Tag Archives: history

Flag Day

June 14th is Flag Day, the day celebrating the adoption of the U.S. Flag in 1777 by the Second Continental Congress. It was officially established in 1914 via a proclamation by President Woodrow Wilson and was reaffirmed by an Act of Congress in 1949.

Flag Day isn’t an official federal holiday, but it is a state holiday in Pennsylvania (the only state to recognize Flag Day as a holiday).

This photograph shows the retreat ceremony at the WAVES Yeoman School in Cedar Falls. It comes from the Naval History and Heritage Command.

Happy Flag Day!

New Year’s Resolutions

Here’s the exciting news: the rough edit of the film is done (!!!) and our fabulous composer Andy Forsberg should have our music composed by mid-February.

So what’s up in the New Year for the Homefront Heroines crew?

Champagn and celebration with Navy WAVES at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel.

We have some resolutions in place.

  • Blog a WAVES picture a day for 2012
  • Submit the film for ITVS and American Documentary Film Fund financing in January. Then, on to American Experience, who we’re hoping will agree that the story of the WAVES is worth a place on PBS. The funding will help us with our other resolutions.
  • License film footage and archival music
  • Find a firm to do color correction
  • And, find a narrator. We love the idea of :

What do you think?

Here’s to a fabulous 2012 and the debut of Homefront Heroines both for the WAVES at the WAVES National Annual Conference and (ideally) at a film festival or on a television screen near you!

War

Three thousand miles of widely varied terrain – from mountains to deserts, swamps to farmland. Another three thousand miles or so across the Pacific Ocean. That’s the distance that separates Pearl Harbor from Washington, DC.

WACs operate a teletype machine during World War II.

While today communication across the world is nearly instantaneous, in 1941 there were some challenges. Starting with the time difference. When the attack began in Pearl Harbor at 8am local time, it was 1pm on the east coast – it ended close to 3pm. And forget the immediacy of the internet: news was spread by telephone, morse code or telegraph machines, which transmitted news stories via a cable. In this case, a cable stretched for miles underneath the Pacific Ocean.


The initial reports about the attack spread on December 7th, through breaking news updates on local radio stations (remember these were the days before television). And the next day, December 8th, President Franklin Roosevelt announced that the United States was at war.

What We’re Thankful For, Part I – The Four Freedoms

In January of 1941, months before the United States would become officially involved in World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt gave one of his radio addresses.

Roosevelt was an innovator in using mass media to help bring his message to the public. His speech about the banking crises in 1933 was the first time a President had used the power of the radio to speak directly to the American public (in this case to attempt to stop the bank runs which nearly destroyed the nation’s economic system in 1933).  That speech would lay the groundwork for the Fireside Chats, 31 radio addresses on a variety of topics, ranging from the New Deal to the War in Europe.

The Four Freedoms speech wasn’t one of those Fireside Chats. It was the official State of the Union Address for 1941. But it nonetheless illustrates Roosevelt’s skill at using the public airwaves to speak to the American public:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms…That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb. To that new order we oppose the greater conception—the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Roosevelt included two Constitutionally-mandated freedoms (Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Worship) in his speech, and then added two freedoms which he said should be a part of the social contract we have with our fellow Americans. Freedom from Want means that Americans shouldn’t go hungry or be without basic human needs (food, shelter, etc.) – and that a modern society had a responsibility to provide for those in need.  Freedom from Fear means that we should live in a country where we don’t have to worry about our safety. Roosevelt went on to say that these weren’t just American values, but should be values available to everyone in the world.

The Four Freedoms would later be illustrated by Norman Rockwell in a series of drawings for the Saturday Evening Post.

The Four Freedoms wasn’t a Thanksgiving speech, but nonetheless we’re thankful this time of year for Roosevelt and his identification of the Four Freedoms.

11/11/11

Seventy years ago today, America wasn’t officially involved in World War II.  In less than a month, the country would be. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would thrust the United States into the war and transform the country.

This is a photograph of my (Homefront Heroines Director Kathleen Ryan) mother, Mary Marovich Ryan. It was taken after she enlisted in the WAVES. She came from a large family and grew up on the south side of Chicago. They didn’t have much – it was the Depression and there were a lot of mouths to feed.

