If one were to ask my first impression of Mrs. Nadine Stocker Johnson, one word would come to mind: magnetism.  Walking down the hall to our interview room, Mrs. Johnson noted our differences in height with a hearty laugh; I seemed to be over a foot taller than she.  This quickly ensued into a discussion of the many benefits of being either tall or short.  Also, upon meeting Mrs. Johnson, I couldn’t help but note her ensemble, which was a vibrant pink jogging set with a bright green scarf hastily knotted around her neck.  Her ensemble spoke magnitudes of what the interview soon turned out to be.  With a complete disregard to her age--eighty-five, and the many stereotypes--Mrs. Johnson quickly became a familiar friend.  She introduced me to Nadine, a sharp, vivacious, woman with who was one of the first WAVES in United States’ history. 

My name is Nadine Stocker Johnson.  I was born in Yates Center, Kansas on March eighteenth, 1921.  My parents were Hoyt B Stocker and Naomi Eliza Sylvy.  My grandparents, on both sides, came to Kansas in a covered wagon.  My dad’s parents were married in 1871 back in Kentucky, and shortly after their marriage they--in a covered wagon--came to Kansas and homesteaded seven miles north of Yates Center.  They paid three dollars an acre for their land; bought it from the MK&T, Missouri, Kansas, and Texas [railroad]*.  They had their house, I remember them tellin’ about [it].  On the ground floor was sod, and they covered it, evidently, with carpet they brought with them on the covered wagon.  The upstairs of course was finished. I thought that was kinda interesting--what their house was like.

My mother’s parents, my grandparents on my mother’s side, they came from Ohio in a covered wagon, and I’m not sure what year.  My mother was born in 1888, and they were here by then.  So, I think they came in about 1885 maybe little bit later, and they settled in the town of Yates Center.  They lived in town.

 My dad worked, actually he was a painter/decorator, when he was young.  He didn’t tell me, but I found this out later through Census records.  In 1900 he was listed as a boarder at a home in Wichita.  So, he was in Wichita at that time and listed as a boarder working something, I don’t know what; but he was a painter/decorator.  I figured he was learning the trade of painting when he was young; and then my mom and dad got married in 1912.

 My mother went [through her] second year in high school, sophomore.  My dad only went to eighth grade.  But he was a beautiful penman, he could really write.  The first eight grades in those days they really push a lot of information to ‘em . (Laughs)* On the internet I read an eighth grade test.  Well, I’ll bet some college students couldn’t past that test.  He [her father] used perfect English, and he could write!  I don’t know... (laughs) whomever his teacher was really taught him well.

After my mom and dad were married, my [oldest] brother was born in 1918; and that was the year of the big flu epidemic.  My mother took the flu, and they didn’t think she would live.  My brother was born in May, and she had the flu that winter.  They told me they took my brother next door to my aunt’s, my dad’s sister’s.  They [aunt and uncle] took care of him as a baby, away from her; and my dad just went in and out and more less helped her.  Tried to keep from getting the flu himself.  But she did survive, thank goodness; and a lot of them did die.  I remember her telling me, ‘cause she had that flu, and she was so afraid that she might not make it. 

Then in 1921, I was born.  Yay, woopi! (Laughs) ‘ Course I was born at home, all of us, my two brothers and I were born at home.  (Laughs) She said, “ I can remember lookin’ down,” the doctor put the basket beside the bed, you know, she said, “I looked down there and all I could think was there was a little baby monkey.”  (Laughs really hard) So, that was her first impression of me.

(Still laughing) My mom was a stay-at-home mom, of course; and she was full of ideas.  When I was– oh, I think I was only about four, there was a woman in town who gave what they called expression lessons.  I took these expression lessons, and I learned how to give poems, little stories, and stuff.  Also, they had me go to different meetings and I would be the program.  They’d stand me up on the table, and I would give my (laughs) my little reading.  I would go to Eastern Star, and all of the lodges and different places like that.

When I was, I think I was four--I don’t think I was five yet--I gave a reading at the Alumni [meeting].  My uncle had graduated from high school and the alumni associating was having a [meeting].  I think he’d only been out about two or three years, or just very few years.  I was old enough to remember that one.  I wasn’t very old because my expression teacher died in 1927, and I would’ve only been six.  See, my mom had to help me.  She [the teacher] would give these [assignments] and show me how to do expressions; and then my mom would help me at home, to learn how to give expressions, or these readings.

