Rosalie Icenogle is a native of the Topeka area where she still resides today. You might think graduating from high school the same year of Pearl Harbor, 1941, might be scary , but Mrs. Icenogle certainly did not. As a member of the WAVES, Rosalie is among those women who were some of the first groups of women to serve our country in the military, and very proud of it. The military was more than a call to duty, for Rosalie it was a great learning experience that enabled her to excel in her career for the rest of her life.

I was born in a rural community, on the farm around Havensville, Kansas, and Pottawattamie County. You know where Topeka is? Havensville is fifty miles a little west and north of Topeka. It’s kind of close to the Nebraska line, so it’s in the northeast corner of Kansas. I was the youngest of six children. There were four girls and two boys in the family. But I was much younger than my siblings; I came ten years after my next sibling. I think my parents were probably in their mid-forties when I was born. I was much younger than the rest of them. They kind of, my sisters, I always said my sisters’ raised me, because I was so much younger than them. My mother’s name was Cora, and my dad’s name was Harley. My last name was Davis.

There was no kindergarten in our town at that time; but I went to first grade in the city school, in Havensville. We lived on a farm so after first grade I went to a country school called Buckeye, it was Buckeye Ridge, really; it was a one-room school out in the country. I went from second grade through the sixth grade at that school; it was [called]* elementary school. And then I went back to Havensville for the seventh and eight grade. [Then] I chose to go back to this town school, it was called Havensville rural high school because it had students from a large rural area. It wasn’t a very big school, but that’s what they called it, Havensville Rural High School. I graduated in May 1941. Pearl Harbor was in December of the same year, 1941.

Rosalie and some of her friends in the WAVES

In that interim from May to December, I went to secretarial school in Topeka. I was only there, I think, about three months. I lived with an older sister in Topeka [when] I went to that secretarial school. In 1942, I went to live with another older sister in Kansas City; and got a job, my first job, as a clerk typist for General Electric Supply in Kansas City. I worked there about, I think, about two years before I went into the military. I went in the navy, the exact date was August 26, 1943. I was twenty years old at that time. I [was in] the WAVES. I found out from my daughter that the WAVES stands for, (laughs) I never could remember what it stands for. WAVES stands for Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service. My daughter said the reason they called us that was that they, the government-- at that time when the WAVES were established-- they expected that that part of the military would be dissolved after the war. It was strictly thought to be an emergency department. That didn’t happened because people, women, are still in the WAVES today. But that was the idea in the beginning.

We were never aboard a ship. The WAVES were not allowed to go over seas--I think we could have gone to Hawaii, it seems to me. But I went from, after I enlisted in Kansas City, they sent me [to] boot camp (laughs), in the Bronx, New York. The navy took over, during World War II; it was very ordinary, very accepted, for the military to completely take over some school, which they did for the WAVES. It was Hunter College, which I think was a private women’s school in the Bronx. That was where I served my boot camp for four weeks. That was kind of an interesting time in boot camp. You always think of boot camp of being extreme and hard, all that kind of stuff; for me it was kind of fun (laughs).

Somebody had told me to get into the music company in the navy. I said, “Okay”, [because] I had already been involved in singing and so on. So, I volunteered to be in the music company. You think of the military as platoons and regiments, and company’s; well it would have been a music platoon, and we did a lot of marching to teach us discipline. I remember that as being a lot of fun. The only songs that I can remember besides, of course, the military songs the navy taught us to march by, [were the ones] in this show that we put on. You are my sunshine. That was the one that I recall, it was back during that era. Well, I can’t remember any particular song, but I do remember that one. We did a lot of marching, for me anyway. Most of the parades, at that time, were in our school; or it wasn’t the school, but within the navy. We put on a show at the very end for, kind of, the graduating ceremony. Our platoon put on a show. When we graduated from boot camp, it was a big deal. The school had a great big football field and our visitors and family could come, we had quite an audience for our graduation.

