Janet Cremer lived behind me for six years. It was pure chance that I was able to interview her. She was very gracious and helpful in sharing her stories and pictures. She was a wonderful woman who accomplished much in her lifetime. She held her achievements as matter of fact; she was humble and practical. She never mentioned that she was diagnosed with cancer, and I was saddened to hear that she died only three weeks after this interview. I consider myself fortunate to have known her.

I was born in a community in central Pennsylvania, called Mineral Point, Pennsylvania, on May the 18^th, 1919 to M.J. and Frieda M. Wilson O’Connor. My dad was postmaster there and we also had a grocery store. I have one brother five years older, now deceased, and one sister two years older, now eighty-eight years, and lives in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Both were teachers. Many fond memories of my childhood. I played tennis and also the violin. I was educated in the elementary school in Mineral Point. It was a four room school with four teachers. There were two grades to each room. We took the eighth grade examination in order to be promoted to high school. One of the questions on the test was to write and punctuate correctly the Gettysburg Address.

[I]* graduated from Johnstown high school. Johnstown was more like a city, perhaps seventy thousand people at the time. Yeah, [Johnstown was] seven miles [from] Mineral Point. [I] graduated from high school in 1936, went into nurses training in the fall of 1936. [It was a] three year diploma school. [I] graduated from there in the fall of 1939; [but I] had to wait one year to take nurses state board because, at that time, you had to be twenty-one years of age to take state board, and I was only twenty.

But, anyhow, I worked as an RN in several positions in different hospitals and cities, enlisting in the Navy nurse corps in November of 1943. I felt it was my duty [to help out with the war.] I was twenty-four years old then, when I enlisted. I was stationed at Norfolk Naval Hospital, Norfolk, Virginia, for two week for indoctrination.

Janet’s Group of nurses “at ease” at the Captain’s Inspection outside the nurses hall at the Norfolk Naval Hospital, Virginia, January 1944

We had to drill. This is when we were standing Captain’s Inspection. [referring to the photo] Here we are, now this is what we call dress blues, see?

Then I was transferred to Philadelphia Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There were maybe five hundred nurses there, we lived [in the Ben Franklin Hotel]. They did have quarters on base, but not enough. The majority of us lived in the hotel, and they took us back and forth to the hospital in a Navy bus. I was there for fifteen months, and then I was transferred to the naval air station in Brunswick, Maine. All the navy nurses were commissioned officers. Most of us were ensigns. Some of us were officers.

I was an Ensign when I went in. Then I was later promoted to a Lieutenant Jr. Grade, which is like a First Lieutenant in the Army. [In] the Army, you go in as a Second Lieutenant, [then] First Lieutenant. In the navy, you go in as Ensign, then you’re promoted to a Lieutenant Jr. Grade, and then a Full Lieutenant and it goes like that. The ranking system is a little different than the, uh, Army. I was promoted, see, to lieutenant junior grade and you have stripe, what they call stripe and a half. It’s a gold braid, is what it was.

‘Course our duty as nurses was to take care of the patients. An average day, if you worked days, you went on duty at seven o’clock, and an average nurse day is to take care of patients. We were treated with respect by all the military. A’course the doctors outranked us, as some of the nurses did, because they probably had more education. All the military personal respected us because we were officers. I would enlist again. I’ve always said that I would do that again.

The dress code at that time was not like it is today. We wore white uniforms and caps. Everything was white: shoes, hose, uniforms, and caps. You looked like a nurse. [In the Navy]

Janet in her white uniform Janet in her dress blues

you wore your rank on your cap; but in civilian life, each hospital had their own cap, so to speak. Like if you worked in one of the larger cities like Detroit, each of the hospitals had their own particular cap. That’s how you identified nurses from different hospitals. But you wore the cap of the hospital [where] you graduated, ‘cause that’s why there were so many caps of the nurses, because there were nurses there from different hospitals. They’re always starched really stiff.

Janet in nursing uniform

You never did wear your white uniform and cap out on the street, you know. You changed clothes at the hospital, and wore your, what we call dress blues. It was a skirt, shirt, and tie and jacket. We dressed exactly

like the man in the navy except we wore skirts. I suppose some of the branches the women wore slacks, but we nurses never did. In the wintertime you wore blues, what you call blues. In the summertime you changed to white. What they do today, I don’t know. This is back in the forties.