Oh, I’m backing up a little.  I remember something that happened when I was a year and a half old.  Evidently, I walked pretty young, and I was small.  I had somehow gotten away from my mom.  (Laughs)She thought I was out in the yard, I think, and the neighbor, I think we had one of the original phones in town; but anyway, she did too, and she knew our family.  I was a block away, going down the street after a collie dog going (makes kissing noises).  This neighbor called my mom, she said, “You know Nadine is going down the street behind a dog, following a dog over here.” (Laughs)Oh, my mom come flyin’ over there to get me.

(Laughs) I guess I must’ve had a tendency for runnin’ away because when I wasn’t too old, I was thinking about sometin’ to do.  I had a little neighbor girl, I involved the neighbor girl.  I took the neighbor, and by that time I was five or six.  I’d been to the cemetery, this was right after my Memorial Day– or Decoration Day, we used to call it– and I’d seen all those flowers in the cemetery.  They were so fascinating, you know, ‘cause at that time you planted flowers, and these Sweet William, I can remember, they looked so beautiful in the cemetery.  Well, I told this neighbor girl, Meredith, I said, “Let’s go to the cemetery and pick some of those flowers.” (Laughs) We took my little brother, he was about a year and a half, two years old; he wasn’t very old.  We took him in the wagon, and we went towards the cemetery.  Well, it was quite a ways to the cemetery.  We went up this dirt road, and my momma could, after she noticed we were gone,  follow the tracks of the wagon.  Here I am, my little brother, and my neighbor girl, and I was the instigator of it.  Its [the cemetery] probably blocks and blocks, the cemetery is way north of town in Yates Center.  But it did have a walk, and we went down that walk all the way out to the cemetery.  We’d gotten to the cemetery by the time my mom had figured out where we were goin’.  She was runnin’, of course, trying to find us.  That’s what we were doing.  We had located the flowers, [and] we were ready [to] pick them.  So, when she got up there, she said, “Okay, get ready, you’re pulling this wagon back.” 

I said, “ No , I just can’t.  I can’t pull that wagon back.  I’m to tired.”

 She said, “You’re pulling that wagon back to town.”  My mom didn’t paddle, you know; but she had a little “stiffer elm”, she called it.  Sticks, and she switched my legs.  That’s how she corrected us.  Oh, I hated that!  I hated to be corrected with that little switch.  I almost rather be banged in the head.  So, she had to switch my legs, you know, to get me to haul that wagon back to town (laughs).  Oh, it was torture!  It was a lot heavier goin’ up, I mean comin’ back, than it was goin’ up ‘cause I was tired. (Laughs)

 My folks also taught me to roller skate.  There wasn’t much to do, you know, for little kids.  My dad worked downtown in the hardware store.  He was working at the hardware store after my folks got married, and the hardware store was one of the main stores in town.  The one in Yates Center had been an opera house, in it’s day, and it was a big two story building.  Well, the opera house was upstairs and had an elevator.  For the 1920's, you know, it really was quite [snazzy].  Its on the historic register right now–the Light Hardware Building in Yates Center.  That’s where my dad worked.  Well, he walked home for lunch, day to day.  He’d come for lunch, then my mom and I would go to the corner with him.  They got me a pair of skates.  My mom and dad skated a lot when they were young.  That was one of the recreations they really enjoyed.  There was a skating rink in Yates Center, but I didn’t know where it was.  I know they skated a lot because I heard them talking about how they used to skate.

Skates were solid, you know, you couldn’t adjust them or anything, and they had ball bearings underneath.  They were really heavy, and they had to be screwed onto your soles of your shoes.  So, you had to have shoes with a leather sole on the bottom.  Some place in my archives I have a roller skate key.  You had to roll those little clamps back and forth, [with the key].  My dad made a small pair of skates.  [I] learned to skate; they were walkin’ and I was skatin’ in between.

I liked animals, and next door was a bulldog, a white bulldog.  (Laughs) She was my pal; her name was Lady.  My mom would think it was kinda neat, and I did too, she’d let me go to town with a note. [I’d] get like maybe just an item, once in a while a loaf of bread.  Although my mom used to make bread, once in a while we’d buy a loaf of bread.  That was an elite thing to do, you know, to have bread that was made uptown, ‘cause everybody made their own bread. (Laughs) She would send a note, and I think she must’ve called the grocer man ahead of time and said that I was on my way.  Lady would go with me, and she and I’d go to town.  Lady had a litter of pups, [she] went under the house.  She wouldn’t let anybody see those pups, I crawled in there and [would] bring the pups out.  (Laughs) She’d let me go in there, and I would go under the house and bring the little pups out.  “Oh, isn’t this cute,” you know, (laughs).  They weren’t gonna see those pups ‘cause she was a bulldog; and boy, she was really protective of them.  She [Lady] would let me go in under there and get those pups.  I can remember those little pups being born, (laughs) and how I was the only one that could see ‘em .  (Laughs)