Rosalie and her platoon marching on the football field of Hunter College

Well, they sent us to as specialty school from boot camp; they sent us to Yeoman School, which yeoman means secretary the same thing as a secretary or a clerk. They sent us to Cedar Falls, Iowa; and I was there ten weeks for that training. There again the navy took over a state school and we were there in Cedar Falls, Iowa State School for ten weeks. And when I graduated, I graduated with a rating of Yeoman third class. The class would go Yeoman third class, and the next one up would be second class, and then first class; and then after that, you’d go into what they would call the chiefs rating. [You still have] enlistments rating. Your’re not an officer yet; but that’s the way it would go. The Yeoman Third Class would be the low man on the totem pole; but after I graduated from that school if I had good grades, then I have the Yeoman rating.

[After gradation], they assigned us, then, to where we were going to go to serve our time. I seem to remember that we were given somewhat of a choice. You could either go to Great Lakes right outside of Chicago or Washington, D.C., or, I can’t remember the other selections; but I chose or I asked to go to Great Lakes which are a permanent--Great Lakes Training Station-- that has been there early on. A long, long, time (laughs), and will probably always be there. It’s just outside of Chicago. Great Lakes is a recruit training center. Lots of sailors would be sent there for their early training before there were sent over seas or sent to their permanent, what they call a billet. My job was to be a clerk typist in the transportation office. I was one of several WAVES, and they also had some civilians there too. It was run by-- the head of the department, was, I think--he was a lieutenant commander in the navy, and we were responsible for the sailors in there; and we would be given their [sailors] orders to send them to wherever their next assignment was. We would get them tickets or usually by train during World War II. A lot of transportation was by train, so we would get their place on a train or whatever. That was one of my jobs, was to arrange their travel to their next assignment.

There was I seem to remember, some of the sailors might have thought: “Well they brought in a bunch of women so they [can] ship us off to an area to where there was fighting. And if it hadn’t been for these women (laughs), then maybe we could have kept these state side jobs away from combat.” But there wasn’t a lot of that during World War II. We were pretty well accepted, I think. There may have been, but I was not aware of that kind of [anti-women] attitude. We worked hard. We were given definite jobs, but it was very good training for your career, whenever you got out of the service.

The WAVES, I don’t know how in comparison to the other women military outfit, but we lived in a big barrack. We had a big building, I think it was only two stories high, but there were a lot of us up in there. Well, as I would say, it was kind of like a dormitory. We had a big lounge area where we could entertain our friends who might come.

Rosalie and fellow platoon members in their lounge.

We were allowed male friends in the lounge, they could be there and they could meet us. One of the WAVES, that I got to know, was married; and I don’t think you were supposed to be married when you went in, so nobody knew she was married. So, after several weeks of knowing her, one morning we got up, and Becky--that was her name-- was not in her bunk. Well, where had Becky gone? We had what they called a dispensary, it was a medical building behind our barracks; and it seemed they found that Becky was in the dispensary. She had had a baby! How in the world could Becky have a baby? Nobody knew that she was pregnant or married or anything. This sounds like an impossible story, but it was the truth. After a week or two, she came, and they made her be discharged. As I recall, she was given an honorable discharge. We found out that she had been married all this time, and hid this baby the whole time; and without anybody knowing that she was pregnant. That’s hard to believe because our uniforms fit pretty well. She must have had elastic in those skirts or something (laughs). But they were very strict about everything. We were to get up by a signal and go to bed by a signal. Lights out was at ten o’clock, and that was strictly regulated in the dormitory where we lived. We had lockers, much like you would have at school, and our beds were two bunk beds--top and bottom bunks. Maybe a hundred [women] slept in one room. There were two areas off of the lounge area, one to the south of the lounge and one to the north of the lounge. Probably in that whole barracks there would have been, like, 250 women.

Bunk beds in Rosalie’s dormitory.

We ate [in] the mess hall [that] was not very far away; and you’ve heard stories about terrible food in the military (laughs), but I don’t remember that. It was, seem to me like the food was fairly good. I learned to eat some things that I had never eaten before, but I remember it as being not very bad food.

Another very important part of being there [Great Lakes], was that some of us were auditioned [for a show] to see if we could sing; and I was one of three WAVES and three sailors [chosen] for the navy’s radiocast called Meet Your Navy.

