Anna Victoria "Nonny" (Adap) Kachmar was in Brooklyn, New York in 1919. The only child of Augusta Hylick, and Antonio "Tony" Adap, she was raised in a large extended family, already ethnically mixed from the several marriages of her maternal grandmother. They resided on both Prospect Street and Adams Street in the Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Her mother was born in New York City and was a second generation Czech American. Her father was born in the Batangas province of the Philippines. He moved to Manila as a young man, and from found employment on U.S. Naval ships. After serving the U.S. Navy as a laborer, he was discharged in Virginia and soon settled in Brooklyn, New York. He worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the tool and dye industry.
Kachmar attended elementary school at PS 8 in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. An accomplished student, she was later the valedictorian of St. Anne's High School's graduating class. She then worked as a lab technician at the Brillo factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where she met her future husband, John Kachmar. During World War II she worked as a riveter at the Navy Yard. After the war she raised two sons, and worked as an administrator at an elementary school in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn. She later moved to Ohio, Connecticut, and finally Long Island, New York.