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Family Connection

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WAVES attend aviation machinist’s mates class at the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1943. Photo by ��Lt. Wayne Miller.

Ryan started collecting oral histories of WAVES more than a��decade ago, as part of her PhD dissertation at the University of Oregon.

Her mother, Mary Marovich, had been working at the phone company in South Chicago when, at age 22, she opted to follow in the footsteps of her six brothers and enlist. Marovich served for more than two years, rising to the role of pharmacist’s mate third class, where she was paid $96 a month—the same as a Navy man.

“My mom never talked about it at all,” recalls Ryan, who learned much��of her mother’s service history by rustling through old papers and photographs after she had died. “But she was proud of it, and she was insistent that when she died she be given a military headstone.”

Ryan has gathered 51 audio and video oral histories, documenting the stories of the first women to be admitted to the U.S. military, notably, at the same rank and pay scale as men.

In 2012, she produced a full-length documentary, Homefront Heroines: The Waves of World War II.

Now, with support from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, she’s working on an interactive website that will include video artifacts, more expert interviews and full transcripts—all in time for the 2020��commemorations of the war’s end.

“I want people to know that the experiences of these women were��important, not only to them and their families, but to society as a whole,” Ryan says. “They laid the groundwork for change.”

Hinges of History

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Top: WAVES look at vocation posters at Hunter College Training School in New York City in 1943.

Bottom: WAVES give instruction on operating .50-caliber machine guns at the Naval Air Gunners School in Hollywood, Florida, in 1944.

Through her interviews, Ryan has uncovered a host of colorful histories of proud women, many of whom joined the WAVES to break free of the era’s limited employment options.

“I was supposed to go into the convent. The nuns were really zeroed in on me. But I didn’t want to,” WAVES veteran Josette Wingo recalls in Ryan’s documentary.

Veteran Eileen Horner Blakeley adds that, traditionally, a woman’s job “was to be a nurse, a housekeeper or a teacher. We didn’t know it, but we were really breaking ground for generations to come.”

It soon became clear that they were capable of more than they’d been given credit for.

“The rumor in the Navy was that the best pilots were the ones who had been trained by women,” Ryan says. “They knew how to teach and they were very exacting and precise.”

Military contributions aside, the WAVES also set a precedent for working women calling for equal pay for equal work.

“They would say, ‘If the military—one of the most conservative organizations in the country—can do this, why can’t everyone else?’” Ryan says.

With access to the GI bill, many pursued advanced degrees. Some took faculty positions at universities. And many encouraged their daughters to break through the stereotypical gender roles of the day.

“It gave women this idea that you can do whatever you want,” says Ryan, whose own mother encouraged her and her sister to get a good education.

After Japan surrendered and the war drew to a close on VJ Day—August 15, 1945—Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal sent a letter to each WAVE, thanking them for their service.

One woman, interviewed for the documentary, read it aloud, her eyes welling up.

“You deserve to be proud for as long as you live. The nation which you served at a time of crisis will remember you with gratitude.”��