Oral History interview with Sally Ann Weeks Benson, 2015

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WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Sally Ann Weeks Benson
INTERVIEWER: Therese Strohmer
DATE: March 31, 2015
[Begin Interview]
TS: Today is March 31, 2015. This is Therese Strohmer. I'm at the home of Sally Benson in Coats, North Carolina, to conduct an oral history interview for the Women Veterans Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina of Greensboro. Sally, could you state your name and say it the way that maybe you'd like to have it the collection?
SB: Sally Ann Weeks Benson.
TS: Okay, great. [dog barks] And I'm going to introduce Ginger in the background there because she's chatting with us a little bit today.
SB: Yeah.
TS: Well, Sally, why don't you go ahead and start out by telling me a little bit about when and where you were born?
SB: I was born [26 January 1947] in Aiken, South Carolina, right after World War II, but moved up here to Coats when I was about two years old, and then a year or so later moved over to Dunn, about twelve, fourteen miles away on Highway 95. Highway 95 wasn't there then.
TS: At that time, but yeah. But in that general area.
SB: Yes.
TS: So you were born a little bit after the war. What was it like growing up, and was it always a rural area that you were in, or outside the little towns, or where'd you grow up?
SB: This has always been a rural area. The closest big towns were Raleigh and Fayetteville. Dunn has always been a small town. I don't think the population ever crossed ten thousand when I was growing up there.
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TS: Yeah.
SB: And we didn't have internet.
TS: Right. [both chuckle] No, there's no internet back then. Well, what did your folks do for a living?
SB: My father was manager of a furniture and appliance store—the credit manager for a furniture and appliance store, and my mother had several jobs over the years. She did work most of the time we were in school; manager of a Sherwin Williams [paint store], manager of a hotel. And then later on she was the accountant for an oil company.
TS: Okay. Now, did you have any brothers and sisters?
SB: I've got two sisters and a brother, all three younger and all three live in this local area; within twelve, fourteen miles of me.
TS: Oh, that's pretty nice. Were you close in age?
SB: Pretty close. The brother's the youngest and he was born just before I turned seven years old.
TS: Okay. So that was pretty close together.
SB: Yes.
TS: So there's four of you, then?
SB: Yes.
TS: What kind of things did you guys do growing up as kids in this area?
SB: Well, we played out in the yard, and we played games.
TS: What kind of games do you remember playing?
SB: Oh, board games. I loved Scrabble, Monopoly, checkers, you name it; all the popular board games back then.
TS: What kind of school did you go to? Was it a tiny, small school or—
SB: Yeah, very small school in Dunn. Always the public schools, so I was in Dunn first through twelfth grade.
TS: Oh, all the grades were—
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SB: Yes.
TS: —in the same building?
SB: No, I was in three different buildings.
TS: Okay.
SB: Because when I was in the fourth grade they had opened a new fourth through sixth grade and we moved into the building when I was in fourth grade, and when I was in seventh grade moved into the building that was seventh through twelfth grades at that time.
TS: Okay. So you're in, like, the post-war timeframe, for growing up.
SB: Yeah.
TS: And in the fifties. Did you do any sock hops or anything like that?
SB: There were sock hops. You couldn't wear high heels on the gym floors back then. [chuckles]
TS: That's right.
SB: So since we—Didn't—Every family didn't have two or three cars and so you were very local; you went to the local swimming pool, the local park. More kids in neighborhoods. I think the neighborhoods were closer back then.
TS: Close together.
SB: And so, you played out in your yard with friends. Vacations for us were down to either White Lake in Bladen County [North Carolina], or to Tennessee to see a grandmother.
TS: Okay.
SB: There was no Disney World on this coast and—
TS: Right. Now, was it segregated at that time, then?
SB: Yeah. It's interesting. Yes, it was segregated. When I was in the eighth grade we made national news because the local Indians [Native Americans] were integrated with us. There's several tribes of Indians between here and down Lumberton, and so on this one day when they were going to integrate us, TV cameras and news reporters were all over the school grounds, and nothing happened.
TS: [chuckles]
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SB: It was like who cared? And we're still friends. In fact, my high school class, out of a hundred and twenty of us that graduated, eighty or more of us are in touch right now.
TS: Is that right?
SB: Yes.
TS: Wow, that's pretty nice.
SB: Including the Indians. [both chuckle]
TS: Well, that's neat. So that was just, like, normal growing up, and they'd been your friends and—
SB: Yeah. And the—Also when we were in, I think, the twelfth grade, maybe the eleventh grade, is when they integrated blacks into the schools, but they did it just sending two or three, which was wrong; we should have just integrated.
TS: Right.
SB: And unfortunately, the one black woman who was in my class died last year.
TS: Oh, that's too bad. Was there any tension during that time, for that kind of integration?
SB: Not really, but around here most of us liked rock and roll music, and there was a place called Williams' Lake [Williams' Lake Dance Club] down in Sampson County where bands would come. All the good bands included black people. The good sports included black people. So all of us, of my age, it was like, "Who cares?" And I think that the music and sports brought us all together.
TS: Kind of a uniting factor, maybe?
SB: Yes. So we didn't have a problem.
TS: Yeah.
SB: At least most. I'm sure there are those—In fact, I've seen some grow up and grow up with attitudes, but most of my classmates now say—it's like, "We didn't care."
TS: Yeah.
SB: Yeah.
TS: Well, so what kind of music did you like listening to then?
SB: Oh, back then, let's see, the rock and roll, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles. But locally, 5
Billy Stewart, The Tams, The Occasions; a lot of the local groups. And we had one, Jean Barbour and the Cavaliers, that developed out of our high school; started out as, I think, The Black Notes. Later they became The Men of Distinction. And they still now get together occasionally, and they became Harry's Band, named after their manager who died.
TS: Oh, that's pretty neat. So you had lots of music going on.
SB: Oh, we had lots of music, knew lots of people in bands, and just—
TS: Yeah.
SB: Had to have a record player. [both chuckle]
TS: That's right. And the 45s [45 rpm singles].
SB: Oh, and I had a little transistor radio. I was one of the first to get a nice transistor radio.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Oh, to get one?
SB: Yeah.
TS: How big was it?
SB: Oh, gosh, the size of a brick, maybe.
TS: [chuckles] Yeah, pretty good—
SB: Not quite as long as a brick but—
TS: Yeah, good size though.
SB: Yeah.
TS: A little heavy.
SB: Not that heavy.
TS: Not too bad?
SB: It wasn't; I had good one; I had a Motorola one.
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TS: Oh, nice.
SB: It came from the store where my daddy worked.
TS: So he spotted it and said—
SB: I got it for Christmas, I think, so.
TS: Very neat. Now, did you have to walk to school or take a bus?
SB: Well, we lived in town, and at that time school buses didn't pick you up if you were in town, so you either had to be in carpools or you had to walk, and most of the time I was driven. However, even when I was in the fourth to sixth grade I did walk the couple of miles home sometimes. So it was a combination of walking or being driven.
TS: Getting a ride. Okay. Now, did you enjoy school?
SB: Oh, I loved school. And I wish—Knowing what I know now, I wish we'd had Internet back then. I would have been an absolute fanatic. But I spent much time in the libraries and just loved school; loved everything.
TS: Were you a big reader?
SB: Have always been a big reader. I've been reading since—I started reading when I was about two years old.
TS: Oh, really?
SB: Books, and by four years old—four and five years old I'd already read all the elementary school books and they wanted me to skip first grade and go—I didn't go to Kindergarten; very few did back then.
TS: Right.
SB: And we didn't have the kind of money to send me to Kindergarten. They wanted me to skip first grade and my parents said no because I'd be in the wrong age group. Well, as it turned out in the years that wouldn't have mattered and—whatever.
TS: That's how you [unclear] thinking about it; keep in the same peer group.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
SB: But I didn't—Yeah. I did read. In fact, they had to bring books into the local library for me—had to find some—because I had read everything. I still read a lot. 7
TS: Yeah. What was it about reading, do you remember, that you enjoyed so much?
SB: I just think learning about things, and learning about the rest of the world. And my father having been in World War II and was a general's driver—he was just on active duty a short time in Europe—I was fascinated by his stories of the places in Europe, and wanted to go.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: That he had been in?
SB: And so, reading, I was learning about the rest of the world and I wanted to see the whole world. And then I also liked fiction.
TS: Yeah, so you just were a voracious reader.
SB: Right.
TS: Yeah. Did you have any favorite teacher growing up?
SB: Oh, I liked so many of them. I don't think there were any I didn't like, so they all had—there's special memories for all of them.
TS: Was there a particular subject that you enjoyed more than another? Or disliked more than another even?
SB: Well, I loved languages.
TS: Languages.
SB: Yeah, as far—I had a wonderful language teacher. We were fortunate in this area to have a woman—I think her husband had been sent here, she wasn't from here originally—but she taught Latin and French.
TS: Oh, okay.
SB: And she taught it so—you know, like French, you don't memorize, you learn it, and so you think in the language, and it made a big difference in my life having that background.
TS: I bet, yeah. I bet it did. Well, as a young girl growing up, then, in—let's see— [born in] '47. So you're in the mid-sixties when you're getting into high school?
SB: Right, because I graduated from high school in '65. 8
TS: Sixty-five. So you would have been in high school when John F. [Fitzgerald] Kennedy was President.
SB: Absolutely. I remember the day he was assassinated; it gives me chills to this day.
TS: What do you remember about it?
SB: We were sitting—We had a big auditorium and we had the weekly meeting in the auditorium of all classes, and one of my classmates ran the sound system and you ran it from a room that was separated from the auditorium. And he was in there, and we were in the auditorium, and I don't even remember what was going on in the auditorium. I remember where I was sitting. And all of a sudden, breaking in on whatever was going on in the auditorium, over the PA system was the sound of, like, a radio. We're going, "What's happening?" And he had been listening to the radio while he was in there and heard about the assassination and just turned it on with no warning to anybody.
[President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald]
TS: Oh, my goodness.
SB: And so, we heard the initial coverage as it was going on.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: The breaking news?
SB: And it was —it was very scary, because back then you respected the president, regardless of your political leanings, really, and we all loved JFK anyhow; fascinated with him and with Jacqueline Kennedy.
TS: Right.
SB: I had my pillbox [hat] and my little suit that looked like her.
TS: Did you? That's neat.
SB: Yes, I did. But—So that was a very frightening day in this country.
TS: Yeah. What'd you do?
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SB: I don't know. I remember going back into class and that it just—the day was done with then. We were still in class but a lot of us were really upset. And I remember going home and watching TV and just being glued to it and trying to understand what was going on in the world.
TS: Yeah. Well, can you explain to people who maybe didn't grow up in that era, about, like, that Cold War fears and things that were going on? Did you have any of that? I mean, did you experience it? Maybe you didn't. The duck and cover. Any of that?
SB: We knew about it, and I knew, yeah, there were bomb shelters. We didn't have a bomb shelter at my house. We knew there was this fear of Russia; they would get us. But again, if I'd had the internet and could Google [internet search engine] more I may have understood more, so I don't feel like I was scared on a day to day basis.
TS: Right.
SB: I mean, it was there. I was more excited about the space issue, of sending the satellites out into space.
TS: Sputnik and—
SB: Sputnik. Laughing at my younger sister one night, when we were talking about they radioed back from space. She says, "How do they get a drop cord that long?" [both chuckle]
So that was more exciting to me. I thought I might want to be an astronaut but girls couldn't be astronauts, so.
TS: Right, not at that time.
SB: No, that's changed.
TS: Yes, it has.
SB: So.
TS: Okay.
SB: But yeah, I don't remember a fear. We were just happy kids, and I think maybe not knowing everything helped. I also read the newspaper though.
TS: Yeah?
SB: We did current events. I remember fourth grade, reading things about Cuba and [Fulgencio] Batista [Zaldívar] and [Fidel] Castro, and doing my current event reporting on them. So I was quite aware of the news, and my father was an avid newspaper reader and so— 10
TS: That kind of rubbed off on you?