But as the war enlisted all of her brothers – except for her younger brother who was too young to join up – enlisted in the military. They joined the Army and the Coast Guard. Two of her brothers joined together. By the time my mother enlisted, every member of her family was in the service, except for that younger brother and a sister who was married with a young child (her younger brother would serve during the Korean War). I love her quote in the article below about wanting a six star pin so she can honor her brothers.

Those of you who have been following the Homefront Heroines project know that my mother didn’t talk much about her military service. I knew that enlisted in mid-1943. She went to New York for boot camp, and then traveled across country on a train to head to her specialty training at a Naval Hospital in California as a pharmacist’s mate. A pharmacist’s mate helped out in various  medical capacities; my mother actually worked in the pharmacy. She was stationed at Treasure Island in San Francisco where she met my father, a pilot in the Army Air Forces. She was decommissioned shortly after V-J Day, and she and my father eventually settled about an hour north of New York City in a town along the Hudson River.

But she kept things. Like these photographs (including the one above of a celebration at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco with a group of friends) and the articles about her service. Or a book discussing the properties of various prescription drugs. Or gloves. Dozens of pairs of white cotton gloves, which were part of the formal WAVES uniform. And before she died, she asked that she be buried with military honors, commemorated by a headstone listing her dates of service.

On this Veteran’s Day, we salute all of those who offered their service to our country, including those Homefront Heroines who blazed a trail for women in the future – in the military, of course, but also in the civilian workplace.

Vogue’s Best Dressed Women

If you talk to one of World War II’s Navy WAVES, you are going to hear about her designer uniform.  The Navy was already known for having “sharp”-looking uniforms for men and with the creation of the WAVES, a lot of thought went into making an appealing uniform for women.  The women took great pride in the comfort, quality make and fashion of their Mainbocher-designed dress.

Fashion designer Main Bocher opened his own shop as an American in Paris in 1929.  He became a sensation in Europe and the United States, with many wealthy clients in both places including the Dutchess of Windsor.  His clothing was beyond what many WAVES could have afforded which is another reason they became prized possessions.

(Main Bocher)
(One of Mainbocher’s most famous designs made famous by Horst’s photo – “Mainbocher Corset”)

The WAVES uniforms were so trendy that in 1943 the WAVES and other women in uniform were named as Vogue’s “Best Dressed Women in the World Today.”

Check out this Exhibit on the uniform identity of the WAVES to learn more.

Janette Shaffer Alpaugh

Janette Alpaugh (Shaffer at the time), originally from Indiana, joined the WAVES in January 1943. She was part of the second class of WAVES to attend boot camp in Cedar Falls, Iowa. After boot camp she applied to become a Link trainer, where she learned how to instruct men who were training as pilots in flight simulation. Janette was stationed in Pensacola, Fla., as a link trainer before she went on to become a WAVES officer.

She grew up on a big farm, north of Indianapolis, where she says she was raised like a boy. While Janette’s girlfriends were helping their mothers in the kitchen, Janette and her sister were helping her father with the farm. The family only had one boy,  Janette’s younger brother, and everyone’s help was needed. Her time working on the farm, however, gave her a passion for hard work and athletics. Photobucket
“[My Father] treated us just like boys. We did farm work that any boy our age would have done.”

Sharing Her Experiences

Helen and her husband had four children together, three girls and a boy. They were married nearly 30 years when Chuck was killed in a plane crash in Mexico City in 1979. The crash was all over the news and Helen’s friends and family did their best to shelter her from all the coverage.Photobucket

Helen and Chuck, pictured above, at the last party they attended together.

Helen turned 80 years old in 2000 and moved in to a retirement community. It was too boring for her though! She couldn’t stand all the talk about blood pressure and gossip about ambulance visits.

That was when she decided to start writing a book and share all of her experiences. She started on an old typewriter until it broke down and her son bought her a computer.  With the help of her children, “Okay, Girls – Man Your Bunks!”  was published in 2006.  A copy of the book can be found here.  In the book Helen goes into greater detail about her experience in the WAVES, her struggle with alcoholism as an adult, and her family and marriage.

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