Oral history interview with Pamela Devine

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WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Pamela Devine
INTERVIEWER: Therese Strohmer
DATE: March 11, 2009
[Begin Interview]
TS: This is Therese Strohmer and today is March 11, 2009. I am in Shelby, North Carolina. This is an oral history interview for the Women’s Veterans Historical Project at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I have Pam Devine here. Pam, go ahead and say the name the way you’d like it—your name the way you’d like it on your collection.
PD: Pamela J. Devine.
TS: Okay, very good. Okay, Pam, why don’t we start out with you telling me where and when you were born?
PD: I was born here in Shelby [North Carolina], at Cleveland Memorial Hospital, September 5, 1952.
TS: Do you have any brothers and sisters?
PD: I have one brother and seven sisters.
TS: You’ve got a large family too.
PD: Yup.
TS: What did your folks do growing up?
PD: My mother was at home raising kids of course. And she worked. She took in work. She babysat. She ironed clothes. She picked cotton as we all did. All the kids worked right along with mom and dad. My father worked in the textile industry. He was a mechanic. He fixed looms—the looms that made cloth.
TS: Interesting. Now where do you fall in that line? We got—is that—how many kids, nine?
PD: Nine kids and I’m nine of nine.2
TS: You’re the baby!
PD: Yeah!
TS: [laughs] All right, okay! Well, talk a little bit—So, where you lived in Shelby, was it rural or in the city? Can you describe that a little bit?
PD: It was rural. Of course, there wasn’t a whole lot of city to Shelby really then. It’s grown quite a bit. We didn’t live in town. And when I was about five years old we moved a little closer to town. So I had to change school systems. And then I went into the Shelby city school system. And then that’s where I finished high school—was at Shelby High School. So we were more rural-like, yeah. We moved off the farm that my parents had lived on when my brother and my sisters were younger.
TS: Okay. So what was it like for you growing up then?
PD: Oh, I was a woods girl—always was, always will be. I played a lot. And, you know, when you got that many kids you can make people mad all day, and still have a friend at the end of that day. I can’t imagine growing up any other way than in a big family.
TS: Do you remember what kind of games you guys played or what you did just to—
PD: Oh! Hop-scotch was a big one. We played board games at home. Sunday afternoons were reserved for making homemade ice cream in the yard. That was real big at our house.
TS: Did you do that every Sunday?
PD: In the—when it was warm, yeah. That was a ritual at our house. My daddy would churn the ice cream out in the front yard, and that’s just the way we lived. We were family kind of people.
TS: Well, that’s really neat.
PD: Yup. We fished. My dad—I still love to fish. I probably got a lot of—a lot more undivided attention than maybe some of my other siblings did, because my dad—of course by the time I was born he was older, and so he was my playmate, you know. And we went fishing. We fished in all the creeks, and everywhere in the lakes. And we did all that kind of thing. We went close by most of the time, because my parents didn’t have a car. So—
TS: So you walked.
PD: We’d walk to the creeks and stuff like that. So I grew up fishing and being outside. And, you know, we still do all that ice cream stuff and all that. That’s just—that’ll be in us until the day we die. We still do it.3
TS: Still churning it?
PD: Yeah. We still have ice cream things and stuff like that. We’re out—I love to be outside. I’m an outside kind of person.
TS: How about school? Did you like school?
PD: I loved school. Yeah, I liked school a lot. I played a lot of sports in school—as much as I could for the day, because women’s sports were not—they weren’t as big then near as they are now, we didn’t have all those opportunities for organized competition. I played basketball in high school. And, you know, I liked school. And I remember having some upheaval in high school, which I think is pretty common among high school kids. But sports always made everything okay again, you know?
TS: Yes.
PD: So, between the two of them everything went okay.
TS: What do you mean by, like, upheaval?
PD: Well, I had a little—there was always—high school life is like—you know—even though I liked school there was times I didn’t want to go. And actually, if the fair was in the town or something like that, I was at the fair probably two out of three days. But I still ended up somehow making the honor roll in high school.