Filming “Meet your Navy” program in Great Lakes, Illinois –July 13, 1945.

I don’t t remember how we were chosen. As I said, Great Lakes is close to Chicago; and there was no television at that time, so everything was radio, and the radio show that was done at Great lakes. That was a lot of fun; we really had a lot of fun doing that. That went on for several months. The band that we sang with was kind of a jazz band, and it was real good. We had some musicians out of Chicago that were in a regular dance band. So, yeah! It was good outfit, it wasn’t corny. (Laughs) I had a lot of boyfriends when I was at Great Lakes. There was a musician that I was involved with from the radiocast, but the idea of marriage never came up.

Rosalie and her sister in Chicago, while Rosalie was on liberty.

They called it [vacation] liberty on the weekends. When there wasn’t regular business going, on we could go off the base. The places where we could go were specified. They, the WAVES were pretty well supervised. It seems like I did take one time, during the time I was in Great Lakes, and go home. You had several days [to go]. Our usual place of liberty was either Chicago or Milwaukee. There in Chicago there was public transportation line, a train line that goes from Chicago to Milwaukee, [that’s] how we did all our traveling. Whenever we went off base on that train, [so] nobody needed a car. We had to use our own money to do that. We didn’t make much money, but we didn’t need much. Our food was paid for and we had no living expense. All the money we got, we got to do whatever we wanted to do with it; and all the time you were in the navy you were required to wear uniforms, so we didn’t have a need for a whole lot of money.

The war was over in sometime in ‘45; and I think I was discharged from there [Great Lakes] the sixth of February in 1946. You were discharged on a point system, and I don’t remember too much how that works, but you were discharged after you had been there a certain length of time based on this point system. They did offer several of us to stay on as civilians in our same job if we chose to; I did that. I stayed in the same job as a civilian. It seemed to me maybe three to four months or maybe a little less than six months. I couldn’t stay on the base, of course, but two of my girlfriends and I got an apartment just close to Great Lakes. We lived in our apartment and went back and forth to our job in Great Lakes.

Rosalie (back and center) and her WAVE roommates in Chicago with their landlady Mrs. O’Brien.

[From the service] I made friends that I kept for many years. Some of them have died. In fact, after I got out of the service, I went to live with one of the friends in her hometown because she was from Illinois—Macomb, Illinois. That was her home, and I had gone home with her a couple of times and got to know her family. Her family wanted her and me to come back and stay with them and see if we couldn’t get jobs there. It was a state university town much like Manhattan, [Kansas]. My friend, her name was Beverly Barnes, had already had two years of college, and her family wanted her to go back to college. We were good friends, and so they invited me to come and live with them so Beverly could go back to school. I did that; and I got a job in that town as a secretary for the [state] department of agriculture. It was a real good job. I felt very fortunate to get that job. I always thought that the military did a very good job of training us so that we were qualified as civilians to get good jobs. [Also], veterans were given sort of preference. For instance, if there was a job advertised for, and five or ten applicants would apply for a job, veterans would be given preference over civilians, over other people, if you qualified. Of course, during World War II the attitude of the country was kind of different-- quite different from what it is today. There was a feeling, a general patriotism everywhere. That was kind of the first time since World War I since the United States had been involved in a global war. It was just a different attitude. People in the service, in the military, were treated very well. I didn’t [live] with them [Beverly’s family] the whole time. Oh, maybe for a year; and then I got my own apartment. I lived with two others girls then. There was time when I finally did live by myself. For a while, I usually had a roommate or two.