Yep, [there were] very few blacks. I don’t know that I ever saw a black nurse, but there could have been some in some of the other areas. Oh yes, yes and there were blacks in the other areas of the navy (coughing)* you know. Very, very few women.

Pay scale was according to your rank. I don’t know whether they paid us more than the men or not. I really don’t know. I never paid that much attention. I’m sure the doctors got more than we did. See, we were always considered in the medical corps.

I left the military after World War II, which was in 1945; and the reason I left was because I had gotten married, and married nurses could not be in the Navy, so I had to resign my commission. I got married in Brunswick, Maine. I met my husband there. He was a Navy pilot. His squadron was stationed there. I met him there, and we were married.

Well, I was on duty at the dispensary, is what we called it, in Brunswick, Maine. We didn’t call it a hospital because it was just a one story, and we had a medical side and a surgical side. Anyhow, I was on duty this day, and Jack came to visit one of his buddies that was in sick bay. So, when he was leaving, he wanted to know what I was doing that night, and I said, well you know, “Nothing. I’m on duty until eleven o’ clock,” ‘cause [I] was workin’ three to eleven.

“Well, there’s a dance at the officer’s club, would you like to go?”

And I [said] “Well, sure, something to do.” So, he met me when I got off duty at eleven o’ clock. We took the bus into town. This is in Maine, a little one place, horse town, you know? So, we went into town, and I changed into my dress blues. [After the dance], we were standing out on the street waiting for the bus to go back to the base and some man came along and said, “Were we going to the base?” And we said, “Yes,” so he gave us a ride. [He was] a civilian. So, that’s how I met Jack.

Dottie O’Neill, Janet O’Connor, and Mary Jo O’Connor at a Picnic in Brunswick, Maine

And then, his [Jack’s] squadron was what they call decommissioned after the war was over in Europe. Jack was in a patrol, what they call a patrol

squadron. They were patrolling the Atlantic coast. Well, they were transferred then to another base, and there were a whole group of them. So, they had this clambake as their departure from up there. So, they invited we nurses. Some of the men were married, of course. Their wives were there. And whoever catered this, took this seaweed, and made a great big fire; and put the seaweed on then tomake steam. Then they put these big clams, and, uh--I think they were duck eggs--they were great big, to bake. So they had this big picnic, they called it. So, of course I was invited to that. Then they left Brunswick, Maine.

I can remember when we first met him up in Maine. He said he was from Pittsburg. Well, most of us were from Pennsylvania, or a lot of us from the east coast, you know. We just assumed he meant Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. No! Pittsburg, Kansas; and we all said to him, “Where’s that?” (laughs) He got a big kick out of that.

Janet and her sister, Mary Jo, at her wedding in Maine, August 15, 1945

We were married the fifteenth of August, and we didn’t know at the time that World War II was going to end then. The married nurses had to resign; but during the war they changed that because there were so many nurses being married and leaving the Navy. It was leaving the Navy short-handed. They had to change that, what they call an All NAV, which meant all Navy. They changed that so nurses could be married and remain in; but as soon as the war was over, they changed it back. That’s why I had to resign.

Jack had been in for four years. He got out before I did. We got married, and he went back to Florida because he was stationed in Florida at that time. He had what they call enough points to get out. So, he got out and he came up to Maine. Then the all NAV came out [so,] I had to resign. So, this was in, like, November of 1945. So, I resigned.

One time when he was in Florida--he was in Florida several times--they had one of their famous hurricanes. Well, they had to ferry their planes inland. So, they brought their planes back to Cleveland, Ohio to get them out of the hurricane. I think it was [from] Panama City, Florida. He was at several bases down at Florida when we were married. And then I had applied for leave and I was going to go back to Florida with him for some leave, then the war ended. See, we didn’t know that at the time ‘cause you have to apply for all these things ahead of time. So, I didn’t get to go to Florida. He had to go back, but I didn’t because the war was over and everything was changing.

So, then, let’s see. He got out of the service on points, then I had to resign and we went back to Pennsylvania. Then we came here to Pittsburg, Kansas which was his home town, in December ’45. I’ve been here ever since, and I had never been any further west than Chicago before that. So, we got on the train in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and then changed trains in Pittsburgh, and changed trains in St. Louis, then changed trains in KC, and finally we got here.

