Loring May Ebersole, later known as Florence, was born in 1915 to a Filipino mother and an American father.

After High School she took a job as a stenographer with U.S. Army Intelligence Headquarters in Manilla, where she met and married Charles Smith. Six months later she was widowed.

 Being half Filipino, she was able to hide her American sympathies from her new employer, the Japanese-controlled Philippine Liquid Fuel Distributing Union.

Working with the Philippine underground she diverted fuel and other critical items to the resistance. Soon she became part of a network of private citizens smuggling food, medical supplies and clean clothes to POWs.

Her activity was eventually discovered and she was arrested in October 1944. She was imprisoned and tortured until her release in February 1945, having never betrayed the resistance. After her liberation she moved to New York where she joined the Coast Guard in June 1945.

          When her U.S.C.G. superiors learned of her work in the Philippines, she was awarded the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Ribbon and later the Medal of Freedom. She eventually married Army veteran Robert Finch and settled down in Ithaca, New York.