Veterans in the Triangle would be interested in knowing about an innovative project that has been created to make an archive about female veterans in the state.
By Tim Bullard
Turn your clock back to 1945 - there is a library in North Carolina that has
collected a fascinating oral history of women in the military, and there are
intersections in San Antonio.
Beth Ann Koelsch, curator of the project, "I've been here three and a half
years. The university archivist, Betty H. Carter, was talking to the class
of 1950 during a reunion." The discussion veered into World War II and the
G.I. Bill, so she did some research.
"She realized that a lot of the alumni had left the state," she said. "So she
started collecting the oral history."
It is a story about this country's most extensive collection of military
records regarding female soldiers at The Betty H. Carter Women Veterans
Historical Project at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's
Jackson Library.
But it's more than a story about war. It is a story about this country's
most extensive collection of military records regarding female soldiers at
The Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project at the University of
North Carolina at Greensboro's Jackson Library.
There are stories like that of Lenora I. Nagel who was born Sept, 6, 1930.
She served with the Women in the Air Force from 1953-56 and taught overseas
for 30 years as a civilian in the Department of Defense. She was raised in
Lawton, North Dakota. She ended up in San Antonio.
Her parents were German, her dad a carpenter who had a convenience store in
the Depression. Then she went to Mayville State Teachers College in
Mayville, North Dakota, earning a two-year teaching certificate and teaching
for three years. Her father's store had a small lunch counter, candy bars
and ice cream. She joined the WAF June 15, 1953.
"There was an area where they could play cards," she said. "Just when the
banks failed, he had just the night before put a big deposit in, and he was
going to have to pay for it because he had just gotten a big shipment, so he
deposited the money in the bank. They didn't say anything. The next morning
the banks were closed, and he never got any of that money."
Her grandfather had fought during the Kaiser War in Russia between Germany
and Russia. Her father joined the Army in World War I. Her brother was in
the Navy.
In San Antonio she completed basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in
late 1953 and was discharged from the Air Force on Dec. 15, 1956 after
attending radio school at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss. She
retired in Tampa, Fla. after 29 years teaching U.S. kids in France, Germany,
Japan, Iceland, Bermuda and Cuba.
Her first day of training in San Antonio: "I remember, first of all, all the
shots we had to get. I remember we had to learn how to make the bed. You had
to be able to flip a quarter off of it. Invariably, we'd get it tight enough
for an inspection, and that night they would call a fire drill. We had to
pull the sheets off and blanket and go running out with it all over us. Then
we had to start all over again trying to get that bottom sheet because if we
knew there was an inspection, we didn't sleep in the bed that night. We
slept on the floor so that we would have that all ready. They would get us
up with reveille."
This was a white glove inspection.
"Everything had to be just in place, and nothing could be out of place. No
hair anyplace. One time we got a gig just because a hair happened to be down
by our shoes."
"We had to go to classes, of course, each day, and we had to parade to and
from. We had quite a bit of freedom." They could have only one uniform dirty
or they would get a gig.
The hats had to be starched. She shared a room with two others with bunk
beds.
"We had no air conditioning. It was very hot in the summertime there, and
they had big fans at each end of the hallway," she recalled. She would
leave the door open so air would circulate.
Bugle call was at 5 a.m., and then they would hit the chow hall.
The female drill sergeant was female. Men and women ate in separate chow
halls.
There were watermelon parties. "We'd spit the seeds outside so we had
watermelon plants growing around," she said. Everyone would end up with KP,
kitchen patrol.
She was interviewed Saturday, Feb. 10, 2001 by Hermann Trojanowski at her
home in Tampa for the oral history for the Women Veterans Historical
Collection at UNC-G.
Lawton was a small farming community near the Canadian border.
"It was a very small school," she said. "We had what we call not a one-room
schoolhouse but three classes in a room."
What made her join up?
"I think what it was just an article in the newspaper about people in
the service. They needed women, and I had thought my girlfriend from home
that I grew up with was going to go with me. She was back in college
again that particular year, and she decided then not to go, but I decided I
was going to go anyway. So that's basically how I found out about it. I had
wanted to join before that...I was wanting to go overseas. I wanted to go to
Germany to see if I could find some relatives on my mother's side."
Her father would not sign for her. She was 21.
"My friends threw a party for me. I found some pictures of us the other day,
and they were all trying to salute."
This was in the Korean War era.
A memorial service was held Saturday, Feb. 27, 2010 for her in Tampa,
according to her obituary.
According to the funeral home guest book, she never failed to forget a
birthday or special event.
"Well just don't quite know where to begin this little epistle," wrote
Constance Cline Phillips. She rode the coach to Asheville, "soot and all."
"Then we got into a Pullman about 8 and had a fairly quiet time," she said.
She described the group as "motley" The crew went to Cincinnati, and more
WACs got on the train. "One was very drunk and put on a big exhibition," she
wrote. "But we sat quietly, and I played cards with a nice little boy that
had been in four months and was going to California."
At 4 they arrived in Chicago.
She remembered Saturday which was a blur, and the IQ test. The women took
their shots, she recounted, diphtheria, typhoid and tetanus. Then came her
first bath. She took out $10,000 insurance and a $25 war bond.