TS: [chuckles] Now did you have a favorite teacher or subject or anything?
PD: Anything science. I love science. I had a—I had several teachers that meant a lot to me going all the way back to the first grade. I know my first grade teacher’s name. I know my first principal’s name.
TS: What are they?
PD: My first grade teacher was a lady by the name of Miss Spake[?]. She was of course from this area. And my principal in my primary school her name was Miss Cleopatra Latham: very, very widely known and well respected woman. As a matter of fact, I visited her grave about three weeks ago.
TS: Ah.
PD: Yeah. I remember all that stuff.
TS: So growing up—so you liked science. And did you have any expectations of what you might do when you got out of high school?4
PD: Well, not for a long time I don’t think. I think I was just so wound up in the wonderment of the world and stuff, that I always had this problem that there wasn’t anything that I didn’t want to do. So that made things kind of tough. I mean there wasn’t—there weren’t too many things that I wasn’t interested in, I’ll say it like that. So you know it’s kind of hard to narrow things down when you have that problem. Like you want to know about everything. So—that makes it kind of rough sometimes.
TS: Well, that’s true. Well, what about—so let’s see—so integration would’ve already happened in this area.
PD: Yeah, integration was in its—integration here happened when I was in the seventh grade. And so—you know—by the time I graduated, of course, I had—what—that would’ve been six years so—no big deal. I mean, I grew up being really close to black people. So—you know, I don’t know what it was being alive at that time. It was like for some reason there wasn’t that big prejudicial thing at my house, and even though, unfortunately, that’s kind of presupposed if you were from the south in that time.
That attitude did not exist in my home. We had—living out in the country, you know, we had black neighbors just like we had white neighbors. And we had black peoples’ houses that—you know, we’d eat at home and then we’d sneak over to their houses and eat again! So you know—I don’t know, I love that stuff. It wasn’t as firmly ingrained in my life as it was in some other peoples.
Although however, I can remember vividly—even the stores in downtown Shelby—I remember specifically in Penney’s—J.C. Penney’s. I can right now see it as clearly as I did then. There were two separate water fountains. One of them had a little brown handle and one of them had a white handle. And one of them said “colored” and one of them said “white.” But I guess I was too young to really know the whole crux of that situation. And, like I said, that was not preached in my house. We didn’t grow up like that. We looked at people for how they acted, not what they looked like. So—I think that was kind of an advantage for me.
TS: Yeah.
PD: I mean—you know—I dealt with it from both sides of the tracks. And I had a little—there were some problems I went through in high school. I can remember that very well also. You know, like social things [be]cause the integration had come; like, we’d have dances at high school and stuff. And I remember, you know, I didn’t take it the wrong way—mixing with the black people as easily as I did for that time. You know, it just wasn’t that huge of a deal for me. I figured if somebody respected me as a human being, that was all I really thought about.
TS: Yeah.
PD: So I carried that on into the navy as well. And it just wasn’t that huge of a shock for me as it may have been for some other people.5
TS: Well, let’s see—so you were a young girl when JFK [John Fitzgerald Kennedy] was assassinated. Do you remember that at all?
PD: Oh, absolutely. I was in the sixth grade at Oaks School here in Shelby. And I remember we were studying about Australia. For some reason, I remember that too. And we were all taken into the auditorium in the early afternoon. And when they got everybody in there and quieted—and you know—got it all quiet—then they told us what had happened. And it was a pretty traumatizing thing. Even as a sixth grader, I knew the implications of that. Politics were always widely and openly discussed in my home. We were big watchers of the news. And I knew what was going on in the world a lot of times, because my parents—that was just part of our lives.
You know, my dad never technically graduated from high school, but he was an extremely well educated man—very well read. He had a very high IQ and all that stuff, even though we were just poor white people. You can find some great big books in our house, and education was always pressed. But you know—so I understood some of that pretty—I think more so than maybe a lot of kids that I went to school with, and that was based on the fact of the kind of environment that I had at home.
