Marcia Carol Martin Anderson (née Mahan)

Army, Army Reserve, or National Guard, and later sponsored the Navy ship that carries her hometown's name. Born Marcia Mahan in Beloit in 1957, she lived with her maternal grandparents after her parents divorced when she was one. Her mother worked hospital billing; her father, a Korean War veteran, worked at the Beloit Corporation. She flunked kindergarten at Merrill Grade School—"the only general they ever met who flunked kindergarten," she likes to tell students—then finished first grade at Our Lady of the Assumption before moving with her mother to East St. Louis at age eight.

Catholic schools in St. Louis finished her schooling. At Creighton she landed in ROTC by accident when astronomy was full and took military science instead. She chose the Army Reserve, earned a law degree at Rutgers, and built a civilian career as clerk of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Wisconsin in Madison. In 2011, at Fort Knox, she received her second star. Service as Pentagon deputy chief of the Army Reserve followed; she retired in 2016.

On November 23, 2024, in Milwaukee snow, she sponsored the USS Beloit, the first Navy ship of that name, and gave the order to man the ship and bring her to life. Her Beloit childhood ended at eight; the city's name is on the hull.