When frail, 110-pound George W. Jorgensen turned 18 in 1944, he tried to enlist in the wartime Army, which took a peek at his wispy frame and rejected him.

But leave it to the Army, a few months later it drafted Jorgensen and he served two years as a clerk at Fort Dix, N.J. before earning an honorable discharge.

It was an upright but unremarkable achievement for a slight fellow from the Bronx who would later become a national sensation – not as a man, but as a woman.

You don’t hear much about Jorgensen these days. But folks of a certain age well remember the headlines when she became a transgender pioneer in 1952, assuming the name Christine to honor Dr. Christian Hamburger, who performed sex-change surgery for her in Denmark.

Transgender issues, especially involving human rights, are familiar topics today, but back in the ’50s – an era that for many Americans was hardly as idyllic as we like to remember – newspapers were ablaze with the Jorgensen saga. 

“EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY,” shouted the Daily News in all caps.

“Bronx ‘Boy’ Is Now A Girl,” reported the staid New York Times.

Jorgensen was not the first to undergo sex-change surgery, but her background as a male Army vet from the macho Bronx (think New York Yankees and traditional gender outlooks) whetted an insatiable public appetite for details.

As for human rights, Jorgensen soon learned that for her, they had been compromised. The publicity made it impossible to continue her preferred career as a photographer, and she was denied a marriage license in 1959 because her birth certificate listed her as male.

But the notoriety held opportunity as well, and Jorgensen used it to promote national discussion on gender identity.

In her 1967 autobiography, she said that despite a happy childhood, as an adult she felt like a woman trapped in the body of a man.

Reveling in her new female status and flaunting it with glamorous jewelry and makeup, she started a new career as a nightclub entertainer whose theme song was, “I Enjoy Being a Girl.”   

But Jorgensen also lived a life with wider horizons, as a lecturer and traveling educator, often on college campuses, advocating for transgender rights.

She died in 1989 of bladder and liver cancer, a public curiosity at first who evolved, in the words of one LGBTQ publication, into someone whose life “reassured and heartened innumerable men and women who experienced the same feelings she had before her journey to Denmark.  

“She was also an inspiration to many who struggled with the social identities and expressions of gender presumed for them by others… admired for her courage, elegance, and grace. She remains a role model, not only for transgendered people, but also for all of us who seek to become our true selves.”

Reflecting on her struggles with depression, Jorgensen wrote in her autobiography, “The answer to the problem must not lie in sleeping pills and suicides that look like accidents… but rather in life and freedom to live it.”

Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.