When America was in the midst of World War II, women had limited opportunities to be of service. Some women became WAVES. Established by Public Law 689 on July 30, 1942, the official name of the WAVES, the acronym for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, was the U.S. Navy Women’s Reserve. It was authorized for the war and six months thereafter. Sadly, the women who enlisted, including many sorority women, are in their 90s. Soon there will be none to tell their own story.
Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, was the site of the first Naval Training School for women officers; 9,000 of them were trained there. Former First Lady Grace Goodhue Coolidge, a Pi Beta Phi alumna, lived in Northampton. From 1942-45, the Navy set up shop on the Smith campus, taking over several buildings for training. Mrs. Coolidge loaned her home, Road Forks, to Captain and Mrs. Herbert W. Underwood while he was in command of the program. Mrs. Coolidge accompanied the Underwoods when they went to Hunter College in New York to review the WAVES there.
In the Winter 2000 Arrow, Josephine Crook Rich, a Knox College Pi Phi, recounted her experience as a WAVE. She was recommended for the program and she left her job as an accountant with General Electric. She was sent to Smith College for training. While there, she discovered that there were Pi Phis among the members of her WAVE training class. The Pi Phis knew that Mrs. Coolidge lived in Northampton and they invited her to tea.
Mrs. Coolidge gave her account of the meeting in a Round Robin letter she wrote to her Pi Phi friends:
A couple of weeks ago, I had a note from a Pi Phi Wave saying that those whom they had been able to round up among the Waves were planning to have a tea to-gether at the Mary-Marg* tea room and would I join them. I got me out my best bib and tucker and found about twelve of them on the door-step waiting for me. A friend of one who was here to visit her took our pictures and we went in to-gether for our tea.
They came from the following chapters: California Delta (UCLA), Wisconsin Alpha (University of Wisconsin), Florida Beta (Florida State University), Iowa Gamma (Iowa State University), Florida Alpha (Stetson University), Vermont Beta (University of Vermont) and Illinois Beta-Delta (Knox College). There were two from two of the chapters. A grand group of girls and Capt. Underwood and visiting Admirals from time to time have expressed themselves as well pleased with the way in which these girls take to the training.
The former First Lady was a prolific letter writer and she sent the Pi Phis thank you notes.
A blurb on the Smith College website tells more about the program:
By the end of the war over 83,000 women were serving in the Navy, a number significantly over the original estimate of 11,000. They filled positions such as parachute riggers, pharmacist’s mates, instrument flying trainers, store keepers, radio dispatchers, clerks, mechanics, lab technicians, mail carriers, decoders, and navigators. Most of the officers were restricted to the rank of lieutenant with the notable exception of Captain Mildred McAfee (the president of Wellesley College) who was the director the WAVES. Soon after peace was declared in 1945, the WAVES and SPARS programs were dismantled and the women who had been in the Navy returned to their homes or civilian jobs.
*The Mary-Marg was the Mary-Marguerite Tea Room at 21 State Street. It opened in 1920. Owners Mary W. Wells and Marguerite L. Hawks sold the business in 1952, and it continued under different ownership into the 1960s.
