The Navy WAVES Are Formed

            The need for women to serve became even greater during World War II.  On July 30, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Public Law 689, and the Navy had a women's reserve component.  The initial request was for 10,000 women to serve in the Waves to relieve men for active sea duty.  Later, realizing how well the women did the jobs they were assigned, the Navy reported that it would employ as many women that it took to get the job done.

            Stipulations for admittance into the Waves were strict.  The woman had to be a U. S. citizen, from 20 to 36 years of age.  She was required to have at least a high school diploma, or to have taken business school courses and have supplementary experience which together would be comparable to a high school education.  The applicant had to be at least five feet high, weigh at least ninety-five pounds, and be in sound physical condition.  Her vision had to be correctable with glasses to 20/20 vision.  An applicant could be married, but not to anyone in the Armed Forces, nor could she have any children under the age of eighteen.  If single, she had to remain so until basic training was completed.  She could then marry anyone except for a man in the Navy. 

            The women began to enlist.  Their reasons varied, but for most of the women it was for the love of their country that they joined.

            Beatrice Hughhart Dunphy worked with Jimmie Lee Hutchison Long at a phone company in McAlister, Oklahoma.  "The Navy Personnel Recruiters came visiting the phone company in February 1943.  Jimmie Lee and I read their literature and decided to go and talk to them.  They were skilled in their job.  Before we left that day, we were in the Navy.  We still wonder how that happened."

            Elaine Hazell MacIntyre's boyfriend joined the Marines shortly after the war started. Bored, she began to look for something to do.  "I always was a tomboy, enjoying challenges, full of zest, ready for adventure, so I looked for something new.  About that time Congress decided to let females join the armed forces.  That sounded great; a change of life style and a chance to help my country.  I was too young for the Marines, but as soon as I reached 20 years of age I joined the Waves.

            "Another reason was to get away from home.  My parents were very strict and I wanted my freedom.  Seems ironic, doesn't it, to join up for freedom, when the Navy demanded obedience to their rules, but I thought I could handle this, since everybody would be under the same rules, both male and female; no distinction!"

            Women under the age of twenty-one had to be signed for by their parents.  Many parents were reluctant to do this.

            "I was working in a defense plant for about eight months and I was a line leader." said Evelyn Urich Einfeldt.  "I thought, boy, I bet I can be more help someplace else to win the war.  So I went and tried to enlist.  But I was only twenty and you had to have your parents sign.  Well, I took the paper, but my dad wouldn't sign it.  He had been in World War I, he wasn't having any of his kids, girls especially, in the Navy.  I suppose I got a stubborn streak and thought, well, by George, I'll sign his name.  And so I did, and turned it in."

            Evelyn Hodges Vogel came from a family of three daughters.  At the age of eighteen, she had just finished high school.  She began working at an ammunition factory to help with the war effort.  Her sister Robin worked as a private duty nurse in Kansas City. 

            "Our father had been a Navy man in World War I and we were a very patriotic family.  One night Robin and I were sitting and we were saying you know, just working at an arsenal or doing private duty nursing wasn't really, we felt, enough.  I said 'You can join the Navy Nurse Corps and I could join the Waves'.  The more we talked, the more we knew that if our dad couldn't be in the service and we had no brothers to serve, then it was up to us to do it.  I was two years younger than was allowed to go into the Navy.  So I got out my old photo static birth certificate.  My mother's doctor who had delivered me was a very poor writer.  The way he had made the nineteen twenty-five and the way that I changed it to nineteen twenty-three with a white nail pencil enabled me to get into the Navy."

            When Jimmie Lee went in for her physical they told her she was underweight.

            "I didn't weigh ninety-five pounds soaking wet.   So I went out and ate a whole bunch of bananas.  All I could hold.  Then I ran back and they weighed me and I made it.  Either I passed or they lied, I don't know which."

            Before long, the women began receiving orders to report to boot camp.

            "Coming from a close Irish-Catholic family, and knowing I had never been further from New Jersey, my mother was not too happy about my leaving home." said Mary Reilly Lavettre.  "To ease her mind, I had told my mother I would probably go no further than Hunter College, in New York, and would probably be home every weekend.

            Mary was employed at Dupont Film Laboratories at the time.  "My mother called me at Dupont and told me I was ordered to Cedar Falls, Iowa.  She began crying, saying 'You're going way out West with all those Indians!’  I guess Iowa was 'way out West' to someone from a town as small as Perth Amboy, New Jersey."