I had the honor of spending the day last Saturday with a group of women military veterans. When most people think of veterans they picture men, since most veterans are men. There are 16.5 million male veterans currently in the US. But less noted, there are 1.6 million women veterans.
As we shared stories, I shared the story of the women veteran that was an important part of my life for over 60 years.
My mother’s younger sister, Dorothy Josephine Graham, (our Aunt Dote) entered the SPARS, the women’s division of the Coast Guard in 1943 and served till 1945. I didn’t hear much about her active duty experiences but when I Googled the SPARS and learned that “No woman, officer or enlisted, could issue orders to any male serviceman,” I could picture her snarky eye-rolling response. She often said, in defense of her strong, ‘women’s lib’ opinions, “I wasn’t born with this red hair for nothing.”
I was there for the impact her military service had on her life and the lives of my sister and I. As a veteran she was eligible to attend college on the GI bill and she did so at the University of Detroit. It took her six years, since she was working full time at Ford Motor Company in the accounting department. Telling her story I revisited the excitement my sister and I felt dressed in our Sunday best, watching our special aunt graduate second in her class behind an African-American woman. Thinking about it now I’m sure their class was mostly all men, but given the opportunity to compete, these two women took no prisoners as they torpedoed themselves straight to the head of that accounting class.
It’s an understatement to say that Aunt Dote was our role model, since of her eleven nieces and nephews; my sister and I are the only college graduates among them. We both accomplished that feat by attending college as non-traditional age part-time students just as she had done.
A big part of any veteran’s story is what they come home to in civilian life after serving their country. Aunt Dote had a good job and a good life as a single woman partly due to that fact, but her career life was not without its challenges. She would be called on frequently to train men less capable than herself, in order for them to take the executive positions her boss could not award to her. He would say it out loud; “I wish you were a man Jo so I could promote you.” A couple of times her Irish temper at the injustice would cause her to look for another job. But when she realized the same barriers existed in other companies she stayed put where she had accumulated friends, a track record, and benefits earned for her by the United Auto Workers Union.
Aunt Dote was 70 when she married for the first time, and she claimed that to be one of her most courageous acts. The strangest thing about her wedding for us kids was that she married our father after the two of them had taken care of our mother throughout her last illness and death. She remained fiercely loyal to our mother. We couldn’t say a discouraging word in her presence without a scolding.
Our father died before she did which was not to her liking. “I always though I’d go before him,” she’d say. And since she got a new diagnosis every time she went to the doctors,” and Dad’s healthcare was a vitamin pill and a baby aspirin we agreed. “If it makes you feel any better, Aunt Dote we thought you’d go first too, but that’s not how it turned out.”
She and Dad arranged for him to be buried beside our mother while Aunt Dote signed up for burial with full military honors in a national cemetery. It delighted her Scottish heart that all this would be paid for by the government she chose to serve 61 years before.
By some kind of miracle, given the condition of my closet, I was able to find Aunt Dote’s brass United States Coast Guard service pin. The fastener was broken so I couldn’t wear it but I passed it around ceremoniously in its original 86-year old box. As the pin traversed the circle of current day women veterans, and our nation continues to be involved in the longest war in our history, we respectfully paused to honor all the women pioneers who blazed the trail for women in the military and all those coming after them.
Do you have an ancestor who’s been a role model for you? Have you been able to share their story with someone who didn’t know them?
Sheila
