BANGOR, Maine — A local nonagenarian who was part of the first group of women to enlist in the U.S. Navy some 70 years ago started her military career singing but ended it teaching fighter pilots how to use their instruments and recognize enemy targets.
As a member of the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service or WAVES of World War II, Nancy Tebbetts, now 92, was part of a group that led the way for all women in the military.
She had her hair and makeup done on a recent Tuesday to talk about days gone by when women were first offered the chance to served this country in uniform.
“I wanted to run away to college” but couldn’t afford it, Tebbetts said while seated at her kitchen table. “I just enlisted and l loved it. I got my life back.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Navy Women’s Reserve Act into law in July 1942, creating the WAVES, who were paid equally, given the same rank and for the first time could take jobs typically held by men. There were more than 200 different opportunities for women in the Navy during WWII to help replace male counterparts who were being sent off to war in the Pacific and Europe, according to a recruiting brochure.
“Best of all, you enjoy a new pride and happiness — a wonderful feeling of ‘belonging’ that comes from being with the people who are doing all they can to win the war and bring our boys home sooner,” the brochure states.
“I got $52 a month,” Tebbetts said of her Navy pay.
Nancy Mills Dawe, as she was known at the time, graduated early from Medford High School in Massachusetts in 1941 and went to work for the John Hancock Life Insurance Company. At 20, she enlisted in the Navy and was sent to Hunter College in the Bronx, which was commandeered by the Navy to serve as a WAVES boot camp.
Hunter College, now known as Lehman College, was affectionately called the “USS Hunter” during that time period.
“When I got to boot camp in New York, they pulled four or five of us out and put us into a singing platoon,” Tebbetts said, reminiscing about performing with the WAVES Singing Platoon of Hunter College. “I was a mezzo-soprano. I remember a lot of marching and singing, marching and singing.”
Tebbetts broke into song at this point in the conversation, singing about “Company 43,” as her group of WAVES as known. A smile spread across her face as the song, a little brittle with age, escaped her lips.
For the young Massachusetts woman who had never really traveled, joining the military was quite the learning experience.
“Boot camp was a trip. I had never been around that many women before, women from all around the country,” Tebbetts said. “Women from the midwest were so different from women from New England. Also, I had never been out of New England … so that was amazing to me.”
The singing platoon performed all over the New York area to raise money for war bonds and, according to Tebbetts, some took part in the 1944 movie “Here Come the Waves,” which starred Bing Crosby, Betty Hutton and Sonny Tufts.
“I met Sonny Tufts, but not the other two,” she said of her silver screen experience.
After the movie was filmed, Nancy Dawe was sent to Florida to teach young pilots how to fly with early versions of nonmechanical flight simulators. She also instructed them on how to identify the enemy through aerial recognition.
“We had simulated instruments to use which gave them a seat in a [practice] plane,” she said of the pilots. “They sat in these covered cubicles and learned to use them.”
The training device simulated various types of flight, including banking, diving and stalling in mid-air.
When training cadets heading to the Pacific to recognize enemy air and watercraft, she would drill them over and over with the shapes, “so they could take a quick glance and know it was Japanese,” Tebbetts said.
Many of the pilots had already seen combat and “they had this attitude” that alarmed her, but created a camaraderie amongst the group. They would say things such as, “Drink tonight because we die tomorrow,” she recalled.
“They were a breed apart,” Tebbetts said of the aviation cadets she trained in 1944-45 for the U.S. Air Corps and the British Royal Air Force and Royal Navy while stationed at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida.
While riding a bus home from base one day in Maine an “absolutely yummy man” got aboard and caught Nancy Dawe’s eye. She married Marine Robert Tebbetts in October 1945 and the two went on to have two children.
“I’ve had a wonderful life,” she said, adding a little advice to those who are considering following in her footsteps.
“Do not shy away from experiences that make your life richer,” the Bangor veteran said. “Do everything you can possibly do, especially before you get married and have children. And don’t give away that body before you can take care of yourself.”
Tebbetts has lived in Maine since 1945. With about 127,000 veterans according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Maine has one of the nation’s highest percentages compared to its civilian population.
Tebbetts said that while she was part of the first group of female Navy reservists, her parents brought her up believing that she could do anything a man could do.
“I never had any trouble with women’s rights and all that business,” Tebbetts said. “I have never had trouble with men, anyways. You have to put them in their place, respect them and, then, take care of them.”
In addition to learning how to do a job that was needed to win the war and swear, Tebbetts joked, the Navy taught her and her fellow WAVES something else.
“They learned to do a job and do it right and they learned to protect and respect themselves as a woman,” she said of the WAVES.