My younger brother, back to my family, was born December 29th, 1924.  So, we were all just three years apart: 1918, 1921, and 1924.  You’d think I’d remember him being born, ‘cause he was born [at home].  All of sudden, he was there and they never [told us when the baby was coming](laughs).  Nowadays, they tell you there’s gonna be a baby, and whatever. Me, I didn’t know anything. (Laughs) I didn’t know where babies came from; when I was in the sixth grade, I still didn’t know. (Laughs) I thought the stork delivered them.  They told us the stork delivered the babies.  The stork, you know is a big [bird], and is always on the chimney.  I always thought the stork must’ve dropped the baby down the chimney or something.  I didn’t know.  But it showed pictures of them where the baby, in a little cloth, you know, hanging out of the stork’s  bill.  They dramatized them enough, so I believed that.

(Laughs) I believed in Santa Clause, still.  [We went to] the church and everything.  So, we had a Christmas party.  Then, I was only about seven, I guess; old enough to know, you know, a little bit of something.  My mom dressed up in this Santa Clause [suit]; of course, I didn’t know anything about it.  She came by, at the Christmas party, we were all sitting down munching, and she came to me.  She said later that she could hardly hold herself together because (laughs) here I am lookin’ at her, you know, really examinin’ her good ‘cause she had this outfit on.  When we got home, she said I told her, “ Mom , you know, Santa Clause has a mole right where you have on your face.”  (Laughs heartily) She said, she just about cracked up.  She never said anything more about [it].  She just told me later.

She said, “ I knew when I got there you were just lookin’ at me. Just really studyin’.”  Well, that’s what I was studying.

I was looking at that mole and thinking, “ My gosh, my mom’s got a mole like that.” (Laughs) [A] little mole on her face, on the side of her nose.

I better talk about that, [schooling] first, ‘ course I went to school in Yates Center until I got to the eighth grade.  I [went] through the seventh grade in Yates Center, then we moved to Girard.  But to back up and to tell you the reason why we had to move to Girard was the Depression.  The stock market broke the bank, and my dad had his life’s savings in the bank.  One day, I forget what they call that day, [we lost everything].  He had eight hundred dollars in the bank.  That was his life’s savings; and the bank closed the doors and his eight hundred dollars was gone. 

Jobs got really bad, and it just kept getting worse; didn’t get any better.  In order for him to keep a job, this hardware store that he worked at had purchased another hardware store in Girard.  They’re a partnership, and they had a openin’ for him in Girard.  You know, it was a big decision for us.  He didn’t want to leave [Yates Center] because his parents were born there, and [his] folks lived there.  He had two sisters and a brother; they’d all lived and [were] raised there. My mom [had] all of her [family in Yates Center also]; she had a sister and two brothers. She had three brothers, she lost one; he drank lye.  He thought it was coffee sitting on the stove, ‘cause it had a little froth and stuff on it, he thought it was coffee with milk in it, and he drank that.  Well, I don’t know if they could have saved him or not, but it just ate his tongue up, and he starved to death. Wouldn’t that be awful; he was just eleven years old. 

It [the Depression] left, you know, families, ‘ course the families that lived on farms got along pretty well.  They had their cows, their pigs, and their animals, and raised their grain and whatever.  But the people like us, that lived in town, it was harder on us.

My dad finally decided that we would have to move to Girard.  In the summertime, we had a truck that was open air, it was a covered van, it just had railings along the side and everything.  I can remember one of our chairs fell out along the way, and my dad had to glue it all back together.  There were six chairs to that set.  I still have that set, and I have the chair that my dad glued back together.  I had them all refinished.  My mom said when they were married in 1912, that they bought that set secondhand. So, they are probably close to, uh, I don’t know how many years somebody would keep a set of chairs, but they’re close to a hundred years old, I know.

That’s how we got to Girard; ‘cause my dad had to take this job at the other store there. Then I started in eighth grade at Girard, and went to Girard High School. [I] had to make new friends and everything; its quite an experience at age twelve. 

