Gladys [Linky] Sommer Brokhausen was Gma Fanny's first cousin. Arlene's father was George Sommer. His brother Henry was Glady's father. They had little contact since Henry and family moved to Louisville, KY. when they were very young. Another brother, Uncle Karl and aunt Dot, lived in Altoona.
7 September 2007
Dear Arlene……………..
Next time has come already. Since I don’t know when this will get mailed, I thought I might tell you a bit about my adventures once I left home. Cannot ever recall being more than fifty miles from home without my mother until I joined the Navy in early 1944. Then it was off to Hunter College in NYC. NAS Atlanta for Link school. NAS Richmond, FL. NAS Pensacola (The Annapolis of the Air). Coronado, CA. Hope, ND. Los Angeles. Los Banos, CA-in the San Joachim Valley. Chicago, Baltimore (The most peculiar place I ever tried to live. The 16 months we were there were the longest ten years of my life.). Orlando. Oviedo, FL. Vestal, NY. Gilroy, CA-the garlic capital of the world. And finally lit here in early January of 1977. All those moves did tend to get closets cleaned out!!
I had become engaged a few weeks before Pearl Harbor. The family called him, “The Great Dane” because he was a tall blond fellow of Danish extraction. He shipped out to the Pacific late the following spring. When the legislation was passed to allow women into various services, I was only vaguely interested, because, as was the custom then, it was understood that I would be there waiting at home when he returned. He was killed in mid-1943, and I went into deep mope mood for quite some time. As the VFW auxiliary was involved in keeping the USO perking, I went to dances. Talked to the WACs who came in from Ft. Knox, and it seemed that all they did was office work and drive trucks. I was working for Standard Oil as a secretary (and bored out of my pointed little head) and I didn’t drive. So, I investigated the Navy. The jobs available sounded much more challenging. And their uniforms were much more attractive, too. So, one day I went into the recruiting office and signed up. I hadn’t even let anyone at home know I was considering enlisting. When I told Mom and Grandma they just had a fit, “No nice girl from a good family belongs in the Navy!!” After a few days they simmered down, and I mistakenly thought they were coming around. Nope. They had come to the conclusion that I was so skinny that I would never pass the physical.
Boys of seventeen could enlist on their own, but females had to be 19 with parental approval (it had just dropped from 20). Or 21 on their own recognizance. Plus we were required to supply three recommendations. I gave our minister, the dean of girls from school, and a family friend who was an FBI agent. Don’t know about the others, but the agent told us about the teasing he got in the office. He didn’t mention, and I didn’t know for several years, but I was probably one of the very few women who went into the Navy with full security clearance. Men were pretty much processed where they enlisted, but we gals had to go to ONOP in Cincinnati. We had just picked up our pencils to start the written tests (guess they wanted to find out if we had brains before they wasted time checking for beating hearts) when a young officer came into the room and asked for 5 volunteers to take the NavCad tests. Seems there had been much bitching because the tests were so difficult that many men flunked. If we passed, we were through with tests for that go round. Should we fail, we could then take the WAVES test. All finished in the first 10 done, and all passed with flying colors. Surprising, considering we were mostly educated to be housewives. Ergo, there were some very weird questions to answer. The examiners had what they wanted. And I later realized that we had been insulted. If the test was easy enough that mere women could pass it, the men had nothing to complain about.
On down the hall to the medical department for our physicals. And my weight, or lack thereof, did rear its head. I was quite a bit below the set minimum for my 5’7” frame. In my youth I had ears like an owl, and I could hear the three doctors on the other side of the room discussing me. Finally, one of them said, “Other than being so skinny, she seems health as a horse. And look at those grades. Let’s waive her.” So, the three of them signed a wavier that made two women at home very unhappy.
Home for a few days and then off to NYC and Hunter College, quite close to Yankee Stadium. Every two weeks a regiment 1680 women arrived, to spend six weeks learning to speak and act Navy, etc. The first morning, we were lined up by height and as usual, I was in the front rank. The young petty officer barked, “Forward march!” and I did. “Halt!” and I did. But the tubby gal behind me didn’t and I was thankful for my ability to dance, for it took some fast footwork not to go face down in the street. This maneuver brought a bark of, “You!” and a finger pointed at my chest. “You’ve marched before!” I had to admit it. “Where?” “Drum corps.” “Fall out! You’re our platoon leader.” Talk about confused. But I quickly learned that I was to help teach the other 39 women to march. Plus, should she be busy elsewhere, I was to get the platoon to wherever we were scheduled to be. There was one good thing about this. Being platoon leader meant that my name did not show up on any other duty roster. And that is how I got through my entire Navy career without ever pulling KP or Captain of the Head….