TS: Do you remember what you thought about it at the time?
PD: Oh, I thought it was real scary.
TS: Yes.
PD: I knew that it was really, really serious after they told us at school. I think one of the things that drove the point home of how serious it was was that they sent us home from school the rest of the day. They sent us all home. And then I remember after that—through the things with [Lee Harvey] Oswald [presumed assassin of John F. Kennedy], when he was arrested. I remember watching it all live on television. We watched every minute of it at our house. I saw him get shot on live TV. And of course Jack Ruby [Ruby gunned down Oswald on November 24th 1963] was right there, and they nabbed him right there. So I did see all that as it was happening on live television. I remember the seriousness and all the implications, and how disturbed the general public was. My family was very upset—you know everybody just kind of worshipped JFK in those times and—so it was a big deal. It was a huge deal.
TS: Well, what about—at the time where we had—you know—fears of nuclear blast or atomic war. Do you remember anything like that as a kid?
PD: I remember practicing getting under the desk in grammar school. I was going to Morgan School in Shelby. And I remember we would practice all of that. I remember the sirens. We’d get under our desk, and we practiced the escape routes to get out of the school. We practiced what to do if something of that nature did occur, and where we were to stand outside to wait to be picked up to go home. We practiced it a lot. So I remember it all. 6
TS: And then when—I’m trying to think of how old you would’ve been. What year did you graduate from high school?
PD: Nineteen-seventy. But I started when I was five, so I graduated as a child.
TS: Okay. So in—Nineteen sixty eight was a pretty pivotal year too, when we had Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated and Robert Kennedy [assassinated]. Do you remember those two?
PD: Oh, yes! Same kind of an effect. I remember the Martin Luther King thing of course. I mean, you know, it was perceived as horrible all over the country, I’m sure. But being that he was killed in the south—you know—and most of the integration thing was centered in the south—it of course had a huge rippling effect through everywhere. There was a lot of tension. A lot of things just seemed kind of up in the air all over again. It was like “Will things ever get right again?” I know all of the things that went on, like in the Greensboro [North Carolina] area—all of that stuff. I don’t remember any big marches or anything here in Shelby. There may have been some of that reaction, but I tend to remember it more in a quiet, sort of a numb type of atmosphere.
The thing about Robert Kennedy—of course, since it happened so far away, that was all another live television event. You know, I remember all of that and how the air waves were inundated, and the implications of, you know, “They’re going to kill all of the Kennedys”. That seemed to be the feeling of the time, because of the fact—well, you know, they were brothers, and he was trying to become the president as well. So it was like, “God, why does everyone want to kill all of the Kennedys?” All of that stuff I think was permeated through our entire society across the country, because, you know, he was seen as kind of like the second coming—you know—to take his brother’s place.
TS: Well, how about something on TV also, but maybe more positive? The moon landing, did you get a chance to see that?
PD: Oh, yeah! Yeah! Saw it all! Sure. Wouldn’t miss a minute of it, and, thank God, the schools allowed us to see the broadcast of all the other space vehicles. The schools—the schools saw it as an important part of what was going on in the world—not just our country. It was the big space race, you know. We had to beat the Ruskies [Soviet Union].
In truth we didn’t, but however—comma—we like to think we did. But it was in that little science vein, so you know I couldn’t be pulled away from it. And I think it’s really unfortunate that we spend trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars on education now, but it never makes the top ten anymore. It never makes it. Oh yeah, that was wonderful watching it—being at school, getting to watch it. There was dead silence, because it seemed like everybody was just in love with it.
TS: Well, I think one of the shuttles is supposed to take off today or tomorrow. Like you say, it’s not so much like it’s in the news. It’s like a routine thing you know.7
PD: Yeah, they don’t want to really report on it unless somebody gets killed, and that’s the bad thing about it too, you know. But it became—it has become so mundane that people—they don’t think about the risk that is inherent. When they light that rocket off, you know, it’s a life and death situation. But still to this day—if I see it—and I make it a point that I usually watch all of the launches, and have seen a few in person! It—
TS: How was that?