Oh, I did skip second grade.  I do have to tell you about that, too.  (Laughs) Another girl and I, this was back in Yates Center, the school room was large, and had the first grade and the second grade all in one room.  The first grade was on one side of the room, it was on the right side of the room, and the second graders on the [other] side of the room.  One teacher taught first and second grade, so she’d teach something over in first grade while the other grade was studying or whatever.  Eloise, her name was Eloise, Eloise and I, we got kinda bored with the first grade ‘cause we’d get all of our stuff finished and we were able to learn everything (laughs) that the second grade kids were learning.  When it came time for us to complete the other course, the teacher told us we could go to the third grade, so we did (laughs).

We skipped the second grade then I was a little bit young goin’ into [the third grade], not much, though, because we didn’t have kindergarten.  You didn’t start school until you were six years old.  See, you had all those years at [home]; that’s the reason I ran away from home so much, had to have something to do (laughs).

Then I went to high school in Girard.  I played in the band, I started with orchestra.  I started with violin, my mom had a violin that was handmade by some of her relatives or something.  It was really old and the wood was made stripped.  It was really different--no one had seen anything like it.  I started taking violin lessons, and played in orchestra.

I got a lady (laughs) that’s still around, and she asks me once in a while, “ Do you still have that horn?”  She’s older, she’s five years older than I am (laughs), which makes her close to ninety.  I don’t know, she sees me occasionally.  It’s called an alto horn in the band, and I don’t know when I first saw her, I hadn’t seen her for years, ‘n years, ‘ n years.  She said, “ You still have that horn?” 

And I said, “No! (Laughs) I got rid of it just like you did, soon as I got out of high school I sold the horn.”  It was called an alto horn, they don’t have it anymore.  Its similar to a French horn that they use in the [marching band]. [It has] valves.  You played it like a [trumpet].  Well, I could play taps on the kids’ trumpet because I did the fingering on a alto horn; but they don’t make it anymore, I don’t know why. It could be called a melaphone. 

Our band played in the Coal Festival in Pittsburg. [It] was one of the big things that all the bands from near around [gathered at].  Its now called Homecoming, but it originated as the Coal Festival, and there was a Coal king and queen.  One of the first queens at the Coal Festival was from Girard High School. [I] can’t even think of her name now, Helen something, she was one of the first queens. 

Of course our band marched, and then we competed also at the college ‘cause they would have the same kind of competition.  I still think they have it--where they rate the bands from all around and they come, and, and see how your rating is.  Girard always got a pretty good rating, not because of me. (Laughs)  They [Girard] were actually a pretty good band. 

Oh, the one [class] I really liked the best was shorthand and typing because I had made up my mind I was going to be a secretary.  (Laughs)  I liked that [class] best of all, and I was visiting with a friend the other day, he was a product of Girard high school.  He learned shorthand and typing from the same teacher, her name was Ms. Adams.  He’s about five years older than I am, but he said that it really helped him out in the service, ‘cause he got to stay in the office, ‘cause he said somebody asked him, “Does anybody know shorthand?”

 He said, “I do.”  So, he held an office job [during the war], because he knew shorthand.   I like my shorthand type of classes best, and I would really do well in them.  Bookkeeping, I didn’t like bookkeeping.  That was my least liked subject.  Yet, I had to [do] bookkeeping in my lifetime.

I took a test one time, that was way after when I was working at the college, even.  You had to balance [books].  You had to balance that [test], and I thought, “Ooooh , I don’t know if I could do this on a test.”   But I did; so,  I was really excited.  In fact, I got a hundred on that test.  With that, and I was already a veteran, and you got five points extra [for being a veteran], my score was a hundred and five something, ‘cause I made a hundred on the test.  It involved shorthand, transcription, and bookkeeping.  It was the bookkeeping, is what I was worried about, if I could make that thing balance.  But I did.

I have to make a little bit of a background [for why I joined the WAVES].  After I was out of high school,  I took a civil service test, and I’d worked at two or three different places while waiting for this [test result], and I did get a grade. I was living at Girard, of course, at the time, and I’d gone to Manhattan to work for the government up there--well, it was state government.  State triple A office; it pertained to agriculture.  I had just been up there about two months, and my mother called and said I had an appointment [to] a civil service department in Washington, D.C.. It happened that there were some young people from Girard that were home on leave that were already up there; so, I got a ride to Washington, D.C., and that was in June of 1941.  My appointment was at the Navy department, Bureau of Supplies and Accounts.  ‘Course I was a stenographer. At the time the WAVES were formed, I was working for a lieutenant in the Naval Reserves and he was on active duty in the reserves.  He was a descendent of Lever Brothers, which is a big soap company.  Around the office they rumored he was a millionaire, and I think he was because he used to tell how he’d fly ta Bermuda on the weekends, and stuff like that

