museum at Fort Lee, Va. She lived in Arlington from 1966 to 2002, when she had a stroke and moved to Springfield.

In addition to her sister, of Annandale, survivors include a brother, retired Army Lt. Col. Robert H. Hoisington of Huntsville, Ala.

Gen. Hoisington was never married. "The Army is my first love," she said in 1970.

Admittedly unskilled at domestic chores, she did not know how to cook and was a hunt-and-peck, two-finger typist.

As her sister put it, "She said if she had learned to type, she would never have been promoted to general."

Elizabeth Hoisington (1918)