SB: Right. So talking to him about things, that made it easy. The other thing is, he did the cryptogram, and so I've always done that.
TS: What's that?
SB: The cryptoquote in the newspaper. I enjoyed doing that.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Oh, really? Okay.
SB: So he taught me know to do it and think it through early on, and then he had to fight me for it. [both chuckle]
TS: You wanted to do it first?
SB: I've always been a newspaper person.
TS: Okay. So as you're growing up, as a young girl, and you are thinking about, maybe, your future past high school. What kind of ideas did you have for what you might want to do, besides being an astronaut?
SB: Well, it's interesting because after doing so well in languages—which I did well in everything in high school, and I loved everything. I loved math, I liked everything, but knowing that girls couldn't do this, or girls couldn't do that, and especially growing up in a small town and not having older people who could say, "Yes, you can do this." So I was missing out on that, and my parents, neither one had a college education, and so there were things they didn't know about either. I knew I didn't want to be a nurse. I thought about I wanted to be a doctor at times, but then I thought I can't afford to do that.
TS: Go to medical to school?
SB: But I thought with the languages, I had been reading about the air force, and the fact that you didn't have to be a nurse to go in the air force, that maybe women could go—and in fact, I took the air force—not the air force—the military entrance exam [ASVAB; Armed Services Aptitude Battery]—they gave them in schools back then—and then they started calling me, and the air force, especially, wanted to offer me a ROTC [Reserve Officers' Training Corps] scholarship, but my mother said no daughter of hers was going in the military. So that cut it off, because at that time, not having any other knowledge of how to do things, I pretty much had to do what parents said. 11
But I had just felt that, "Well, my father was in the military, and men go, and we're starting Vietnam and hearing about this, why can't girls?" I did have a cousin who became a navy nurse, but it just seemed like it wasn't the place for me, and where I thought I could get in my mother was fighting, so I didn't do it.
TS: That would have been right after high school, to go—
SB: This was high school—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: —on the ROTC scholarship?
SB: —when I was in high school—
TS: Okay.
SB: —when I—my mother said no to the air force calling. And when I was in college they kept calling. But I thought, "Well, I like clothing;" I was doing a lot of sewing and I liked to design. Little did I know, that actually my expertise was in management and leadership. Even the retail stores I've worked in, when I think back, I should have known that, because that's what I did. But I liked fashion design, and that's when I went to UNCG and got the BS [Bachelor of Science] in clothing.
TS: Okay.
SB: Which if back in that time we had had what we have now, with internships and more involvement in, "What's a person going to do with their degree"—which we had none of that then, nothing—I wonder what would have happened. Because my thought had been, "Oh, I'd love to be a designer," and wedding designs, and what I wanted to do is exactly what's being done today. I wanted to do weddings that were more themed weddings and more gowns based on historical events.
TS: That's neat.
SB: But I didn't do any of that. [both chuckle]
TS: But you decided to go to UNCG, which was—Was it still Women's College at that time?
SB: It was [UNCG]—Men started there I think—I know when I was in high school, so there were some men there.
TS: Okay.
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SB: And I went to UNCG—I wanted to go to a public school. Money was an issue, too, because then—it turns out there were probably scholarships I could have gotten and didn't know about because the school counselor didn't know. My parents thought that if they were there the school counselor would tell me.
TS: Right.
SB: It didn't happen. I did get offered a scholarship at Duke [University] but it was so small I never even told my parents about it. I couldn't afford the difference.
TS: Right.
SB: And I actually wanted to go to NC State [University] but I didn't know that there would be a job for me if I went in any of the engineering things.
TS: I see.
SB: So I said, "Okay, UNCG, I can do that." So I was accepted at UNCG in October of my senior year in high school under the early admission program.
TS: Was it '65 that you—
SB: Sixty-five I started.
TS: You started.
SB: Yeah. UNCG's the only place I applied.
TS: Okay.
SB: Yeah. Now everybody applies to all different schools. I just applied to one and that's it.
TS: So that's what you got. What was it like going to school there? Where did you stay? What was your—
SB: I remember my first dorm was Coit [Residence Hall]. I don't even know if it's still there.
TS: Coit?
SB: Yeah, it was an old—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Might be, I don't know. 13
SB: —old dorm. And then I went into one of the high rise—Grogan, I believe—yes, and I think I was there for three years.
TS: So you were on campus the whole time?
SB: Yes, I was on campus the whole time.
TS: Okay.
SB: And it was interesting, and I think what I loved is meeting people from all different backgrounds, and being exposed to more of the world than I had grown up in. I wished I'd had a little more personal money that I could have done more things than I did, but I did a lot. I enjoyed the classes. I did not like the grading system at the time; didn't feel it was fair.
TS: Why didn't you think it was fair?
SB: When you're in a class and you're told that it has to be graded on this—the curve, and that in a class of, like, twelve only one can get an A, and even if you've got a ninety-eight average you can't get an A. Or if you're in a class that you're told since nobody's a major in my subject the highest grade I'm going to get is a C, I'll give you a C+. Well, a C+ didn't matter. So there were—It was difficult I thought. But I didn't shy away from the hard courses.
And I took chemistry. It's interesting. My junior year—summer after junior year I took chemistry, kind of as an elective I think. I just liked chemistry in high school so I took it. Well, and that's when I did really well in chemistry. So the chemistry department asked if I would be a chemistry lab assistant my senior year. Well, I needed a job and that was perfect. So I was an assistant to instructors, and I had two or three labs a week, and I had the non-majors labs, and that year the non-majors had higher grades on their labs than the majors did. And I loved it; absolutely loved it.
TS: You enjoyed it?
SB: And my senior year is when you finally—they came out with calculators—handheld calculators.
TS: [chuckles]
SB: I remember that because of the chemistry lab instructor getting one and being amazed with how it worked.
TS: What you can do with it, yeah.
SB: I could use a slide rule.
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TS: Yeah. You still use one?
SB: I probably could.
TS: Probably. Now, do you remember any of the professors you had in particular?
SB: I cannot remember names.
TS: That's okay.
SB: But I remember—Like, my chemistry professor that summer I remember absolutely loving. I loved chemistry, and I thought, "Why didn't I major in this?"
TS: [chuckles] But what were you majoring in?
SB: I had a BS in clothing, and I enjoyed those classes, I learned a lot from them, and I think that if we had had internships, or anything like that back then, that I might have stayed in that field until I got the chance to go in the military.
TS: Right.
SB: But I also—one thing I loved, in PE [physical education] I wound up taking modern dance my freshman year. Maybe they put me in something I didn't like and then switched me over, and I loved it so much that I took advanced modern dance, and I took another dance thing, and just really enjoyed the exercise, and I designed costumes for one of the performances and made them.
TS: Oh, I see. That's pretty meat. Yeah. Now, did you go down to Yum Yums [Yum Yum Better Ice Cream and Hot Dogs], did you do any off time fun stuff?
SB: There were a lot of things at the corner. There was a corner drugstore. It's totally different from the way it looks now; totally. But there was the corner down there, and yes, we went and got ice cream. I remember buying some earrings down there. And we went downtown occasionally. My problem was, on weekends when I didn't have Saturday classes, or if I did, my parents—my mother especially—thought I should come home and work. I had a job where I could work on Saturday. Well, that hurt my grades, too, in a way because I was—I had to get a ride—there were others from the area—come back, work on Saturday, drive back on Sunday. That didn't help. So I stayed in contact with a lot of people in this area, but I'd missed out on doing some things on the weekends up there.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
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TS: Some of the other things on the weekends, yeah. Well, the counterculture was kind of starting up too. Was that happening at UNCG as well?
SB: Yeah, we were in, like, the hippy era and we were starting to wear the wild things, the slave bracelets, the flower children. Going down to one of the stores and buying plastic flowers to put in our dorm room. There were demonstrations on campus at times.
TS: Demonstrations for the—
SB: For the—Against the Vietnam War.
TS: Anti-war, okay.
SB: And there was one time there was something about—to do with the black issue but I can't remember what it was.
TS: Like black power, or that might come later though.
SB: I don't remember exactly but it didn't go over well with most of us. Because one of my best friends in the dorm, she and I both liked tuna sandwiches I remember, Jennifer, and we had this ongoing bridge game that somebody had to go to class and some came out, some played all night, and I remember at 2:00 a.m. being awakened by Jennifer saying, "We need a fourth. We're still playing. I'll make you a tuna sandwich." [both chuckle] And Jennifer was a very light-skinned black woman, and her fiancé was very dark, so Jennifer would lie out in the sun with us to get a suntan so she could be darker. None of my friends participated in anything to do with the black issue. And then with Vietnam I saw more of that when I'd go over to Chapel Hill. Which I did get to go to some ballgames at Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, Durham, so.
TS: Yeah.
SB: And I loved doing that; that was fun.
TS: When you talk about the issues going on, it might have been civil rights related then.
SB: Right.
TS: At that time.
SB: I can remember [Robert Frnacis] "Bobby" Kennedy was assassinated. Martin Luther King [Jr.].
TS: That was '68.
SB: Yes.
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TS: Were you still in school then?
SB: Yeah, I was there '65 to '69.
TS: Oh, '69. Oh, okay, so what was that like; that experience? That year was a pretty volatile year.
SB: It's hard to remember exactly the feelings. I know that there were feelings of not understanding all that's going on, and some things of understand—why is this a problem, and why do people care if somebody's black or white, and why can't they—Sometimes I think we're shielded growing up back then in a small community, without the Internet, without people—with—most of my teachers lived in the area the whole time. Most people I knew lived there. They didn't move around like people do today. So you're shielded from the total reality. And even in college, understanding what it meant. I think I didn't have family members who were directly involved maybe, or —
TS: Well, like, the issues of discrimination and voting rights and things like that, that wasn't something that you really had a lot of knowledge or information about?
SB: I didn't have a lot of know—I didn't understand why—to find out they can't vote. Why not? And so, not understanding, as well as looking at it now, if it were today's time and I were in college I'd know a whole lot more about it.
TS: Right, because access to information is a lot easier.
SB: Yeah. I mean, because I didn't understand—
TS: And misinformation, too, though, right?
SB: Right, misinformation. But I remember growing up when I was little and my mother was working as a—maybe when I was in first or second grade, and there's me and three siblings, in the afternoons after school there were two black women who came. My dad or somebody'd bring them over to the house, and they would take care of us, and fix dinner—I helped fix dinner—until my parents got home.
And we called them Aunt Bessie and Aunt something, and it never crossed my mind to be concerned that they were a different color skin. So I just—I think it was later on that I realized, "Maybe I should have had a stronger voice." Just because things didn't bother me, or didn't affect me, I needed to speak up for those whose voice wasn't being heard.
TS: Interesting.
SB: Yes.
TS: Well, you said how you were interested in the space race and stuff. So you had the moon landing—'69. 17
SB: Yes.
TS: It might have been the summer that you graduated.
SB: Oh, that was fascinating.
TS: Yeah.
SB: Oh, Woodstock was—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Woodstock too.
SB: Woodstock was the summer of '69. I graduated from UNCG and I went to NC State for both summer sessions and then the next fall, with the intent of getting a second degree in textile technology. Well, it was at that point in time, though, that textiles in this area was falling apart, and I realized, "Okay, I need to go make money and think about what I really want to do. That maybe going for the textile industry, because it's local, isn't going to work"
But in summer of '69, taking calculus at NC State, I made quite a few friends, and some of the friends—this is a combination male and female, we're just friends—they were—we had heard about this thing that was going on and it turned out to be Woodstock. Well, one of the guys had a van, and so several of them said, "Yeah, let's go up there. This sounds like fun on a weekend."
Well, I didn't have much money, I'm still trying to go to school and work, and I had work that I could do, I had—somebody had, in a retail store somewhere here. I said, "No, I've got to work. I told them I would work." So I didn't go. And I'm at my parents' house, I'm watching TV, and it showed Woodstock, and I went, "I'm supposed to be there."