Well, the war was declared, and I can remember that day.  I lived with a family out in northeast Washington, D.C.; and we were listening to the radio ‘cause we didn’t have nothing but radio; and President Roosevelt declared war on Sunday evening that the Pearl Harbor was attacked.  The next morning, Monday, we had badges that we were supposed to be allowed to get in, and everybody had to have their badge to get into the Navy department that day for sure.  The officer, that I worked for, he was in full uniform.  Everybody was in uniform.  See, when we weren’t at war, you couldn’t tell who were the officers and who were, you know, personnel at the Navy department.  There were lots of officers that had their uniforms on once we were in war.

My boyfriend, which is now my husband, he had been drafted.  They used to draw names out of a fish bowl, and his was one of the first names drawn here in Crawford County.  He was so lucky to be drafted. ‘Course he was in the Army.

The WACS were formed first, and we knew a little bit about ‘em . I ate at this boarding house, and there were about twelve or fifteen of us.  We’d talk, talk, talk, and I told them, “You know, I’m going to join the WAVES,”‘cause we heard there were going to be women in the Navy.

They said, “Oh, yeah!  Yeah, Nadine.  Yeah, you’re going to join the WAVES. Blah, blah, blah.”  (Laughs) You know, I was always tellin’ them somethin’.  I knew when the Waves were going to be formed; so I went the first day, in Washington, D.C..  They were enlisting them, or recruiting them or whatever, and I knew some of things you had to do.  You had to weigh a hundred pounds, and you had to be at least five feet tall.  Well, I was sorta on the verge, you know, ninety-nine pounds.  So I thought, “I can’t get in there if I can’t weigh enough.” I was five, well, the Navy put me down as 5 feet 13/4 inches.  Had me down to a quarter of an inch.  I decided I had ta weigh in [at] that [one hundred pounds].  So, I ate a lot of bananas, drank a lot of water, and I almost failed the aptitude test.  I could not think, you know.  Here I am full of water. (Laughs)  I thought , “Oh, I may fail the aptitude test.”  But I made it, and I was the forty-eighth WAVE.  I can still remember my serial number, its 4472048.  I never used it.  I have never needed to use it, this was 1942. (Laughs) I can’t remember my social security number.  I can remember the last four numbers, finally.  Its because everybody asks us.  My husband has said that sometimes he can remember his serial number.  When you’re young, like that I guess, it just goes into your head ‘cause you’ve had to use it so many times that it just stays there.  Of course, nobody needs my Navy number, but I can remember it.

Well, I just wanted to do something to be patriotic.  I thought since my older brother had joined, in the Army, and he was stationed, oh, he stayed state’s side. I can’t remember where he was at the time.  My husband [boyfriend at the time] was already in the service, and he was being trained.  So, I thought, “Well, I’ll just go into the WAVES.”  I was in the first group of the WAVES [to be trained], ‘ course there were six hundred of us sent to--well, it used to be Oklahoma A&M, in Stillwater, Oklahoma. I had to go to that Yeoman school.  ‘ Course I had been a secretary for so long it was easy for me.  We also had to learn to march down there.  There was, I remember, this one girl that was down there, she was my roommate down there.  She was from Massachusett’s, and she had kinda of, had a Massachusett’s slang or whatever.  You know, she came in one day and she said, (imitates voice) “I just been out maching.” (Laughs) She said marching.  They do that with their “R’s”, and its hard to understand them.  She out maching.  (Imitates voice again) She said,“I really matched the best.” 

In training, we were the first group of WAVES.  They called us guinea pigs.  We’d just get settled inta one thing and they would change their mind about something.  One time, we’d just been there, I don’t know, a couple of days or we’d just gotten in, and everybody had just gotten ready for bed check.  Until we got this alarm thing, Get dressed!  We’re going to the dispensary. Had to have shots.  Everybody had to have shots. Well, the sailors came from the other school and we came from ours.  Actually, they were dormitories at the college.  We got all lined up ready for our tetanus shots.  Well, I don’t know how many of those sailors past out, but none of the girls did (laughs).  None of the women.  But some of those sailors passed out when they went in they just klunk (imitates noise made by sailors when passing out), klunked out.  (Laughs)The next day, and for a day or two--oh, were we sore.  I was talking just recently to one of the doctors about [the tetanus shots a long time ago].  Well, it was Dr. Seglie.  He’d been in the service, too; and I said, “You know the tetanus shot,”‘cause I’d taken a tetanus shot.