We had many classes, plus shots, marching, uniform fittings, and many tests to find out which square hole they would be trying to squeeze us into. Heard that there were 16 hours of the multiple-choice tests. We were told that we were not expected to finish them, but just do as much as we could. Always read fast—so I finished them all. The officer who interviewed me for assignment told me that I pulled one of the top 10 grades in our regiment, and that as far as she was concerned I could have any school that I wanted. Was there anything that struck my fancy? I had heard about Link Trainers, but the first two requirements for that school were two years of college and a math major. Neither of which I had. But I asked anyway. And found the curriculum no more difficult than most. It was alien material for all of us. In addition, we did the course in half the time allowed for the men who had preceded us. It was so hard that we were made petty officers upon graduation. One of only two school to do so.
Off to a duty station. The rest of the class went off in small groups. I was sent off alone. To a blimp base. And everything I had been taught applied to planes. So we (my commanding officer and I) had to make up what I was going to teach. As if that weren’t problem enough, there were six WAVES already in the dept. into which I came. None of them was rated, although they had been there for varying lengths of time. The “crow” on my sleeve meant I was the ranking gal and was in charge of the others. Luckily they knew the “Navy way” and none of them got bent out of shape when the greenhorn tried to run things before she knew what was going on.
As I had to be able to do what I was teaching, I could fly the various aircrafts in the air. I just couldn’t get them up there and back down again. Eventually I had flown a Fairchild (a small cabin type), a Grumman Goose, (amphibian with room for 6) blimps, SNJs (single-engine trainer), SNBs (twin-engine training and utility plane tenderly known as bugsmasher), and a PBY seaplane which was often called Dumbo because of its big wings. By this time I was at Pensacola and attached to the PBY training squadron. In early 1947 I decided that I wanted to learn to land and take off, so started taking lessons at a little flight school started by a pair of WWII Navy pilots. I didn’t have to take ground school, and pretty much started the flying well past the basics. Had 8 or 9 solo flights under my belt when I got married. At that time Brok was flying the really big seaplanes, and was a worry wart where I was concerned. As a result my flying lessons went no farther. He stayed on active duty until May 1950, and then stayed in the reserves until 1973. Retired as a Commander. Early on he used the GI Bill, and was hired right out of school by the company that built the big seaplanes he had been flying around the Pacific. His last 20 working years were with IBM (I Been Moved), part of it on the Saturn-Apollo moon shots. I was more interested in that than most wives because Shepard and Schirra (of the first astronauts) had been in a group I had given an indoctrination talk to, and Shepard had been my student when they were in flight training.
In 1992 they had a convention in Norfolk celebrating 50 years of women in the Navy, and three of us who had worked together at Pensacola planned to meet there. Only two of us made it. But had a wonderful time, and lots of us went on up to D.C. together. When I got back home, a professor friend who was then head of the history dept. at Southwestern University, the small liberal arts school here in Georgetown, asked me if I would talk to one of her classes about “Women in the Military.” Having more guts than good sense, I agreed. None of the kids went to sleep and fell out of their chairs, and they had questions, so I felt like it was not a failure. Few years later our ham radio club was hard up for a speaker at the monthly meeting and called upon me. Next was the one for Senior University, a series of seminars started by the folks at Sun City. Think that is the one you have the newspaper piece about, as I had sent a copy to Shirley. I was wired and the tapes and my papers went to the Library of Congress. When I was gathering up my books, etc., a man walked up to me and said, “I don’t like you very much.” This tends to take one aback. Then he grinned and said , “I’m doing next weeks program, and you’re a helluva act to follow.” Pretty nice compliment. Every now and again someone calls—and I do it again. Have done it for a Woman’s Club. For a gathering of Descendants of the Mayflower. And the last time just this past May at a local Baptist Church. A group has a potluck and program one Saturday each month. I just have a list of subjects to hit upon, and wing it. Stress different facts and subjects according to the group. Don’t know what has come over me, as I used to be absolutely petrified to talk in public.
The book, “Texas Women in World War II” has gotten me a lot of attention, too. There is only one other woman in it from this area, and her health isn’t that good. It has gotten me a ride in a Black Hawk helicopter, rides in parades, and other outings. And they usually feed me. Sure does an old biddy’s heart good.
It also got me on a TV show. The Austin PBS station sent a camera crew out here some weeks ago for a program on C....Tex WWII vets that is going to be shown along with Ken D…. series on WWII. Just after I turned off the printer, the producer phoned to tell me the show dates. Will not be shown out of state so far as they know at this time. Same station produces "Austin City Limits," which is shown all over.
"Former vice president Al Gore laid out his prescription for an ailing and overheated planet Monday, urging a series of steps from freezing carbon dioxide emissions to revamping the auto industry, factories and farms.