TS: [chuckles]
SB: So I hate I missed that, because my friends who were not drug users had a blast. They came back—They had had a wonderful time. So.
TS: You missed out on that.
SB: I missed out on it but—
TS: Well, who knows what would have happened?
SB: Who knew? And I got a paycheck so that was okay. 18
TS: [chuckles] That's right. So you were aware of the drug culture that was going around?
SB: Yes.
TS: And so, what about the anti-war sentiment? Did you have any thoughts about what was going on with Vietnam?
SB: I didn't understand it enough then, and I think if it were like today I would have known more. I would have had more ways to research it, but I was so tied up in taking full course loads and trying to work to support myself, and borrowing money, that I didn't give the time to the current events that I wish I could have. So my information was from those that had strong opinions, one way or the other, so I never participated in the demonstrations because I wasn't sure what was right. And I don't know that today I even know what was right. I knew that it wasn't a clear cut issue, I can tell that.
TS: Right.
SB: But my effort was spent on getting through school.
TS: Right.
SB: Getting that degree. Back then getting the college degree was the goal.
TS: Right. And so, you expected you were going to do what with that after you graduated?
SB: With my BS in clothing or tex—With the clothing, when I realized that I didn't have the money to take off for New York—and there was no help at all from UNCG on what do you do with your degree.
TS: Okay.
SB: There was nothing.
TS: Okay.
SB: Today, it's totally changed. And that's why I thought, 'Well, with the textile industry in North Carolina, if I get the second degree in textiles and I've got both, then I can get into something in the Research Triangle area." And that's when textiles fell apart, and I was well aware it was falling apart, and so I couldn't do the things I wanted to do because I didn't have the money, or I didn't have someone to help me find out the answers.
TS: Right.
SB: And so, when I left State I went to work at Hudson Belk [Department Store] in downtown Raleigh. 19
TS: How long did you work for them?
SB: About eleven years.
TS: Okay.
SB: Because I started out as a department manager, and back then women weren't in management positions in retailing.
TS: Right.
SB: I became an area manager. The Hudson Belk in downtown Raleigh was one of the largest department stores in the state, only second to, and sometimes led, the Belks in Charlotte. And back then they were not franchise—not a chain store like it is now; it was partnership groups.
But when I became a section manager that was—I had more volume under me than some of the store managers for Belks in other areas. In fact, most of them. And this Belks paid for me to be a member of the American Management Association. In the early seventies I went to one of their big, weeklong meetings held down in Myrtle Beach [South Carolina], and it was, like, four hundred people. I think seven of us were female.
TS: Really?
SB: Because you did not have women in management positions.
TS: How were you being treated at that time as a women in that kind of position?
SB: I was treated fairly well. I found out after I got in there that they were paying the men managers more than they were me, and when I asked about it they said, "Well, you're not married and they have a family to support."
I went, "That's not fair." And I did get a raise; it took a while. I eventually became one of the assistant store managers, and was treated very well. I was even offered—"If you'd rather be a buyer," but by that time I had really realized that my real expertise was in management and leadership, not in the sit down and do the desk work.
TS: Right.
SB: The nitty-gritty details. And plus, there's more opportunity in management than there was in being a buyer, so I stuck with it.
TS: Stayed with it. Well, so you spent, really, all the seventies in this position, with this company, right?
SB: Right.
20
TS: And this is when the women's movement is going on, too.
SB: Yes.
TS: Did that have any influence on you?
SB: Not as much as it probably should have, because I had a job, I was getting paid better than a lot of my friends. I was making more than my school teacher friends, even though it didn't seem like that much. I was being treated very well by the men with whom I worked, so I was not having a problem. And I really—If there were problems with the other women, other than not having the opportunities to move into management as much as the men did, I may not have been as aware as I should have been. However, there were women that did get management jobs. I think they were limited. But I didn't—I wasn't seeing mistreatment with Hudson Belk.
TS: Okay.
SB: I think they treated their employees very well. And so, I don't—I don't think it was much of an issue for me because it wasn't in the company with whom I was working.
TS: Did you have any kind of sexism or sexual harassment, or anything like that, that you saw or experienced?
SB: No. And that's interesting, because I didn't at work. I saw that with other people and how they were treated, but at work there I wasn't seeing it. I made good friends, I knew the spouses of the men and women with whom I worked; got along very well with them. So no complaints there.
TS: So you weren't having the kind of obstacles, maybe, that some other women might have been having during this era of, like, change, and getting into—
SB: Right. In fact, it's funny. When I first started working for Hudson Belk my hair was long and straight like most everybody else of that age back then, and I remember one time with my long straight hair, and a Maxi Coat I had on, meeting Mr. Hensdale, of Belk-Hensdale in Fayetteville; and this was old Mr. Hensdale. And I can't remember where I met him—in one of the meetings or however—but had, like, a full day with him. Well, his son-in-law—I think son or son-in-law—called later and—or and came up, because I met him. He says, "I had to meet you because with my father, father-in-law." He says, "He is so anti-young people and hiring females," and all that. He said, "After meeting you he came back, he says, 'We need to be sure and hire some young women.' He says, 'I thought if they had long hair they weren't smart.' He says, 'I'd like to hire her.'" But he wouldn't take me from Hudson Belk.
TS: Yeah.
SB: But I was just—that made me feel better. 21
TS: Sure.
SB: But then I had to start thinking about, "How do I come across as a professional?"
TS: How did you think you did?
SB: Well, I cut the hair some because I thought, "Yeah, I want to look more professional," but at the same time, if you're in a business that supports fashion, I was allowed to wear—I could wear things, the shorter skirts, but not too short.
TS: Right.
SB: And back then women did not wear pants to work; you wore skirts. You could not wear sleeveless stuff. You wore stockings. After—That changed in a few years because we were selling pantsuits.
TS: Right. Then you start wearing them.
SB: Right.
TS: Well, what made you decide to get out of that and change careers?
SB: Well, early on I had told some people with whom I worked, I said, "I always wanted to go in the military." I just felt like we all have a certain obligation in this country to do some kind of community service, or service back to the country. And right now—Back then the military was the big option. Now there are other options we could use, but—And the other thing was, I'm never not going to do anything again because somebody else doesn't want me to.
And so, regardless of how my mother felt when I was the age I was, I should have done what I felt was right for me.
So when I was twenty-seven, I went to the air force recruiter in what used to be the post office in downtown Raleigh, and was told I was too old, because twenty-seven was the cutoff so I was too old. And after that point I said—I reiterated, never again. If there's something I want to do it does not matter what someone else thinks, I'm going to do what I feel is right.
Well, when I was thirty-four, and this would have been in early May of 1980, I guess—'81, '81, yes—an avid newspaper reader, I was sitting on the deck at my townhouse in Cary reading the paper from cover to cover, including the want ads. I'd scan them, because Raleigh was growing so fa—rapidly then that there was a lot going on, and I learned a lot just reading through the want ads. And I wasn't even look—I wasn't looking for a job, I'm just looking at what's going on, and I saw this big ad that said: Managers Wanted. Ages 18-34—or something like that—or 35. And I go, "They can't do that. They can't put an age on it." And then I kept reading, and it was an ad from the navy recruiter, and I thought, "Whoa, what happened to twenty-seven?" 22
So that Wednesday, my day off, I went to see the recruiter and said, "What is this all about?" And it turns out that by law you had to be commissioned before you were thirty-five, that the twenty-seven was policy; had been all along. Now, it's different—nurse are thirty-nine, doctors are dead, I think; whatever. [both chuckle] So the ages are different, but for a regular officer, by law, it's thirty-five.
So they gave me a test and said, "You did well on that. Let's do this, that, and the other, and let's get you a physical. This is to go to Officer Candidate School to become an officer, probably surface warfare. Would you go to sea?"
"Sure, why not?"
And so, the next Wednesday when I had my physical and then went in to see the recruiter, he says, "We've got a problem." He said, "The next OCS [Officer Candidate School] class in July is filled and the one that starts in September finishes three days after your thirty-fifth birthday. So you—Yeah, that's a problem." He said, "What I'd like to do is, if we can really push this through I will see if I can get you in that July class that's filled."
So I had to get referrals so I—within a week I had gotten it from Karl Hudson, owner of Hudson Belk.
TS: That's a pretty good referral. [chuckles]
[Speaking Simultaneously]
SB: The local district attorney I knew, and there's several other people who wrote referrals. And even Mr. Hudson says, "I don't want to do this." He says, "But—And I don't want to let you go. If you go I want you to take leave and—come back anytime."
TS: Right.
SB: And I said, "This will work." So [I] got all the referrals in, and the recruiter happened to be an aviator and at that time had an aircraft at Raleigh-Durham [International Airport] that he could use for taking potential aviators up. He flew my records to [Washington] D.C., to the recruiting command, got me in the class, and on June fifth I was swore into the navy, and in July I was in Newport, Rhode Island.
TS: That's 1981.
SB: In 1981, because, like I'd said, what I wanted to do nobody else was going to make the decision for me. My mother said at that time, she said, "I still don't like it."
I said, "It does not matter."
TS: [chuckles] Yeah. Was your father still alive then too?
SB: Yes.
23
TS: Yeah.
SB: My father was thrilled.
TS: I was going to say, did he—he was—
SB: He was fine with it.
TS: Now, he was in the army?
SB: He was Army National Guard, and he had been called to active duty. He's originally from Sampson County.
TS: Okay.
SB: And he had been down in South Carolina working at a—I want to say, like an Ace Hardware but not Ace, it was something similar; hardware store maybe. And was Army National Guard, picked up some extra money, and they called him to active duty, so he was all over Europe and loved it. If he had not developed foot problems, like so many did back then with the poor boots and all, he might have stayed in, but he had to get out.
TS: Yeah. Do you need to take a break or anything?
SB: No, I'm fine right now.
TS: Okay. So your mom's not so crazy about it, you're dad's pretty happy. What about your siblings? Did they have any thoughts about it?
SB: I don't know. They really didn't—They weren't—They kind of thought it was exciting I think, and after I got in—and even my mother after years realized, okay, she's not infantry, going crawling in ditches or whatever. She was—She was okay with it. But they got to come visit wherever I was.
TS: Oh, that's nice. Well, how about your friends? What did they think about this whole change in your career?
SB: Exciting.
TS: Yeah.
SB: I think most of them were just excited about it and happy for me.
TS: Well, so tell me a little bit about, then, your officer training class. This was in Newport, right?
SB: Newport, Rhode Island. 24
TS: Okay.
SB: What a beautiful area to be confined to officer training.
TS: No kidding.
SB: And it was different because, yes, I was one of the oldest. There was several others who were maybe in their early thirties; some of the prior enlisted that went to Officer Candidate School. But yes, I was at the top end, because most often it's somebody twenty-two years old.
TS: Right.
SB: And it was very regimented. However, it's like going to college. There—You were taking college level courses; you could get college credit for them. So you went to class every day for, like, five classes a day, and I believe it was set up in, like, two semesters. It was from July to November but it was very concentrated. And then you had your physical part of it. We had to go run a mile and a half. I went to the gym. I was not a strong swimmer and you had to go off a twelve foot tower. Even though I couldn't swim I went off the twelve foot tower, and somebody—I couldn't tread water. I mean, I could swim some but I couldn't tread water. But—So they got me and then I took swim—extra instruction, which was fun.
TS: Was it?
SB: So I had to go over there and float around in the pool everyday looking up at the skylights. And finally I could tread water fine. But I had to go off the twelve foot tower again. Not my idea of fun but I did it.
TS: Was that the most challenging part for you, the water issue?
SB: Probably.
TS: Yeah.
SB: Because the classes, even celestial navigation, I did fine in; I had a wonderful instructor for that.
TS: And the other physical activity was okay?
SB: Yeah, it was fine.
TS: Had you been very fit at that time?
