Romance

 

            There was also time for romance.  At least 24 Waves were married while stationed in Dayton, half of them within the first five months.

            "Oh, we did have our romances." says Peggy Cox Whittaker.  "I met Doug in Dayton  He was a pilot at Wright Field.  He came to a party as Sugar Camp once because he had seen me at the Biltmore and wanted to meet me, but I had a date."  After dating for approximately six months, Peggy Cox married Doug Whittaker on July 14, 1945.

            "We leased a house from another couple.  When I would stay there, and Doug was gone, I was afraid to stay alone.  A dog would get in the garbage can, or something, and it would scare me and so I'd just get in the car and go out to the Wave camp.  There'd always be an extra bunk and I'd sleep there until Doug came home."

            Mildred Barry married Lyle Miller August 27, 1943.  "I later learned that my aunt, my mother's sister, and a nun spent my wedding day together and that my mother cried all day.  She was afraid that I was making a mistake."

            Frances Whitener remembers when Helen Cavanaugh married Ed Farley.  "We formed a line and kissed Ed, the groom, then went back and did it again and again.  With all of us being strangers and in the same uniform, he didn't catch on at first."

            Vivian Kurtz met Paul Kintner while in Dayton. 

            "I was signal corps, stationed at Wright" says Paul.  "We met at a YWCA dance in Dayton."

            "It was the fall of '43." says his wife, Vivian.

            "It was a cold winter and I was an officer so I couldn't take her to the Officers Club.  And I couldn't go to the Enlisted Club.  That was forbidden.  So we courted outside."

            They met anywhere they could keep warm.  "One time we got kicked out of a hotel lobby.” remembers Vivian.  “We were staying too long."  

            The cold became too much so they were married at a church near his parents home in Indiana in January, 1944.

            A Wave was not permitted to wear civilian clothing outside of Sugar Camp.  "I had to get written permission to wear a wedding dress."

            Jimmie Lee Hutchison had been engaged to Robert Powers in Oklahoma before she became a Wave. “Bob used to ferry planes into Wright Patterson Field from Kentucky and North Carolina, so we'd see each other often."

              They were married on June 18, 1943.  "We celebrated Christmas together, and then in January he shipped to England. 

            "I'll tell you something unique about this.  Robert had always told me, 'You were a woman who was made for a home with children.  If something happens to me, I don't want you to be bitter.  Somewhere there's some good man that will give you these things if I can't'.  And I thought, how broad-minded.

            "Bob, while he was over in England, bought an anniversary card for me, to wish me a first anniversary.  It said something about that there might be stormy days, and that he hoped that I would always see the silver lining.  Then on D-Day they went in with those gliders and he was killed.  We would have been married a year on the 18th of the month that he was killed.

            "I was a widow for three years and then I met my present husband (Earl Long).  On our first anniversary he gave me a card.  And I thought, there's something about this card, but I didn't catch on.  So my mother calls me and she says 'We're getting rid of the old barn out here where your foot locker is.  Come and go through it'.  I went over.  I raised the lid and inside was this card that Bob had sent me from England four years before.  And my husband, my present husband, had gone downtown, in a little town in Oklahoma, and bought his anniversary card.  They were identical.  And I thought, Bob knew this was the right man.  And we've been together 48 years."

(Earl Long passed away in 1996.)

           

 

 Record Of Waves Married While Serving At Sugar Camp

 

            Ida Hutchinson to Bill Jours June 15, 1943 (Married in KY)

            Viola Fox to Clarence Charlton June 16, 1943

            Jimmie Lee Hutchison to Robert J. Powers June 18, 1943 (Married in KY)

            Rosemary Cowley to Edward L. L. Corchan July 31, 1943

            Louise Frances Blackwell to Joseph Lewis Holser, Jr. August 7, 1943

            Esther E. Zyburt to Roger D. Sherman August 21, 1943

            Mildred J. Barry to Lyle W. Miller August 27, 1943

            Catherine M. Convery to Frank A. Racz September 10, 1943

            Ellen J. Bell to Hal G. Fleschacker September 11, 1943

            Beulah M. Radford to John M. Gibbons September 21, 1943

            Dorothy McNulty to William T. Sipsey September 24, 1943

            Elsie H. Byrd to Jacob J. McSwain September 25, 1943.

            Vivian Marie Kurtz to Paul Kinter January  23, 1944

            Marguerite L. Parke to James  N. Racz April 8, 1944

            Mildred Weatherly to Clarence D. Jones June 17, 1944

            Shirley McKenzie to Paul Anderson August 26, 1944

            Helen Cavanaugh to Ed Farley November 11, 1944 (Married in Indiana)

            Wilma Allbritton to Andrew Martin June 12, 1945

            Elizabeth Bemis to Edward Robarts June 23, 1945

            Peggy Cox to Doug Whittaker July 14, 1945

            Mary Reilly to John Lavettre September 23, 1945

            Marjorie L. Bornholz to Isaac A. Morris, Jr. December 1, 1945

            Evelyn L. Nickel to William C. Burbacher May 4, 1946

            Evelyn Hodges to Jack Vogel August 24, 1946

 

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