GI Jill

Mort Werner died in 1990. Martha Wilkerson Werner died in 1999.

Like an actress playing a role, Wilkerson considered Jill a separate entity. In 1966, she told a reporter: "The men overseas created Jill. They made her what they wanted her to be — the girl back home."

In the mid-1960s, Wilkerson and Werner, who was by then a vice president at NBC, lived in Scarsdale, New York with their teenage daughter. Reflecting on her experiences in broadcasting, the ex-disc jockey called her work as GI Jill, "the most important thing I've ever done in my life."

Interaction went both ways as some listeners sent Jill pictures of themselves, leading her to comment, "I think I was the only person in the world who had pinup boys." Some even sent her hand-made trinkets like a bracelet fashioned from a crashed airplane's broken window and a crudely inscribed heart-shaped pendant saying, "To Jill from Lou, 1944". Most of the letters and photographs that she received were destroyed when her family's house in Hollywood burned.

Martha Wilkerson married Mort Werner on March 18, 1939. At that time, she worked at radio station KMTR in Los Angeles, California, and he was program director there. They have two daughters.

GI Jill (born Martha Wilkerson, 4 May 1918 — 1999) was an American disc jockey and host of GI Jive, a music program on the Armed Forces Radio Service during World War II. She was notable for her positive effect of her personality and music selections on American troops' morale and for being "universally credited with being the No. 1 overseas attraction" on AFRS. By the end of January 1945 she had made 870 broadcasts.