25
SB: I wasn't unfit. I wasn't a runner back then. I did walk a lot, and I was in good physical shape, good health, so it really wasn't a—wasn't a problem. The big problem was trying to do push-ups. I have a problem with that.
TS: Yeah.
SB: But somehow I could eke out the minimum to pass the PT [physical training] test. Sit-ups were no problem. Back when I was in high school we had President Kennedy's physical fitness—test, whatever it was, and so I had started with that, and then taking the dance classes at UNCG helped.
TS: Oh, right. So there you go.
SB: So the physical part was never a problem; it's not that tough. One thing I did like initially when we went after a week—because it was very intense. You were paraded around, you were paraded around at dinner, this, that, and the other. They did introduce us to the chaplain. They took us—They said, "It doesn't matter what your beliefs, this is just a time that you're away from everything else and it's—" stress. And it indeed was. And the chaplain we went to was a Jewish Chaplain. I had grown up going to Methodist church primarily. It was a Jewish chaplain and he was so wonderful, and we were just—you never felt like anybody wanted you in any particular religion, you were just—you could interact with a chaplain, it didn't matter who he or she was. So that was good knowing that there was somewhere to go.
TS: Right.
SB: And that you could go.
TS: So you had a little escape somewhere.
SB: Right.
TS: Okay.
SB: And then you're in Newport, Rhode Island, you can't complain so much. [both chuckle]
TS: Did you get to have some off time then, when you were there?
SB: Toward the end we had some off time, like on weekends, and we could go downtown Newport. Downtown Newport in the summertime is wonderful.
TS: Yeah. Probably a little better then than maybe in the wintertime.
SB: Oh yes, since I lived there the next three years.
26
TS: Oh, that's right. Tell us about that. You got through your OCS okay, and then you ended up getting assigned at the same place.
SB: Well, yes. What happens when you go through OCS, you—they have a night when you select where you're going, and then maybe places you can select from. Well, I had thought I'd be going to sea but I find out that only six women a year, I think then, were being sent to sea from OCS, and most of those were going to, like—it was tenders [boats or larger ships used to service or support other boats or ships, generally by transporting people and/or supplies to and from shore or another ship] back then; they weren't on all the ships. Well, since I was at the end of the physical year there was no surface slots for me, so I was not going to sea. There were several places I could select from. I remember Whidbey Island was on there.
TS: Oh, nice.
SB: But—
TS: It's in Washington, right?
SB: In Washington state. And there were some others, I don't remember what they were. They were all admin [administrative] type jobs. But this Surface Warfare Officers School Command, right there in Newport, which was a big deal—they trained everything from the basic—the ones going—we call them "Baby SWOS" or—the CO [Commanding Officer] didn't like that, he said, "No, kinder SWOS." From the very basic surface warfare class on up to classes for those going to command at sea. There were other levels; executive officer, department head. And we had international students.
["SWOS" is an acronym for Surface Warfare Officers School].
TS: It was like a training center?
SB: As a training [for officers going to surface ships—SB clarified later]—
TS: Okay.
SB: And—But the billet I selected said "Curriculum and Instructional Standards Office." Okay? So I go over there and they tell us—in fact, they tell us before we're even sent to our commands that, "You probably won't be in this billet because they're trying to get admin officers and you'll probably be an admin officer." Well, I wasn't really thrilled with that but what do you do? You do what you're told, Ensign. But I did keep that job for three years, and it was supposed to be for someone who was a lieutenant commander, so three paygrades senior to me, post-executive officer at sea, and here I was none of that.
TS: Pretty green.
SB: Pretty green. 27
TS: Yeah.
SB: And some of the others had been moved and some similar positions had been moved out of them into new admin billets that somebody had more money to spend than they had sense actually. Unneeded billets in my opinion. But I stayed in my job, and under two different department heads, so.
TS: Do you think that was because you had a level of maturity from previous management experience, and things like that?
SB: Yeah, absolutely. I think that the level of maturity—experiencing doing anything, and in fact they went from a very small office to adding—even adding another big office space. I went from being just a person working in the office for the commander and his civilian deputy to having two people working directly for me, and having another person added—another officer added with two people working for him. Because I did testing and evaluation primarily and they were doing curriculum development; we split it out. And were very successful. One of the things we were successful in, which again age and maturity helped with, was at every course they did course evaluations, and they were done at the end of the course when the officers were leaving their course, then six months later they were sent a course evaluation that came back to see what they thought; if they'd put it to use.
Well, the return rate was—it was minimal, like less than five percent. It was nothing. And I thought, "Well, that ridiculous." So I started talked to the officers in the class, because the senior officers were my age. [chuckles] And I said, "When you get out of there you better remember I'm here and you better send this back." We started getting them back. We went—I mean, pretty soon we were up to getting fifteen percent of them back, then we were getting twenty-five percent of them back, and even every now and then there'd be a note on it, "She's still there." [both chuckle]
So we were able to make significant changes in courses, and some needed changes, and sometimes—and I would sit in on courses. This helped me in my growth and education. Even though I wasn't going to be a surface warfare officer, the navy is about surface warfare, submarine warfare, and learning and knowing what went on made me more marketable to the different communities. But I sat in on the classes and I would look at what prior students had said about it, and then I could write up, evaluate an opinion for my commanding officer—my department [to the] head commanding officer, on why I agreed or disagreed. And on testing, we would evaluate the test. If eighteen of thirty people got the same wrong answer on the multiple choice question, something's wrong.
TS: Right.
SB: And I remember there was one on valves—butterfly valves and something, that once I had read their evals and sat in on the course and looked at the course materials I saw what was wrong with the question, and it was misleading and we could correct that.
28
TS: Right.
SB: And two wonderful enlisted people working for me most of the time. I had [unclear] two. One of them, who was a petty officer—a first class petty officer—retired as a lieutenant commander, so he grew [from a machinist's mate to a senior enlisted to officer—SB clarified later].
TS: That's pretty neat.
SB: But—So I learned a whole lot about surface warfare, plus because of my age and maturity, every time an admiral came to visit, which was frequently, because they came to speak to the courses, and they came for things—at least one of them a week—they had me as the escort officer. Well, that was okay. It wasn't like we're just sending a female out to greet him, it was someone they knew who was going to have the admiral's ear, and that can be good or bad.
TS: Right.
SB: I met a lot of the senior officers, so that my name was known everywhere, and it paid off later.
TS: Since maybe a younger person, male or female, might have been more intimidated by—
SB: They could have been intimidated, plus there were things they would miss out on. In fact, a—someone who is still a friend, that became an officer and is younger than I am, and I met her when she was assigned to this command right before I left, and she was going to take over doing the admiral duty and there was a lot—and she has told me to this day that I saved her life because of some things I told her that she would not have thought about.
TS: Like what?
SB: For instance, where the admiral was going to stay in the flag quarters that were designated for admirals. I said, "I don't care if it's designated for that. You never know who's been there and what's going on. It doesn't matter if somebody tells you it's ready, you go look at it."
And sure enough she went one time to check it out, she said, "I was running tight but I thought you told me that for a reason," and she checked and there was, like, somebody had left some dirty clothes or something. So whoever told her it was ready had not been up there to check, and she said—
TS: Right.
SB: —"You saved my life."
TS: Double-checking it.
29
SB: Right.
TS: Crossing your T's and dotting your I's, sort of thing. That's neat. Well, now, at the Surface Warfare School, were they all men that were being trained? Were there any women?
SB: At that time I think it was all men. I'm trying to—No, there were a few women. Like I said, there were six a year that went to the basic course, but I really didn't—the basic course was in a different building from us, and even though I had worked some of their things—
TS: You were more in the advanced.
SB: —I was more in the advanced. I did work—One of the big things, I worked for the basic course—not to get away from the women—was in looking at some of their test scores and helping them out, and looking at some problems. I made the comment one day, "I think they're having a problem reading." And we started doing a reading—I researched and found a reading test. Most of them are geared for high school. I wanted to find a college level and I found one through McGraw-Hill [Education] or somebody, that when students came on board, gave them this test; it was three part and I can't remember what the three parts were. Lo and behold, test scores at basic SWOS correlated to the reading scores; direct correlation. So it started helping, giving some remedial help.
TS: Like reading comprehension?
SB: Reading comprehension.
TS: Okay.
SB: Which is interesting. When I went to the [U.S.] Army Command and General Staff College [Kansas] later they gave a test to incoming students. But—
TS: To kind of assess where they're at?
SB: Well, for the Army Command and General Staff College, at that level it was because how heavy duty the curriculum was and how—when you've got to read six hundred pages a night, and I'm not exaggerating, they had to know that you were a fast reader and could comprehend what you were reading. And if you had any problems with that they were going to give some extra help.
TS: I see.
SB: But with the basic SWOS, it was a matter of—there were quite a few of them that somehow made it through college—because they had to be college graduates—that still had a problem with some reading and it was a matter of understanding that and seeing if we could help.
30
TS: That's really interesting.
SB: There were women in basic SWOS but at that time the women had been there so—not long enough that they were in the department head or the senior officer courses, so it was men.
TS: Okay. So you were there till about '84?
SB: Yes.
TS: And then you headed to Groton.
SB: Groton, Connecticut.
TS: Connecticut. That was a nuclear submarine?
SB: Nuclear submarine [repair facility—SB clarified later].
TS: Now, did you sign up for that or was that an assignment that you just—
SB: Oh, that was not available to a woman at all.
TS: Well, tell me about that.
SB: I—When I was in Newport I—we all had detailers who we worked with us—for our next assignment, and at that time the general unrestricted line—[those without a warfare qualification—SB clarified later]—those detailers were under the surface warfare captain who. They were later separated out because it didn't make sense to have us under them, but where else do you put us?
Well, I had a really good detailer that a lot of people didn't like. I remember her name was Tracy and she could be very harsh and—I don't know. I had no problem with her. And she called me one time, after I had jaw surgery and my mouth was wired shut and I couldn't talk—
TS: [chuckles]
SB: —and she says, "I know you can't talk."
I said, "Yes, I can."
And she says, "But I have this opportunity that you're the only person that comes to mind." She says, "I would love for you to do. You're going to hate me if you do it but let me tell you about it." She had had lunch with a detailer for the submarine repair facility. Nuclear submarine, all men; women weren't even allowed near them. There were some enlisted females that worked there, but not on submarines, on shore.
TS: An administrative kind of thing.
31
SB: Ri—Well, no, they worked in the repair shops.
TS: Oh, they did, okay.
SB: So they were electronics technicians, or this, that, and the other, but not to go to sea—not to go on submarines.
TS: Okay.
SB: And she said she had had lunch with the detailer who was trying to fill a job that's called the assistant repair officer for the Nuclear Repair Facility, but it was also—it was assistant repair officer and repair admin officer. Well, this command had twelve hundred people, nine hundred of which were in the repair department. There was a command admin officer run by two warrant officers, but because the repair office was so large they had their own assistant repair officer, repair admin officer, a master chief who worked in admin, and two yeomen, because of the volume of work.
Well, the position required a lieutenant commander. It needed to be someone senior because it'd be working with senior people, and it needed somebody—and they had it as a limited duty officer; somebody that'd been prior was enlisted then became an officer. So somebody with enormous amount of experience, and had to be nuclear qualified. Well, I met none of that.
TS: I was going to say.
SB: I was a lieutenant, junior grade.
TS: Okay.
SB: So two years junior, not submarine qualified, female for God's sake. And she said—she said, "I told him about you and he said that he would try—he said he doesn't see why you couldn't do the job. He said he would try—If you would agree to it, he would try but he doesn't think he can get you in there, but he would try. He said especially with the current commanding officer." She said, "You will be working long hours. He said it's supposed to be a three year tour. I will write it for two years and see if I can get by with it, if nobody notices." And she said, "It will be hard." She said, "You will be under a microscope."
So I said, "Okay."
TS: What was appealing about it to you?
SB: I think it was appealing because somebody had the faith in me to do something that they couldn't get anybody—somebody else—they couldn't get another female in, or—and that it was hard but that they said, "You can do the job."