Janet and Jack Cremer visiting Mineral Point, Pennsylvania

When we came to Pennsylvania, to my folks home, that’s the first time he had met my parents. He had met my sister when she was out

there, because she came out there when I was married. He kept telling my mother he was taking me to, “God’s country” because she was asking all kinds of questions‘cause people on the east coast think Kansas is the droppin’ off place. “Do they have dry cleaners out there, Jack? Do they have drugstores?”

“Yes, Scotty,” Everybody called my mother Scotty. He was takin’ me to God’s country he kept telling ‘em. “I’m takin’ her to God’s country.” Well, it was snowing in Pennsylvania, and we got here to Kansas and it was still snowing. That spring they had one of their famous dust storms, is what they told me it was. That summer it got up to 120, and I thought, man, this is the country God forgot. You know, I couldn’t really handle all these extreme changes.

Then we came out here to Kansas. Jack’s parents, that’s the first time I had met them, we only knew each other. Guess we were lucky. It was really something but then, Jack and I had three children in all… one son and two daughters, all graduates of Pittsburg State. One was a teacher. The other daughter majored in social work and the son majored in business. We have five grandchildren. They’re all college graduates also, but just one graduated from here.

I worked for several years after we were married. I did a lot of volunteer work with the blood mobile and different clinics that we had here. I worked at the Student Health Center at the University for several years, and worked part time in several nursing homes. The last place that I [worked] was at Crawford County Health Department, and I was on the board there. It was the mental health board at the time.

[I see you have a question about ‘loose women’.] Let’s see. Loose women. What does that mean? I really don’t know. The only thing I know… this is kind of a far-fetched story, but anyhow, this spring, there was a friend of mine brought me an article from the Branson News. The mayor at Branson, Missouri had declared the third week of May as Women’s Veterans week; and he wanted to know if we knew this, I said, “No, I didn’t.” Anyhow, there was a lady’s name there at the bottom of the article. So I called--and she works at the Chamber of Commerce in Branson, but she was also in the military in the Navy in the Vietnam era. Anyhow, we became friends; and she and two other ladies from Branson came here this summer--in August, on a Saturday-- to meet with the women of our women’s legion post. She used this term “loose women.” She also--well, all three of those ladies--told us that there were a number of ladies down in the Missouri area, and different places, that didn’t even admit that they had been in the military and that their families didn’t know. We were all just shocked. So, perhaps this was the term that was applied to women that were in the military at one time. I really don’t know.

Anyhow, getting back to our women’s legion post, which is what brought all of this around. After World War II, all of the people were returning to home and joining the American Legion. Well, we women joined the American Legion too; but it was the men’s post. So the man that was the service officer at the American Legion at the time, approached some of we women and said, “Why don’t you ladies start your own post?” Which we did. We proceeded to check out with the state what we had to do, and apply for a charter. So our charter for Betty Lou Vilmer Post 394, the American Legion was chartered in 1948. At that time, there were several women’s legion posts in the state; but right now, we are the only one. We are the only all women’s legion post in the state of Kansas, here in Pittsburg; and I think there are only nine in the country. Well, I am a charter member of Betty Lou Vilmer. Past commander several times--commander’s like the president. Yea, plus I held several other offices, too.

Oh, I suppose [the military helped me in later life.] Well, I got my husband; so, I guess you call that helping me. I appreciated my years in the Navy. Well, I met a lot of wonderful people. I can remember in Philadelphia Naval Hospital, which was a big place, I was on duty on Christmas. The officer in charge of the hospital that was on duty that day was making his rounds of the different wards. He came through my ward and he said, “Miss O’Connor, what are you doing here?”

And I said, “Well, we have to take turns, you know. I’m working on Christmas and I’ll be off then for New Year’s.” This doctor was Dr. Walter Walters, and he was from Mayo Clinic, Minnesota. He was married to the Mayo girl. He was from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Nice, nice man. Like I say, I met so many wonderful people like that, that you wouldn’t meet otherwise. The worst part, I guess, was just, you know, being away from home.

Well, there are just a few of the war stories.

[ ]* were used to show words which were omitted

( )* were used to show sounds

This Interview was researched and prepared by Jennifer Pfeiffer on December 22^nd, 2005