"Tomorrow we get clothes and move to our permanent barracks. Then it begins
in earnest," she said. "We were issued galoshes, caps and overcoat
immediately...this is a hectic life, but I have a feeling I'll like it.
Lights go out in seven minutes. I must bathe my face and get ready. Your
child is prospering, Love, Babe."
The letters are personal and give a deep understanding into the lives of
female soldiers. Phillips was born in St. Paul, Minn. to a businessman and
World War I nurse. She graduated from Concord High School in 1942 and
enrolled in the Woman's College which is now the University of North
Carolina at Greensboro.
She joined the Women's Army Corps in February 1945. She was discharged from
the Army at Fort Bragg.
She finished her education on the G.I. Bill and worked for a summer on a
state mobile X-ray unit, marrying in September 1948. Her husband played pro
football for the Baltimore Colts.
Annie Pozyck talks of meeting her husband at a GI dance in Concord, having
done nurse training at Mercy Hospital in Charlotte before serving in the
Army Nurse Corps (ANC) in World War II. She retired from the VA Hospital in
Salisbury after 25 years service.
"Dearest Mother and Daddy, Saw a very good movie last night here at the
club. It was 'The Corn Is Green.' Bette Davis played in it. When it comes to
Concord, be sure and see it. Well I guess this is all for now. I'll be
writing again in a couple of days. Lots of love, Annie Edith."
One woman writes her parents and thanks them for the brassieres they sent
her.
The project was created at the university in 1998 with documents since World
War I. There are photos, letters, diaries, scrapbooks, oral histories,
military patches, posters and published works.
It has more than 500 collections and 300 oral histories. The university
received in 2002 a N.C. Echo Digitization Grant to put portions of the
information online, supported by the State Library of North Carolina.
Dancing with actor Henry Fonda is the dream of a lifetime, and that dream was realized for a N.C. U.S. Navy WAVE (Women Accepted for (Volunteer Emergency Service) during World War II.
Virginia Gardner Becker lives in Virginia now, but she attended Chowan Junior College when she was a young woman and also worked in Thomasville, N.C.
In 1999 she was interviewed by a member of the staff of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s staff with The Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project.
This is a special project created in 1998 to document the contributions of women in the military with source material including photos, military patches, insignia, uniforms and posters.
It has recollections of more than 500 individual collections and 300 oral histories. This is a treasure trove of precious information that tells one about the most intimate and personal details of service personnel when they were at war.
There are even collections from military members who served in World
War I.
It all started in 1992 when there was a celebration of the 50sth anniversary of the creation of the U.S. Navy WAVES with vets sending uniforms and memorabilia to the Alumni Association.
The university got a N.C. ECHO Digitalization Grant in 2002 to make a lot of the project available online. There were federal funds made possible through the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
It is a remarkable read as the reader delves into the lives of these patriotic women.
Becker was interviewed at her home in Martinsville, Va. She is married to Bernie Becker.
She grew up in Murfreesboro, east of Martinsville.
“I went to high school there, and I went to junior college there for two years at Chowan College, and then I transferred to Woman’s College, (now UNC-G) in the fall of ’38, and finished my two years there in 1940.
“My mother died when I was 15. I had one brother, who is now deceased, and I have no family left. I am it. Well my brother died when he was seventy –one.”
Her father was a small businessman, a partner.
“My father was from Virginia originally, and my mother grew up in Murfreesboro, went to Chowan also,” she said. “When I started at Chowan in the fall of 1936, it was a four-year college. But that was the last year it was a senior college. 1937-38 was the first year it operated as a junior college, so I had to go somewhere else.”
“I studied business. Secretarial administration it was called then.”
She eventually found a job at Thomasville Chair Company where she worked for two and a half years, then going into the U.S. Navy.
The first time she experienced dorm life was at WC after being a day student two years at Chowan.
“Yes, and I was very young and naïve. From a small town,” she said.
“We used to travel by bus. They had bus travel in those days, and that’s how we got back and forth,” she said. It was a four-hour trip.
She was in one of four societies, and she was in Mary Foust Dorm.
After college she got a job at the telephone company in Tarboro after college in 1940.
She met Bernie in 1942 when he went to work at Thomasville Chair.
“He went into the Army and was discharged, and then he left Thomasville and went to work for the government in Washington, D.C. And when I heard about the WAVES, I decided that that would be an interesting thing to do.” At Thomasville Chair she worked in the purchasing department as an assistant purchaser, having replaced a man who had gone into the
service.
She liked her uniform, and then she went to Smith College in Northampton, Mass. in June of 1943.
Then she graduated as an ensign on July 27, 1943, going on to Scotia, N.Y. to the Naval Air Depot for temporary duty.”
“I worked in the supply area until I went to Supply School in October. I was at Scotia for August and September,” she said.
She said her joining the WAVES shocked everybody in her family. She made the newspaper and spoke to the Rotary Club when she went home.
“I remember that we marched from the dorms down to some inn for our meals. And we had wonderful food,” she said.
Her next duty was at the Naval Air Station in Quonset Point, R.I.
A Hollywood actor visited once, Henry Fonda, and she danced with him.
“David Niven was at the base at one time,” she said.