And I'm going, "Okay." Along to my feeling, one thing that helped me is I knew that if I didn't make it in the military I was marketable outside. I could go back to Hudson Belk. But it never crossed my mind that I wouldn't make it. So I thought— 32
TS: You had a lot of confidence in yourself and your abilities?
[Speaking Simultaneously]
SB: I had the confidence. At times it was scary because there are so many brilliant people around, and I thought, "Okay." And I wonder, too—I don't know if I thought this will never happen, but it did.
And so, I get there and it turns out the commanding officer that was there was anti-female and was really bad. I mean—
TS: Pretty hostile in a way?
SB: In a way. He had no choice but to get along with me I think, in a way. His executive officer was wonderful, so that helped. My—The repair officer, my department head was absolutely wonderful. It turned out to be someone that—my current husband who I met when I was there happened to know him. All the other men with whom I worked were wonderful. In fact—Now, the radiation controls officer, who was an O-4 maybe, and he was in a career where—no women and he was kind of snooty for a while. We tolerated each other—he tolerated me, I didn't care. But he had a warrant officer working for him that—the crusty warrant officer you hear about. The second day I was there he came by my desk, introduced himself, and said, "We are really glad to have you here."
And I'm like, "Really?"
He said, "And I would love for you to meet my wife sometime. Come to dinner with us." And I did, and I had a wonderful relationship with him, so that helped.
The master chief in my office was great. And with the repair officer over these nine hundred people we had the O-5, the commander repair officer, and kind of an equivalent to him, working with him, was a production officer, who was still part of the same department, and another O-5—crusty old O-5—that I got along great with.
Then the cream of the crop of senior enlisted were the ship superintendents who managed the submarine repair, and they were senior chiefs and master chiefs; E-8s and E-9s. Well, I was their division officer, and people couldn't imagine that a female could be division officer for them. We got along great. And again, I think my age and previous experience just in life helped there.
TS: Do you think it was something to the particular men that were there? I mean, the commander was not quite—
SB: No, the commanding officer was not.
TS: But it sounds like most everybody else was.
SB: Most everybody was. I think there were those that might have been hesitant, but the thing is I had to learn so fast and furious because with nuclear repair there are always 33
inspections, always people come and checking on you, and so I had to qualify as the daytime repair duty officer, because if the repair officer wasn't there by definition I was the repair officer. Well, I didn't have the background that he did. He was an engineer duty officer. But we had a production officer there, we had the ship's superintendents. I wasn't going to do the work anyhow but I was going to be responsible. I had to qualify as command duty officer. It was only eleven officers there. I stood duty for the commanding officer every eleven days. I had to qualify as repair duty chief, however that was something I would never do. It was just knowing what they would do. And they were the ones that were the senior enlisted that were always—there's one on duty, the command you had a duty officer and you had a repair duty chief, who actually was there at all the repairs going on, because it was twenty-four hours a day. I had to know what they were doing. Ship superintendent. I even went through the qualification for that.
One of the big things that happened there—Well, there were several big things here. I was the first female officer assigned to a nuclear repair facility. Now, we had a hundred and thirty, I think it was, enlisted females. And in fact, one—
TS: How many males?
SB: Well, that was out of the twelve hundred we had a hundred and thirty, so yeah.
TS: Okay.
SB: Eleven hundred. One of our first class petty officers, her name was Christy something. Why I remember her first name and not her last name after never calling her by her first name—
TS: [chuckles]
SB: —I don't know. While I was there she was selected for chief right before I left. So she was, like, the first nuclear qualified female chief in the navy, and she went to the—as an instructor at nuclear training.
TS: What kind of experience did they get? I mean, did they come to you with any problems on the job; kind of, issues with the guys?
SB: The women?
TS: Yeah.
SB: It was very interesting because most of the women were in the repair department. A few of those women were either—were in operations because we had tugboats to go out when the submarines were coming in. We also got females who were coming off the tenders that came in—the ships—If they were pregnant at that time they couldn't be on the ships; they were sent ashore. Well, they were sent to us because we were—I mean, there was a base there, some could have gone to the base, but we got most of them, and we could use them in different places. And we ran into some problems at times because people wanted 34
to use the women as their slaves. We had a command master chief working for the bad commanding officer. The good news is when the bad commanding officer left he was replaced by a wonderful commanding officer. The bad command master chief left and was replaced by a wonderful command master chief. But the bad command master chief would get several of the women assigned to him and would just use them as nothing but slaves.
[A submarine tender is a type of ship that supplies and supports submarines.]
TS: What would he have them do?
SB: I—"Go dust the conference room. Go get this for me. Go do—" And they didn't know to say no. Well, they weren't working for me but I knew what was going on with some. I can't remember what the proverbial straw was one day but something had happened—and this was long into it and some other good things had happened before where some of the women had gone crying to somebody else about the way he'd been treating them, and I went in his small office and I said something to him. And he says, "You can't tell me what to do, I'm the command master chief," and whatever. And I wonder if that office is still there, if the door is still there, if it still has my footprint where my foot almost went through the door when I kicked it closed. I can't believe I did that but I was so furious.
The good thing was—and whatever it was—got straightened out. The good thing was the ship superintendents, the group of senior enlisted, which there must have been five or six of them. I was their division officer. Here was this cream of crop. I got along so well with them. They taught me so much. I got along with the other officers who were division officers; one lieutenant commander in particular, Kurt Murphy from West Virginia; grew up barefooted with twenty siblings or something. At least that's his story.
TS: Right.
SB: Taught me so much, and so every time somebody came to—and I'll get back to the ship superintendents. Every time a group came to test us on our radiological controls practices evaluation, or something else, of course I was included in who they were going to give the written test to, the oral test; they always did but I always passed. So it was like, "Okay, she passes, she knows what she's talking about," and they didn't.
But the ship superintendents and working with them and seeing I couldn't do their job but I could manage, I could work with them. If they had a personnel problem I could call the personnel officer who was living at the BOQ [bachelor officers' quarters] with me—not in the room with me but at the same BOQ—
TS: No, right, I understand.
SB: And I would go, "Chief So-and-so says his service record's not there, that someone took it home."
"Well, yeah, they take it home and work with it." 35
I said, "No, they don't. You better go to her house and get it right now."
"Oh, I'll buy you a beer tonight."
I said, "You can buy me a beer tonight but you're going to go get it." And I could do things that they, as enlisted, weren't able to get done for themselves, whatever—
TS: Because you had the rank.
SB: I could do that. I could—When one of my senior chiefs—Right before I'd gotten there, his eighteen year old daughter had opened the front door to be shot in the face and killed, so he went through a lot. And one night during—halfway during the time I was there he was—I knew his wife too—he would be having bad dreams; he'd wake up and he couldn't sleep and we were getting him help. But when he woke up and lashed out he hit her in the face. Well, he was scared so he took her to the hospital, of course. Well, the police came and picked him up for assault on her. And she says, "He woke up because of—" what was happening. So I went to court with them and told them what I knew and it was okay. And it was just that I could give them support, I could do things for them. They did their job. And it became funny because they would ask me to go with them to see a ship's commanding officer or something because they liked to have me, having the exposure, and to be able to tell some snippy lieutenant who was snipping at a master chief.
TS: Right.
SB: Well, this is my boss and lieutenant—Lieutenant Brown at the time.
TS: Yeah.
SB: Dah, dah, dah, dah. It worked well. And the other thing that this group did, at the submarine repair facility you've got all these people coming off ships and you've got the typical sailor language. There was not—When I got there every sentence includes some form of the work "fuck," at least two or three times; every sentence from everybody. It was like "This is crazy." Well, the command master chief—not command master chiefs, the group of ship superintendents, one time we were talking and they said, "We need to change this. We're better than this." And we did; the whole command changed. It was after the bad commanding officer left.
TS: So to change the culture it takes leadership.
SB: Yes, it does, and it takes not having people afraid. People are afraid to go to somebody. With the bad commanding officer two things happened that I remember specifically. His office was down the hall from mine and we were on the third floor of a building—one of the buildings. We were having a urinalysis one time in the building next to us, and I can't even remember, I think my number may have come up, but somebody had come to me and said, "Ma'am, the women over there are really upset. They're making them use a restroom that the men have used and it's filthy. They said there's pee all over the floor and there's paper all over the floor and that they have to go in there." 36
So I went over there and they said, "Well, you don't need to go in there."
I said, "I want to check it out."
They were right. They—No one, male or female, had any business going in there. And I'm pretty sure now that it was being left intentionally nasty for the women. And this is one thing I'd learned, that even though I may not have a problem, I was responsible for others who did not have a voice, so this was a big turning point I think. And when I saw what it was I said, "You can't do a urinalysis on any more women until we find a clean place." "Well, you can't stop us."
I said, "Yes, I can. I just did." And I told the women, "You can leave until somebody notifies you that you have to come back."
Well, as I was leaving, here comes the commanding officer. He says, "They called me and told me what you did."
I said, "Well, see for yourself, captain." And again, I was of the attitude, "What are you going to do to me? You kick me out; I can make more money than I make here." And I'd never really feared being kicked out for what I was doing. But—So that got taken care of.
Well, then the next thing that happened under this commanding officer—one of the last things that happened before he transferred—we had weekly Monday meetings with all department heads and the divis—most of the division officers. There were probably twenty people in the room and I was the only female. I'm the only female in any position around there that fit in. And the captain sat at the end of this long conference table and I was probably four or five people down from him and right in the middle of the table, and he was smoking cigars under the No Smoking sign. And his answer was, "I'm the commanding officer. It's my conference room, I'll smoke if I damn well please, but no, you can't." He put his feet up on the desk and he was just very arrogant.
At this particular meeting we were talking about the effect of chemicals on pregnant women. That women that were sent to us pregnant, or ours, could not be around certain chemicals, and we had a safety department that always checked this out. And one of the comments that was made on a certain one that—"We're not sure on so we're not going to put them there yet."
Well, this commanding officer says to this group—he doesn't realize that most of them liked me—in my presence says, "Oh, well, I know what we can do. We can get Lieutenant j.g. [junior grade] Brown pregnant and have her as a test case."
So I looked at him and said, "Up your ass, captain," and got up and walked out. Nothing ever came of it.
Every other person in the room came to me and said, "We can't believe he did that. We are so sorry." But he went away, a good CO came.
TS: Right.
SB: But some of the most important things there were changes with people; seeing how people were treated and treating others.
[Speaking Simultaneously] 37
TS: Well, you wonder, too, though, if he's going to say that to you when you're an officer and had some level of authority, how are some of the women enlisted treated?
SB: They're treated very badly. Some of the—We had uniform inspections. Every week he
would take a different division or something and the captain would go with his command master chief, and the master chief of whatever division, and go inspect the division. Well, he always said the women had to wear skirts. You did not work in skirts at that command at all. The only time you wore a skirt might be for a change of command or something. It was a repair facility, you wore khakis and submarine sweaters. But he always insisted on the women wearing skirts, and I had been told that he would get down and inspect the hem of the skirts.
So it comes time he's going to do my division and he requires skirts. Well, I get to walk along with him and master chief and my mas—senior master chief—I had several master chiefs—who happened to be the new ship superintendent and a wonderful man. So we're walking along, the commanding officer goes behind the women, gets down on his knees behind the first woman, reaches up to handle her skirt, so I reach down and take him by the collar and pull him—I said, "Captain, you can't do that." Well, he didn't want to make much of a scene there because he knew that I would not stop.
My master chief was like, "Oh my God. What's this captain doing?"
TS: Right.
SB: He never did it again, and I don't think we ever had an inspection that required just—yeah, unless it was something coming up where you'd wear skirts.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Skirts? So you didn't tolerate his misbehavior.
SB: I did not—I could not put up that. I don't—I wouldn't have cared what it cost me.
TS: Yeah.