PD: Oh, thrilling, thrilling! Absolutely thrilling. One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life is the space shuttle launching at night. There’s a few things on earth that I can’t adequately express in words of what they really look like, and that’s one of them.
TS: That’d be pretty neat.
PD: Yeah, it’s lovely.
TS: Do you remember when it was when you were stationed in Florida that you got to see them?
PD: Yeah, I saw them. I saw the night launch. I have seen two since I’ve been out of the navy, also, in person, but while I was in the navy I got to see four live launches. One of them was at night, and as I said—actually that one was when I was a recruit company commander in Orlando.
I took all of my recruits. I got special permission. I took all of my recruits on the roof of the building. They couldn’t figure out what was going on, and I didn’t tell them of course. I wanted it to be a surprise, because you know if the company commander was there late at night you knew there was something wrong—there was trouble. So they had no idea. I took them all up on the roof though. Marched them up on the roof through the stairwell. Threatened their lives if they got more than two feet away from me, because, God knows, I didn’t need anybody going overboard. So I just got them up there and told them to look at the night sky, and all of a sudden it started glowing. And they’re like—some of them you could see they were kind of scared. I told them, I said, “Just give it fifteen seconds. Don’t move. Give it fifteen seconds.” And then all of a sudden the whole sky starts lighting up. And it’s pitch black dark and there’s this red glow, and then it starts getting white. And they were just freaking. And I said “You’re watching the space shuttle go up.” And they just all screamed.
TS: [laughs]
PD: They had no idea. So they all got to see it. I made sure of that.
TS: What a neat treat. That’s great.
PD: Yeah, yeah. You don’t get too many treats in boot camp. But I hope that none of them have ever forgotten that. Because I wanted to do it, because I felt like it was something they might not ever get another chance to do in their lives. 8
TS: I bet they do remember it.
PD: Unfortunately, I also got to see the Challenger explode.
TS: Oh, you did?
PD: As well.
TS: Yeah.
PD: Yeah. I was on my—I was on a lunch break in Orlando. I was still stationed there. Just so happened. I went to get something to eat, and I knew it was going up of course. So I looked—and from Orlando the space shuttle is just like almost right there even though it’s, you know, on the coast—but the land is so flat and everything. So, it was a horrible sight. But yeah, unfortunately again, I got to see that too.
TS: Did you—when you were watching that did you realize at first what had happened?
PD: It took a couple of seconds, but when I saw the smoke trails I said, “Something’s wrong.”
TS: Yes.
PD: Because I knew it was supposed to be the two boosters blowing off. And you know you—I had learned the sequence. I knew it by heart. And when I saw the extra smoke trails I knew that there was something big and it wasn’t good.
TS: Yes. Well, that’s too sad. Well, what—so you’re—you have all these interests while you’re in school, and then you graduate. What’d you do right after you graduated? Did you have an idea about where you were headed?
PD: Well, one of the things that happened in high school was my father passed away. And I wanted to go—the day after I got out of high school, I wanted to go—I wanted to join the navy—had wanted to for a long time.
TS: Why had you wanted to?
PD: Well, I told you about being an outside person. I think all that translated into knowing the kind of opportunities that were there to see the world—to do all those things. The ocean represented the ultimate outdoors even though I knew that I might not actually be on the ocean. All those other things that laid there at the foot of that door of going, but I put it off for a while because my father passed away, as I said. And my mother asked me not to leave right away, so I didn’t.
So I kind of put it off—went through a few of life’s changes—went to school for awhile. Nothing just seemed to—I couldn’t get the peg in the hole, you know what I mean? I just couldn’t, and I was trying. So after about two or three years I just couldn’t 9
take it anymore. And when I got out of high school, actually, a female had to have parental consent if you were under the age of twenty-one. So by the time I got to be able to go I didn’t need anybody to sign the papers anymore. And my mother was more than willing to have signed the papers prior to that, except that I think—you know, the whole world turned upside down when my dad died.
