Mary Anne Kniska Diamond was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia, to a family of ten children. Her parents were from Czechoslovakia, and her father worked as a coal miner. During the war, she moved to Akron, Ohio to work for Goodyear Aircraft on the F6F Corsair jets. She eventually became the supervisor of the “Goodyear Aircraft Women’s Squadron” in charge of 126 women who were all trained in multiple jobs so they could be dispensed all over the Goodyear plants. After the war she worked in a doctor’s office for over thirty years.