SB: I could not let myself do that. And there were many men who knew about it, and it turns out the admiral on the base there—I can't remember what the squadron was—his flag secretary interacted with me a lot for our command, and his flag secretary had the admiral's ear, and I think that captain retired.
TS: But he never called you out; he never tried to reprimand you?
SB: No, it wouldn't have worked.
38
TS: No? Well, that doesn't mean not that ones haven't tried.
SB: No, he—There were comments sometimes but he never threatened me and he didn't give me a bad fit rep [fitness report] either.
TS: He didn't?
SB: No, because his XO [executive officer] wouldn't tolerate it, and his XO told me he wouldn't. He said he would not let it go to him.
TS: You had good mentors around you, too, then, that were men.
SB: Yeah, I had excellent people with whom I worked, and most of them I was close in age to. But just absolutely wonderful people. I think the funniest thing that happened with my senior enlisted group—The other thing we had there—because there's another chief that's coming into play here—had a chief petty officer who helped coordinate the five reserve units that reported to command. All five reserve units reporting to the command were headed by commanders who—whose active duty job would be repair officer. So the repair officer had five different men, all qualified—one had been training director at Three Mile Island but—to be his—to have his job. Well, before I got there they were treating reserves like, "Whatever. Just come in. Count your time."
And I went, "Look at the qualifications of these people. Why aren't we using them to do this, that, and the other?"
And so, I was the reserve coordinator, but I had the chief who was the coordinator. Early on I went to a meeting somewhere—Virginia, whatever—where my—where the five reserve commanders were, and I'm a lieutenant JG [junior grade] at the time, and two of them came to me and said, "We've all five talked," he said, "but we want you to know that we know we're O-5s and you're an O-2—" at the time— "but we work for you. You are our boss. We will do what you say."
And it was like, "Okay." And that worked so well and we turned out using these units for unbelievable things. Got recognized by COMSUBLANT [Commander, Submarine Force Atlantic] for what we were doing. They even had projects—They were willing to work nights instead of days on their weekends and did that.
TS: Do you think part of that had to do with the level of respect that you're showing them for the type of qualifications they had?
SB: Yes.
TS: And so, then the respect come back in that way.
SB: Oh, absolutely. But they had such qualifications. They had a petty officer—a first class petty officer electronics technician who had a master's degree in oceanography with a 4.0 [grade point] average, and he was vice president of a bank. So these people not only had qualifications for their job, they had other qualifications we could use. They had qualified 39
electricians for instance. They had all kinds of people, so finding this out we were able to use them in so many ways that helped our workload.
TS: Why wouldn't they have done that before, right?
SB: Oh, they would have gladly done it.
TS: Yeah.
SB: But they were—there was just incredible talent there. The submarine USS Nautilus, the first nuclear [powered] sub[marine]—do I have the name right? We redid that to make it a museum there at Groton, and one of the repa7ir units asked if they could have charge of the entire conversion, which that was unprecedented. So what we did, and we had started before then, the senior enlisted of the reserve units were given the opportunity to actually qualify as a ship superintendent, not just a reserve unit ship superintendent to work with somebody else. They paid their own transportation, sometimes came clear across country, because we were the only place they could get the qualifications. They had to work, it was not an easy qualification, but once they did they were certified to manage the submarine repair. And we had this one unit that said, "We will work whatever it takes. We have people, instead of working Saturday and Sunday, if you want them Wednesday night and Thursday night they will work, and we did it.
So we had—in addition to the twelve hundred regular people we had five reserve units that were absolutely incredible talent not being used properly, but then they were.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: [unclear]
SB: But then the funniest thing that happened when I was there, my ship superintendents were all in a big office; big spread out office. Across the hall from them was a little office with the chief who managed the reserve units. Well, one day I walked downstairs, they were on the second floor, and went to go in this chief's office, and he's sitting there at his desk and he's got a magazine held with a foldout—centerfold looking out. At the split second I look at it I see the cover of the magazine, but he's turning red, he says, "Oh! Ma'am—"
I said, "It's okay." I said, "What kind of centerfold is in Bass Fisherman?" And it was a big bass.
TS: [chuckles]
SB: So I laughed. A few days later I go down to the ship superintendent's office. I mean, these people worked nights Saturdays, Sundays forever. Navy's—Naval Submarine Support Facility, NSSF, [worked] nights, Saturdays, Sundays forever, and they did. And I go in and there's four or five of them around a desk with one of them holding a magazine with 40
a centerfold out, and as I walk in I go, "Are you guys looking at that bass?" [both chuckle] And they were. None of them would have ever had anything else in there.
TS: That's cute.
SB: But that was an incredible experience where I stood duty—full duty every eleven days in addition to being there every morning around six o'clock, and not leaving before 6:30 or 7:00 at night. And being called all night during the night, whether I had duty or not, because the repair end of it. I worked every Saturday except for—I think it was a couple of times I had leave or something.
TS: Now, were you married at this time?
SB: Yes, but trying not to be.
TS: Okay.
SB: And so, I had a whole—Yeah.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: So is that why you were working so much too?
SB: Well, no, that had nothing—I would have had to work but he was up in Massachusetts and I did try to go up there some weekends on Saturday afternoon and Sunday, but after a while I was not even doing that, so. No, the job required that—my detailer had been right, that I could have hated her. But it was such a fascinating thing to be involved with, and I got to go out on submarines during the daytime. I—[unclear]. I got to transfer from submarines coming in to tugboats with a safety line. I went out [unclear] tugboats. I just—I tried to—
TS: It's a pretty unique experience for sure.
SB: Yeah, absolutely, and I found out I was capable of learning so much more than I could imagine. I had—I mentioned the lieutenant commander from West Virginia, he'd been prior enlisted. When I would—And I reviewed all command instructions; got rid of a lot of local instructions that were redundant and sometime—and that's dangerous because sometimes you've got a local one and there's a change in a higher-up one and it doesn't—change doesn't get made. But I went through—And with the help of reserve units is where I got great help on not only reviewing every instruction but seeing it firsthand; oxygen charging on a submarine, how is it really done? Let's see what it looks like and then make sure the instruction does say the right things. And this lieutenant commander, Kurt Murphy, was a wonderful help. I get to something and then I call him, I'd go, "What is this about. What does this mean?" 41
TS: So they were all willing to pitch in and help you learn.
SB: Oh—
TS: Because you were willing to do the work, right?
SB: Yeah, right. So I feel I don't know of anyone I didn't get along with. The radiation controls officer wanted be a little arrogant but after a while he saw how I was making his life easier, because even he didn't think a reserve could work there. Well, when SUBLANT sent people down and said, "Yeah, they filled all the qualifications, there's no reason why not. And if something happens and they're called to active duty tomorrow they're ready to work. You don't have to start all over training them."
TS: Right.
SB: So that—We had the dive locker, too, so they were not part of the repair department but as command duty officer I had to understand dive locker qualifications there and the chamber there and all that. So I learned a lot there, which helped when I went to the surface ship repair facility San Francisco when we had our own divers.
TS: Well, I know you had said you wanted to join the military, even at an earlier age, but when you signed up you had this background where you can go back to what you were doing, make more money, but had you wanted to make this a new career and go do the twenty years, or when you originally signed up when you were thirty-four?
SB: Yes, I had thought if I'm going to do it I'm going to do it right, and I had no idea when I did what I'd be doing. I had—I think I thought they'd send me to sea, and I don't know what I'm getting into, but I'll do it whatever it is. I had no idea it would be as diverse as it turned out to be, or as educational.
TS: What are you thinking about the navy, like, as a sailor at this time? Like, what are you thinking about the whole culture?
SB: I was really impressed with the people I was meeting, and I had gone from the first job where I was with officers primarily to where it's primarily enlisted working there—
TS: That's true, different.
SB: —and learning how different the interaction is, that contrary to what a lot of people think about you give orders and people say, "Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir," you don't feel like that. Yes, you know who is senior and who's in charge, and it is rare that you say, "I order you to do something." I remember doing that one time in my whole career. It may have been more than one but I only remember one time that—it was farther down the road than this. It was you worked together. People had their jobs and there were places where it overlapped and— 42
TS: More of a team effort you would say?
[Speaking Simultaneously]
SB: It was a team effort. I mean, we had civilian employees also, so it is a big team effort. And then you learn more—that the navy is more than just a ship or a submarine or an airplane; that there's a whole lot more to it than that.
TS: A whole lot more?
SB: And the culture was changing when I was there to the joint and combined operations, joint being working with other U.S. services, military.
TS: Not just the navy?
SB: Combined meaning work with foreign militaries also.
TS: When you're done at Groton, then you headed out to California, right?
SB: Yes.
TS: Now, did you put in for that assignment or was this another one that was—
SB: Yes, what was interesting here—
TS: Okay.
SB: [chuckles] Interesting to go from one coast to the other at a time when budgets said no, keep them on the same coast.
TS: Okay. Oh yeah, because it was '86. We were doing that reduction in services that—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
SB: Yeah, I think I had—Yeah, I think—
TS: Gramm-Rudman [Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act of 1985] bill was going on then.
SB: Right. What happened is I had met my current husband when I was at Groton and he had been a detailer for the engineering duty officers, but he had come up and decided to qualify as a basic submarine officer, so he—pretty much writing his own orders, go to 43
Marin Island, California. So we were thinking about things, he said, "We'll see if we can get you to California and we'll see what goes from there."
So I'm talking to my detailer and she says, "There's no way they're going to let me send anybody to California because I've got plenty of jobs in D.C.," whatever.
Well, Eric says, "I'm a detailer. I was a detailer. Go see your detailer in person. Go talk to her."
So I go down to D.C. and the detailer at the time was still under the surface warfare group. So when I'm talking to my detailer a captain walks by and stops beside me and goes, "Hi. What are you doing here?"
And I go, "Captain Tolbert, what are you doing here?"
He says, "I'm in charge of this place."
I said, "Oh, really?" So he was head of the detailers that included my detailer.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Was he one of the ones you had met at the first place?
SB: I had met him in Newport.
TS: Oh, okay.
SB: So I knew him quite well.
TS: Right. Okay.
SB: He had been on the staff there. He says, "Well, come to my office and let's talk about it." So we go to his office, cubicle, and he points to his desk and he said, "You sit over there. I'm tired." So I sat in his chair, he sat across the desk, and beside him was a divider. It turns out on the other side was a lieutenant commander who took care of orders and stuff. And he asked what I was doing there so I explained about wanting to go to California and having met Eric, and blah, blah, blah, this, that, and the other. And he said—He yells over the partition, he says, "Phil—" I remember his name—he says, "What kind of jobs have we got out in California? Look at [Rear] Admiral [Robert L.] Toney's staff."
Well, Phil was the surface warfare detailer, not my detailer; he was surface warfare. And he comes around and he says—he says, "But she doesn't have surface warfare."
And the captain said, "It doesn't matter. She knows surface warfare enough to fill any of those jobs we've got that you'll be filling for the staff."
And he had a couple. One was, like, operations at the naval base but the timing wasn't quite right, and I could have done that based on previous experience. But the other that they found was at—it turned to be commander of combat logistics group one. They used to be the—it had a different name. It was under the mobile logistics force. It was the group that handled all the ships that did the—the oilers, the supply ships, that type, and it was for flag secretary for this admiral who was over that group and over Naval Base San 44
Francisco, which means that whole San Francisco Bay area. And Captain Tolbert says, "Admiral Toney and I are friends, I'll call him." He says, "She can have the job." Just that easy.
My detailer goes, "We don't have money to send out—"
TS: [chuckles]
SB: He says, "We'll send her out there." So—
TS: Who you know makes a difference, right?
SB: It does. Who you know and how they knew you makes a difference.
TS: Right.
SB: So that's how I got the job to go to [Combat Logistics Group One] Alameda—
TS: That's pretty sweet.