And he said, “Well, this won’t be like that.”

I said, “I remember the service, you couldn’t lift your arm.”

He said, “That’s right because they were a different kind.”  When we first started out, our shirts [went on] over the head, and we had to get our arms up to get in them.  So, the next morning we were trying to help each other.  Nobody could lift [their] arms to help anybody hardly.  We did have a time for a day or two.  Oh, our arms were so sore.  Well, that was kind of an experience that we had when training, you know.

We did get out and march.  We were drilled, some, not as much as we were in the classroom.  We had a lot of classroom work, you know.  In the service you put--instead of the month, day, and year--you put the day, month, and year.  You’ve probably seen that on dates. That’s a military way of putting the date.  We had to do that, which is kinda different after you’ve been doing it a different way for years.  Well, you had to be sure to put the day first, then the month, and then the year.  That’s, that’s some of the things we learned [out of the] lots of things we learned about the military, I guess.  But it was fun.

[Our training] was supposed to be a three months course; but at the end of two months, they graduated two hundred [WAVES]. I was in the first two hundred to be graduated and stationed.  I decided to stay, there was a electrician’s school, sailor’s school, at the university down there, it was called E-E-N-E-N (spells) electro-electrics something school, so I thought, “Well, I’ll stay there.”  They didn’t have the books at the school they were supposed to for bookkeeping, at the Navy until, after--oh, the Yeoman school had been going for, I don’t know, three or four months, something like that.  I thought, “Well, I’ll just [make] ranking and stay here ‘cause its closer to home.”  My folks still lived in Girard, and I thought, “Well, I’ve been away in Washington, D.C. (laughs) for a couple a years; maybe I’ll just stay closer to home.”  So, I got stationed there [Stillwater, OK].  

Well, I’d just got my ranking changed, Storekeeper Third Class, or let’s see, from Apprentice Seamen, yeah, it was to Storekeeper Third Class.  I was Yeoman Third Class, after you come out of the school, you go from Apprentice Seamen ta Storekeeper, I mean Yeoman Third Class.  Then you have to work your way up--third class, second class, first class, chief.  I didn’t want to be a storekeeper ‘cause , like I said, I didn’t like bookkeeping.  But I got by.  It [my placement] was dispersion, and they gave out the military pay.  That’s what they were doing in the office where I worked. 

I wrote back to Washington, D.C. to the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, all of ‘em back there, [to] tell them how wonderful it was and everything.  Immediate orders back to Washington, D.C.. (Laughs) They got my plane reservation, I mean my train reservation and everything planned, and away I went, like that, with those orders.  Well, let’s see.  They had to reserve it somehow.  I could travel free because we were in the service.  You could travel on buses and trains free.  I don’t know how many times I went back and forth across the United State ‘cause you could travel free.  I went back to Washington, D.C., and was stationed in the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts.  Changed my rating back to Yeoman, ‘cause I didn’t want to be a storekeeper.  Before long, I was promoted to secretary to the Chief of Bureau of Supplies and Accounts.  He was an Admiral and he was also the Paymaster General of the Navy, I was still involved in pay (laughs), but I really liked that [job].  There was a woman who was administrative assistant in the office. She was a Yeoman(F), Yeoman Female in WWI.  So, we had kind of a common bond, you know.  She had been a  Yeoman(F) and I was [a Yeoman].

There were two Admirals, the assistant chief had his office at the same building.  The Navy building during WWII had to expand, and so it runs along the reflection pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.  They built [a] temporary, barracks-type building, office building, across from the reflection pool. [It] had two covered bridges to get from the main building to the office buildings over there.  The Bureau of Supplies and Accounts was in the temporary buildings, it was over on the mall on the other side of the reflection pool.  Our office was in the front of the building. 

I was the first WAVE, enlisted WAVE, to be stationed in that building.   I ended up with a sore foot, so they sent me to the dispensary.  Well, I had a planter’s wart on the bottom of my foot.  So, I got to go to Bethesda, Maryland Naval Hospital, and had that planter’s wart taken off.  Well, I didn’t have any [big shoes], [so] here I am in uniform, and all I had was a bedroom slipper, a big, fuzzy bedroom slipper.  So, here I am in uniform with one fuzzy bedroom slipper for awhile 'cause I had to wear it til it healed. I was already outstanding because there wasn’