That’s when I met my husband. My job [in Macomb] was in the post office building, which is a federal building; and he, my future husband, was still in the air force. He was a recruiter for the air force. His office was just down the hall from mine, and I got to know him that way. I knew him for several months, but then the air force decided they were going to transfer him someplace else, which is very ordinary. That happens a lot. So, they sent him first to Tennessee. Then, by this time, it was during the Korean War. Then they sent him to Fairbanks, Alaska. We dated off and on for three years. I thought he was going to be in Alaska for only a year, but then we found out that he was going to be there for two years. So we decided that we didn’t want to wait any longer. We arranged by letter that we were going to do this [get married]. In fact, my husband was given a leave from the air force. He came back, and we bought our wedding rings, and our outfits that we were going to get married in. So then, after he’d been there a year, I took my first plane trip, and though I was probably going to die. Got on this plane by myself, and flew from Seattle to Fairbanks. Well, I finally got over my fear and looked down and saw, of course, beautiful, beautiful scenery when I got into Alaska. [I] landed at this military base, which was at this time, called Ladd. I think it must have been [named after] a general, some big high officer name in the air force. I arrived there in March of 1951 about the 29^th or 30^th and we were married two days later. I got a job as a civilian on the base, and worked there for a little while. I was not necessarily an adventurous type; and I thought “Wow! What am I doing? This is pretty treacherous territory for me.” But I wanted to marry that guy. You should know him, his name is Lloyd Icenogle and everybody calls him Ike. The thing that you had to get used to was the cold weather. We didn’t have a car, but we were very lucky to get a small house off the base. We never did live on the base. The house had an attached garage--well, that was very unusual. We didn’t have a car, but the people across the street had a car, but not garage. (laughs) So, we kind of made a deal they kept their car in our garage, and every now and then we got to use their car.

So, in about ten months from the time we were married, I had our first child. She was born in April of 1952. My husband was still in the air force, of course. Well he got orders to go some place else in the states; but they wouldn’t let us leave with this baby until the baby was six months old. It was just a health thing. My daughter was born, I remember, it was in this big ward. There were a lot of babies born at that time. It seems to me like there were eight or ten mothers in this ward with their babies. He, my husband, had orders to [go to] Baltimore, Maryland. I can’t remember the name of the base; but he was ordered to an air force base just outside of Baltimore, Maryland. We had an apartment in a big old home. It was in a beautiful area of Maryland called Bel Air, Maryland. It was out in the country, and it was private homes; and we had a car by this time, and he commuted from this county apartment to the base just outside of Baltimore. He was discharged from there. I think he was discharged early in 1953.

Lloyd was originally from Illinois, so we went back to his home just out of Macomb, Illinois. We were only there a short time. I had family back in Topeka so they encouraged us to come to Topeka and for my husband to get a job, which is what we did. He learned the carpenter trade from his dad. He had built houses and barns and so on when he was a young man; and so he got a job as a carpenter in Topeka. I didn’t start working right away. I think it probably wasn’t until 1953, or 1954, that I got a job as secretary for the advertising manager at Topeka Power and Light. I did [enjoy] it, it was fun. I worked there not a long time, though, seems to me not more than a year because there was a Veterans Administration hospital in Topeka, and I knew that I could make more money working there. I applied for a job at the hospital as a secretary, and I got a job there and moved from the power company out to the hospital. I kept that job until our daughter was probably about two years [old]. I had another little child, a boy named Tracy. I quit my job at the VA after our son was born. I didn’t go back to work for a couple of years. [Lloyd] did a lot of things, he had a job as a carpenter during the daytime; and at night, especially when I was not working we needed more money; he had a job as a nursing assistant at the veterans hospital. He did that for two or three years and then in the mean time he also did something else. A lot of the veterans went to college on what they call the GI bill. He went to photographic school on the GI bill. Learned to be a photographer. He worked as a photographer for the local newspaper for a little while and after that, opened his own photographic business. He was a private photographer for a while. It was [called] Lloyd Iscnoble. Oh, he had that opened for a long time; he did a lot of wedding pictures and private pictures. Because he had work at the veteran’s hospital, people got to know him that way as a photographer he did a lot of weddings and pictures for babies and so on. I worked at the veteran’s hospital. My job was very interesting. It’s kind of a campus style hospital one big general building where the general medicine; and then there were four adjacent specialty buildings that were for mental patients. In the beginning, it was known as kind of a psychiatric hospital. I had several different jobs. Every time there was an opening someplace that might be a promotion I chose to apply for that; and then, if I could qualify, I moved into the different area. I credit the military for training me very well for my future career. I stayed at the veteran’s hospital until I retired which was 1982.

This interview was conducted by Julie Scorse, Spring 2006

*words not said by Rosalie