SB: —as flag secretary, and the flag secretary, you're also head of not only the admin office that reports to you, which was the chief, but in my division was the doctors, the lawyers, and the chaplains. The chaplain—I was an O-3, a lieutenant, the chaplain was an O-6, a captain. I think the doctor was the same paygrade I was, maybe a senior. The lawyer was senior to me, but I was their division officer, by definition. Because again, I was put in a job that was meant for a paygrade senior to me. And I get out there and the admiral—Admiral Toney—is one of the toughest admirals around. Interesting. My mother asked me after I'd been working for him two years—she says—she looked at a picture and she says, "You never told me he was a black man."
I said, "Well, that had nothing to do with anything."
But it did with his personality, knowing where he came from at that point in time, to have been a young black man that became an officer, became an admiral. Not because he was black but because he was damn good. He was surface warfare.
TS: Right.
SB: But he was very—He was tough, and he wanted you to listen. And so many people tried to answer his questions before letting him finish and he didn't like that. So I'd kick them under the table.
TS: [chuckles]
SB: But he and I got—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
45
TS: Who were you kicking, the admiral or the person that's trying—
SB: Not the admiral, I was kicking the commanders—the seniors to me—This is really in department head meetings and we had a small table and if they would start to talk to quickly I would kick them.
TS: [chuckles]
SB: It got to be a joke but it helped. But the admiral liked the way I wrote. I wrote his speeches, I wrote letters that some of them said, "Oh, you don't want to say that."
I said, "The admiral wants to say that." And so, we got along well. Again, I'm working long hours because he liked me. I was going to the naval base where—I really didn't work for the naval base, I was under his Alameda [Oakland—SB corrected later] hat, but I was going there every morning, Monday through Saturday, to go through things and messages they had pulled out for him there to—certain issues, and then going over to my regular job. I was going to functions with him all the time. I had the private phone numbers for Dianne [Goldman Berman] Feinstein [senior U.S. Senator from California], [Edmund Gerald] "Jerry" Brown [39th Governor of California, lawyer], you name it; I had their private numbers and used them. It was—It was one heck of an experience.
TS: Sure. What was the best part about the job?
SB: I think the diversity, again, of the types of things I was doing and the people I was working with, because I liked to have a lot going on and I can handle a lot going on I just don't want to do the details. Yes, I did have to write fit reps for the ships' commanding officers, and I think we had—I don't remember how many ships we had but there were a bunch of them, and the ships' commanding officers were about the same age I was, so that kind of helped, and I got along fine with them and—because they realized that I was a good conduit for them and that I would listen. I could go to the ship, they'd come and say, "Come have lunch with us." And I helped ease things out for them.
Some of the most interesting things were how the captain used me—not the captain, the admiral used me over at the naval base, because that was not my job. But with my background, he would want me to double check instructions they wrote on some of the operations things [operational issues—SB corrected later]. And there would be things that I had experience with, like at the submarine repair facility, that whoever doing the instruction really hadn't. They may have been on a surface ship but they had never had the shore station experience. So I got used there a lot on operational type things.
TS: Was there anything in particular that wasn't the greatest about that assignment?
SB: Earthquakes? [both chuckle] during one, my chair went everywhere. I can't think of anything that wasn't good there because I had such a good working relationship with the people with whom I worked, and with the ships' commanding officers, and even with the naval base staff. Although I wasn't on their staff they accepted that Admiral Toney wanted me put in there. 46
TS: So you're really protected by him, too, from any kind of—
SB: Yes.
TS: —harassment that anybody might have wanted to—
SB: But there never was any.
TS: Right.
SB: And even the—He had a flag secretary on that staff, but that flag secretary didn't have any interaction with the ships' COs; didn't have any reason to really because that was my job, but that was the naval base.
I think one of the funniest things that happened at that time, my husband Eric and I had gotten married and he was at Mare Island Naval Shipyard [in Vallejo, California] where they had submarines coming in. Well, there was a conversion going on with a submarine that at that time was beyond top secret. As you probably know there are classifications above top secret, split—you can know this sentence, [or] you can know that one, but you can't know both. And because of his—Eric's job and having to know about things they also did extra background on me, and I knew about it, and for [USS] Parche which was being converted to the dive platform now, it's not just reading it—books—other submarines have been done this way. It was very limited, who knew about it and who could go onboard. The admiral didn't even know. Now, I'm not so sure I agree with the admiral not being able to know that but it kind of helped protect him too. But that was not under his purview. And there came a time when someone was visiting that did have access—one of the submarine higher ups—to go onboard [USS] Parche, and Admiral Toney is accompanying them to Mare Island. His aide at the naval base knew he was going to the naval base side—this is where immaturity didn't help—didn't always check on things. He assumed the admiral could go anywhere because he was the admiral.
TS: Right.
SB: Well, the admiral didn't have access to go onboard this submarine and the aide goes ballistic. And he even calls me in, he goes, "Your husband's up there. What's going on with this?"
I said, "The admiral does not have clearance to go onboard." And I talked to the admiral, I told him, basically, why he didn't have clearance. He understood. But the aide is just making an idiot of himself and I—But that was the funny thing, to have an admiral over the area that didn't have clearance for something there.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Right, true. That's interesting. The compartmentalized information to— 47
SB: But the admiral and I got along so well and the others knew it, that—In fact, I'm still friends with so many of them, and one of the maintenance officers on staff had been someone Eric knew at the [United States] Naval Academy, and we're still friends with him and his wife. But it was to the point that if anything happened at night the duty officer—if it was something related to the command, instead of calling the admiral they would call me—I was the most junior officer on staff—and say, "Should we tell the admiral?"
And there were some times when I'd say, "This will wait. He will not see a newspaper before 5:30 a.m. I will call him at 5:30."
There was one time there was an accident down in Southern California on a ship and some deaths.
TS: Right.
SB: But he didn't need to know about it at 2:30 a.m., 5:30 a.m.—worked and it was okay.
TS: Right, there wasn't anything he could do.
SB: But they were always scared. They'd call me, "Should we tell the admiral this? Should we tell that?"
So the hardest thing about the job was the long hours. That the only way to get a weekend off was to take leave, and then I didn't really take much leave. When Eric and I got married the admiral—We'd gotten married when I could get off. There was something I had to do and we got off Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday I think.
TS: Oh, honeymoon?
SB: That was it. We went down to Carmel[-by-the-Sea, California] or whatever.
TS: Yeah? [chuckles]
SB: But no, I—
TS: You were married before but now you're married to somebody new, so getting joint assignments, how was that?
SB: Oh, this was—
TS: I mean, you got kind of in pretty good with this one, and after that how did it go?
SB: Oh, it went well again, because we're leaving California, and we wanted to try to time it that we'd both leave about the same time, and they're meaning to send me back to the D.C. area, and Eric's job in—at that time everything for him was pretty much back in D.C. and we were trying to get jobs there. In fact, we're finding—we found jobs, and again it was a funding issue where my detailer was saying, "We don't have the funds to 48
do this. We can send you to PG School down in Monterey." And yes, I would have loved to have gone there but Eric would have been going back to D.C. and I thought, "Well, I'll get my masters on my own. [Comment redacted].
Well, long story made short, what happened is the detailers for Eric—the engineering duty detailers—talked to my detailers and—because we had said, "Hey, we're both moving one set of household goods, not two, so you're not having to pay—" and I told my detailers, "The EDs [engineering duty officers] will pay for the household goods. You don't have to pay for it, so all you're doing is paying—"
TS: Saving a lot of money.
SB: "You're saving a lot of money."
TS: Right.
SB: And we're going to drive in the same car together—
TS: Right.
SB: —so you can pay for one move. And it turns out my orders were only—long story—only cost them a little over eight hundred dollars instead of the several thousand they thought they were going to spend. And the engineering duty officers paid for my orders. They went over to my detailer's and said, "Okay, write her orders for Ju—to leave in July and we will pay for it." So they couldn't turn it down.
TS: Right, no kidding.
SB: So we actually left California the same day in the same car. One car; we didn't have to drive two because we went the same day. The only—The way we got to leave on the same day is this was, like, July 5. The fitness reports for the captains—some of the ship's commanding officers were due July 31, and the chief staff officer and admiral said, "We have—You have to do those fitreps before you go." That, "If you can get them done early, fine, you can go early. If not you're going—" because Eric had to go July 5—"you'll have to wait till the end of July, first of August."
So I contacted all my little commanding officers and said, "Please guys, give me your input." And I had been—The year before I had written their fitreps. They didn't do the thing where they normally write your own and—I said, "Give me the input, I'll write them." So I wrote their fit reps and got them to the admiral a month early. I said, "Barring anything happening—"
So he had them in hand, he said, "Fine, what can I do?"
TS: Right.
SB: "Have a nice trip." So that worked.
TS: [chuckles] And so, this is in '89, then? 49
SB: Eighty-nine.
TS: Okay, so then you're heading back to the D.C. area and you're in Arlington [Virginia]?
SB: Arlington, at the navy—Military Personnel Command was just down the hill and up the hill from the Pentagon; a short shuttle ride.
TS: What was your main duties here at this station?
SB: This was interesting. I was heading up the section to process officers, O-1 through—turns out—admiral select—it was O-1 through O-6—for separation—for administrative separation based on misconduct and substandard performance.
TS: Oh, goodness.
SB: A lot of people go through their careers and never even know that section exists. There were senior officers—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: That had to have been interesting.
SB: A lot of senior officers knew nothing about it. Because the big picture of thing—there—we may have had two hundred cases going on but that also included reserve officers.
TS: Right.
SB: So even though you may do a hundred officers out of thousands.
TS: What kind of things were they getting kicked out for?
SB: Well, the substandard performance had several things in it, but the misconduct could be arson, murder, drug use, drug dealing, you name it; anything a civilian does the officers had done. The officer whose wife disappears and they find her car in the desert and think she's been killed or whatever, and a year later or so has hired an ensign to come babysit while he's out of town for the weekend, and the ensign checks to see what the dog's digging up in the backyard and it's the wife's body.
TS: That happened?
SB: That happened.
50
TS: Now, when those kind of things happen is it just handled through the military or do local police get involved too or—
SB: Sometime both, sometimes one or the other, it depends. If it's not on a military base it really should be handled by the local authorities. And what happens with administrative separations is, yes, something will be handled by local authorities—they could go to court and whatever, go to jail—it could be court-martialed. If they're not separated from the military by court-martial then you look at it administratively: does this court-martial warrant administrative—and it's processing for administrative separation. There is nothing where an officer is automatically separated without a process; nothing. So drug use is not automatic separation. Even back then under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"—or before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"—being homosexual was not automatic separation, and people thought it was but it wasn't; there's always been a process.
So with court-martial you're going to look at every one for an officer and I can't imagine an officer being found guilty at court-martial—not even found guilty necessarily—but having a court-martial and not looking at administrative processing, because sometimes they don't separate them for drug use and then administratively you do. Sometime—And it is not double jeopardy to have someone go to court in the civilian sector and convicted for drugs and then to administratively process; that is not double jeopardy; it's not what that means. So we—
TS: This is, I would say, probably a more stressful job, in one way, than the others.
SB: Yes.
TS: I mean, it's challenging in a different way.
SB: It was—The challenging part is, yeah, you're doing a lot of desk work.
TS: Yeah.
SB: A lot of detail, and you have to work with the lawyers to make sure what you're doing is correct. You're learning the process, and my job, ensuring that the process was handled. For instance, with most officer cases it depends on your status. If you're a reserve—got a reserve commission you may only have one level of process, but most officers there's a three level process: the notification, and you can resign sometimes, or the first board, which is a board at the military personnel command. If they retain based on what they know it goes no further, it doesn't matter what it is. And I'll give you an example in a minute. But if somebody recommends separation at that board it has to go to another board that is where the officer can attend it in a local area, and I say "local" because it's the nearest court martial convening authority—
TS: Right.
SB: —even though it's an administrative process. But the final say so, if somebody recommends a separation for an officer it's the assistant secretary of the navy for 51
manpower and reserve affairs. There is one place where it has to go to the president, and that's removal from the rolls, where you're erased as if you never existed.
