The women get together once a month, 11 months out of the year.
The December meeting was held at a Greek restaurant in Aurora and was set up, as usual, by Peggy Mastrandrea. Her full name is Margaret Ellen Fraser Mastrandrea, Mastrandrea being the euphonious last name of the Air Force man she was married to for nearly 50 years.
For 27 months, from August 1944 to November 1946, Peggy was a pharmacist mate 2nd-class of the Navy Reserve WAVES — Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service.
Almost all the women in the lunch bunch were WAVES who served during World War II. A recruitment poster from the time reads, “To make men free. You will share the gratitude of the nation when victory is ours.”
“I used to say, ‘I replaced a man for active duty — whether he wanted it or not,’ ” group member Joan Brecheisen says. She was trained as a radio operator and still knows the dits and dahs of International Morse Code, though, she says, at 88, she’s not as fast as she once was.
The members of the Colorado WAVES have been meeting for at least 25 years. Over time, they have extended membership to women who served in other military branches in other years, which explains Bonnie O’Leary, Air Force, 1951-72.
Peggy goes back to those earliest days of the group when you could count on 40 women to gather at the old Lowry NCO club. But, as is case the with all groups associated with World War II veterans, the numbers are dwindling.
Eleven WAVES were among those who showed up this time.
The youngest member of the group is Bobbie Carleton, 1973-94. Carleton joined the group not long after she retired as a senior chief petty officer. As years passed and the group grew smaller, Bobbie starting thinking: All these stories will disappear if someone doesn’t write them down.
“Will you tell me your story?” she asked each of the women.
“Oh, you don’t want to hear my story,” each answered.
“Yes,” Bobbie said. “Yes, I do.”
“They were getting old,” Bobbie tells me. “They were becoming less able to communicate or remember. They were dying and when someone dies, their story goes with them. It’s permanent.”
So, the women told Bobbie their stories. They spoke of boot camp at Hunter College, dubbed the USS Hunter, and of their jobs as clerical workers, supply clerks, radio operators, storekeepers, in hospitals and intelligence and field communications. They said: “The attack on Pearl Harbor had a profound effect on me, so I joined up.” And: “My mother was glad and my father objected, but the papers were signed.” And: “President Franklin D. Roosevelt died while I was stationed (at the National Naval Medical Center) and his young grandson was a patient at the time. The staff and patients were ordered to turn off their radios so the grandson would not hear of his grandfather’s death.”
They provided pictures of themselves, young and smiling and in uniform. “I still have my uniform,” Peggy tells me. “It’s hanging in my closet.”
Peggy had collected some of the women’s service information from an earlier time and Bobbie added those to her own. She took the stories, combined them with some history of women in the Navy, pictures of old newspaper clippings and recruitment posters and created a booklet. She called it “U.S. Navy Memories” and published just enough to hand out to the women, who guard their copies closely.
Bobbie also sent copies to the Denver Library’s Western History and Genealogy section, the National Archives and various national military and women’s organizations.
Long after these women have passed, long after she herself is gone, Bobbie likes to imagine some lover of history perusing the shelves and finding the booklet and opening it. And just like that, what once was, is again.
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