TS: Oh, really?
SB: And that can happen if somebody commits a felony or whatever.
TS: Did that happen very often?
SB: No. I think I did two, and sometimes you have to know how to do it and get it done, and it's a long process, so.
TS: And I'm sure it could be a challenge all along the way.
SB: Yes, they want to fight it, and some people retain. For example, we had someone who was being separated for being gay and there was no real misconduct. Misconduct is one thing, just somebody saying, "I know you're gay because you've got a boyfriend," or whatever. And I think this person was a medical officer of some kind and somehow they had found out he was gay, so he's notified, "You're being processed based on this." So he gets to the first board of officers, which has to be three O-6s. No exceptions.
TS: What's three O-6; what does that mean?
SB: That's a captain—three captains, so nobody junior to them.
TS: Oh, three O-6s. [chuckles]
SB: Three navy captains, O-6; Officer 6.
TS: The number three.
SB: We had the board at BUPERS, Bureau of Personnel. I had another officer working for me and I had him—him, one time it was another female—they would brief the board on what they were supposed to do and I was always there, that if they had questions I could answer the questions. And we had a lawyer available if they wanted to ask a legal question.
I remember this one time, and it was the first time we had one retained, it wasn't the only time, the captains didn't believe my officer and said, "He says that we can retain this officer, and you're saying if we say retain it doesn't go any further—they retain."
I said, "That's exactly correct."
And the lawyers said, "That's what the law says. If you say that there's no reason to separate him, that you want to retain, that's it." And they did, they retained him, and they were just totally blown away. They thought, "We thought it was automatic separation. We didn't even know they got a board."
TS: Right. 52
SB: And that tends to be the thought.
TS: Is it different for officers than enlisted for those kind of things?
SB: The enlisted process is different but there is a process.
TS: Yeah.
SB: It's not as long a process. It's as fair a process. In fact, the same lawyer I used at the Military Personnel Command also worked with the enlisted side of it.
TS: Well, with before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"—and then "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"—but just the issue of homosexuality in the military, what were your thoughts at that time?
SB: Oh, my thoughts, I didn't care. I thought—I have had—My first gay friend may—I think a high school friend, from a different high school, was—I'm pretty sure he was—and we were friends.
TS: Just not openly.
SB: Not openly. When I went to UNCG I had my first openly gay friend, a guy that I had met that was friends with one of us, and it's like, "So? Who cares?" And then two of the females were found out.
TS: At UNCG?
SB: At UNCG in 1965, '66. Nobody cared. Or we didn't care. So in the military it never mattered to me.
TS: But they were getting kicked out.
SB: But they were getting kicked out, and not as many as you think, because when you read the stories in the newspapers sometimes it was the same story over and over again. That, and conscientious objectors, there weren't as many as people think, because they were just seeing the same story and honing in on that same story so many times. So yes, there were some separated. Some wanted to be.
One of the problems we had is if people had had a military scholarship of any kind, whether it was ROTC or medical or whatever, the medical ones were big bucks, or naval academy.
TS: Yes.
SB: One of the ways out is saying, "I'm a homosexual." Well, then, if that's not misconduct—if they're not—if there's homosexual misconduct that's different, like having sex on base, sex in public; there's a whole five or six list of things. If it was misconduct that's one 53
thing, they have to pay back money. If it was substandard performance they might not have to. So there were some, and I even questioned two that said they were homosexuals and I'm not sure they were. And I don't remember if they were separated or not. But I think it's changed a lot, and nobody I worked with cared. I mean, we told them, "If you want to retain here's the information, you can retain."
TS: When they lifted the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," whatever year that was, recently, that was, you think, a positive?
SB: Oh, absolutely. When—At my last duty station, which we'll eventually get to, where I spoke to sailors coming into the command—they were coming in for—it was an eight week—eight week courses, their first training after boot camp, and I made a point of always speaking to the groups, and the few times I wasn't there the XO did; the master chief. But I would always tell the groups—they'd be such diverse groups—black, white, female, male, non-citizens that were in—and we'd talk about how you grow up in different places and now you're all shipmates. The master chief kept saying, "You're shipmates, it doesn't matter."
And when I got to this training center in Meridian, Mississippi, a couple of months later in October 2000, the ship the USS Cole had the terrorist attack and some people killed, I'd say, "Look at each other, you're all shipmates. It does not matter. It does not matter what color your skin is. It does not matter if you're male or female. It doesn't matter if you're Methodist, Catholic, Muslim." I said, "None of it matters. You're shipmates." I said, "But I'll tell you what I feel." I said, "You know we're under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." It doesn't matter if you're gay, straight, bi[-sexual], transgender." I said, "I don't care." I said, "I've got friends of all of those classes."
And they're going, "Really?"
I said, "Yeah. It does not matter." I said, "Think about it. You're shipmates."
And it was amazing how many would come to me, because I was very accessible, and the student would say, "Ma'am, you made me think things I've never thought before."
We even had a—an instructor on staff that we knew was lesbian. That—Everybody knew it even though she couldn't say. She was one of the favorites. So it did not matter. And then I've got other friends—a transgender friend that graduated from the naval academy as a male. She's a she now.
TS: Well, I guess the only thing that would really matter the most would be for those people who are maybe not under a command that is as friendly.
SB: Right.
TS: Right. And since you're always moving around you never know what you're going to get.
SB: Yes. So there was—there were places that we'd be scared for people to be—
TS: Yeah.
54
SB: —because of the attitude of some people. I'm just glad that I saw it changing, and hopefully those are going away or aging out, and yet it wasn't just the older ones. I found out most of the ones my age were, like, fine, and the very young were fine. It was somewhere in between, the people that had grown up with—
TS: Right, it's your backgrounds.
SB: —backgrounds. But—Because we didn't really—like I said, we didn't process that many in my opinion, based on how many people were around. And it was just like conscientious objectors when we had the first Gulf War, and the newspapers were full of stories about conscientious objectors. Well, I kept reading the same story over and over again just rewritten. And after—The instructions were very clear, I thought, on the couple of types of conscientious objector. I mean, we had conscientious objectors who could continue serving but not in certain capacities, and some who couldn't serve at all. And I can't remember how many the navy processed; it was a single digit number. But there was a Department of Defense level meeting after the war to discuss having to redo the instruction and the problem with conscientious objectors, and I was included in many since I was the one that had handled it for the navy, and we had other DOD [Department of Defense] officials, civilian military, and somebody from each service, and there was a general heading it up. So we start going over about what we need to change and all that, and I go, "Excuse me, but I've got the statistics that I think are correct for every service. General, are you aware of the number that we separate?"
He says, "No, they must have been a lot."
Well, it wasn't. I mean, the total number for all services were either twelve or fifteen.
TS: Okay.
SB: Total.
TS: Pretty low.
SB: So I said, "That's trivial." I said, "That story, there was one—" I said, —"that's these—they're all talking about one; that was the same person."
And he goes, "Are you serious?"
And every service says, "Yeah, that's all we did. This is it. These are all we processed and here's how many were approved."
And he says, "Oh."
I said—And I told him—I said, "The instruction is pretty short and I don't know there's really anything you can do." I mean, there may have been a word or two.
And he says, "We don't have a problem, do we?"
I'm going, "No."
He says, "Okay, that's it. Nice seeing you."
TS: So, like, a meeting without a problem. You kind of ended that.
55
SB: But you had to address it.
TS: Right.
SB: You had to know and see.
TS: Have the knowledge of what was going on.
SB: Right.
TS: That's interesting. Well, do you want to take a break now for a little bit?
SB: Sure, let's take a break.
TS: Let's do that.
[Recording Paused]
TS: Well, Sally, thanks for breaking; a nice little snack, appreciate that very much.
SB: You're welcome.
TS: So we’re back talking again. And now you're at Arlington and you're kind of in that period that Gulf War started. Did you have any association with working the Gulf War? Did you deploy or anything?
SB: No, and I don't think I had many cases to handle on misconduct, sub-standard performance; there may have been a few. But I did have to stand duty in the Military Personnel Command Center, which any reports of death will come in there.
TS: Okay.
SB: Injuries. Anything—Any—the people issues came through that command center that were navy related. I mean, I stood duty officer, which we had to continue, too. But this command center, there were probably two rooms with maybe twenty of us in each room answering phones. The phones were ringing constantly, and we'd get calls either from military units calling to report—they had other avenues but this was one way in—but mainly you were getting family calling; "I'm scared to death about my son."
TS: "What's going on with him?" or something like that?
SB: The most interesting call I had—Unfortunately, we did all get a call at some time asking about someone that we knew was on the list and we had to pass the phone to the person that had the information. But I got a call one time, and if you can picture how someone 56
looks on the other end of the phone, this man who sounds like—and he was out in the Midwest—I'm picturing him in coveralls and dusty and dirty, he said he was a farmer and that he'd just come in out of the fields, and he said he was really worried about his son. He said, "I thought my son—" He said, "I know he went up to Michigan—" and he was a young sailor—he said, "But I thought he was on a ship going over there and I'm worried about him and I don't know—" he said, "but I'm got his address and it says Detroit, but I thought he was on a ship."
I said, "Are you looking at that now?"
He says, "Yes."
I said, "Does it say 'USS Detroit (AOE-4)?'"
He says, "Yes. How did you know that?"
I said, "That is a ship. It's an ammunition ship. It's a support ship that he's on." I said, "And that ship is okay right now." I said, "But I can tell you what. If it will make you feel better the commanding officer's name—" and I gave him Mike Edwards—I said, "I know Captain Edwards personally." I said, "He was my chief staff officer of where I just was a few years ago." I said, "He is a wonderful man. He takes care of people." I said, "Why don't you write him a letter?" I said, "And he will write you back," because I knew he would.
TS: Right.
SB: I wouldn't say that if I didn't know that. So I could just feel the burden lift off this man—
TS: Sure.
SB: —because his son's name wasn't on the list so I'm safe there, and I knew the ship—
TS: On the list would have been—
SB: A list that we knew of those who had been killed or injured.
TS: Okay.
SB: We had those names if anybody called.
TS: Right.
SB: We didn't refer them to—not refer them, we'd put a phone in the other person's hand. It was—There was never a—"You call this," or, "I'll transfer you to this."
TS: Right, you just gave them the phone.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
57
SB: It was immediate. That second room of people was really the people that handled those.
TS: That handled those calls, got it.
SB: So that was the most rewarding part of standing duty there.
TS: Pretty neat.
SB: Yes.
TS: That's pretty neat. I'm sure you did put his mind at ease because he probably didn't expect that.
SB: I hope so. I was just thinking, like, "Thank God I got that call."
TS: Yeah. No kidding.
SB: And I talked to Captain Edwards later—a couple years later and he was laughing about it, because he did get a letter from the man.
TS: Oh, nice. That's neat. So now, after the Gulf War you and your husband, did you go to your next station together or nearby?
SB: No. In fact, my husband had been preparing for the inevitable. He was a naval academy graduate and his—reached his twenty years in 1991 so he was eligible for retirement. And so, he had thought instead of going and being one of the beltway bandits, we call them, or making the big bucks as a contractor. He really wanted to teach school; like high school.
TS: Okay.
SB: And he loves math. So he started taking education classes through Marymount University, a local university there, to get his teaching certificate—teaching degree, in preparation for the inevitable. However, we were still going to try to transfer together. Well, they came up with a job for me, and we thought we were going, like, to, Newport, Rhode Island again to a ship repair facility. And then there was one in Charleston. And why the ship repair facility is because of my submarine repair experience they thought, "Oh, you'd be a good XO for this."
Well, then it came up that they had an opening in Alameda, California because someone was being pulled out of a job there, and the chief staff off—not the chief staff officer at that time—but someone at a higher level had said, "If you can get Sally Benson we will gap the billet." Well, the person that said that was the captain, Mike Edwards, I was just talking about.
["Gap the billet" means filling in for a personnel position or assignment until a suitable replacement can be found"]