TS: Yes.
PD: You know we were such a family. So that made a huge difference—tremendous upheaval. Don’t know how to adequately describe it—what it did. But it happened, so I felt like I had to stay.
TS: Yeah.
PD: And so I did. I don’t regret it, by the way. But when it came my time, you know, I went.
TS: Now you said you picked the navy, because—can you explain that again? Why?
PD: There was never any thought of joining any other service except the navy. I just—I don’t know why. It was king. When all of the people I had known—people that I didn’t know—actually came back from Vietnam, there was something about the ones that had been sailors. There was something about that uniform. There was one of my good friends that I had grown up with—her father had been in the navy. And she used to wear his crackerjack top sometimes in the winter, because it was real wool. And it was beautiful with the piping and the white piping on it. And she would wear that sometimes and he would let her wear his pea coat a couple of times.
The fate was sealed. I’m telling you, it was done. So—I did not see much of an appeal in the army. [chuckles] The sailors out there will understand this. We equated the army with digging holes and pitching tents. And I spent a lot of times in the woods as a kid growing up. I walked the woods all the time. And I thought well, “I know the woods and I love the woods, but I don’t want to be out here doing my work, necessarily.” The army was out. The Marines were out based on the fact that quite honestly I didn’t see much of a future at that time for a woman in the Marines. I had and still do have a reverent respect for the Marine Corps and what they stand for and the fact that they have maintained their history, and they like it that way. But I didn’t want to join the Marines. I saw more opportunity for some reason as a woman going into the navy even though there were limits on things at the time—a lot of them. But I still felt it was the best choice.
TS: You skipped one of those services.
PD: Oh, the air force? The flying club!
TS: [chuckles]
PD: Never entered my mind, I’m not going to lie about it. I knew what they had done in Vietnam. I knew how they had contributed to what was going on over there, because that 10
was real big front news in my household as well. I always knew what was going on in the military. It was always—it was always a subject of discussion in our house as well. I had family members—I know family members of mine all the way back to the [American] Civil War that I can identify readily that had been involved in the military. So it’s a long history and lineage within my family.
TS: Had either you parents been in the military?
PD: My father did a small amount of time in the National Guard, but other than that, no. My brother did some active duty time in the army, and actually spent twenty some years also in the National Guard—and actually retired from the National Guard before he passed away. My brother passed away in 2005.
TS: Oh, okay.
PD: So—he had thyroid cancer.
TS: Oh, I’m sorry.
PD: He passed away in ’05.
TS: Yeah. And you had just one brother?
PD: One brother. He was the oldest child. I was the youngest. I’m the youngest.
TS: Oh, your brother was the oldest.
PD: Oh yeah, God bless his soul [laughs] with all them sisters.
TS: No kidding, I know!
PD: Yeah.
TS: Well, that’s true. Well—okay, so you finally get an opportunity to go in the navy. Do you want to talk about how you—like did you go to the recruiter? Or directly? Or how did that—
PD: Yeah. I was on a beach in Gulfport, Florida, which is a little place down by Saint Petersburg [Florida]. And I was lying in the sun, and I said “it’s time to go.” That’s you know—I had taken a little time off from life. I was in Florida with my good friend that I had talked about who wore her father’s uniform parts. We had left Shelby and we had been gone for three or four months. We just decided to take a little time off from life, so that’s what we did. You know, ran away from home without running away. Everybody knew where we were. We were just having a little adventure. And I remember I was lying on the beach one day, and I said “I got to go.” So I told my friend Vicky, I said, “Vicky, I’m going home. I’m going to join the navy.”11
Everybody that knew me well—wasn’t any secret necessarily, because I had talked about it for a long time. So I just got my stuff and came home, and went to the recruiter and said “I want to join the navy.”
TS: Now how—did you have an idea about what kind of opportunities were available for you in the navy?
PD: I knew that the occupational field was really varied, but, like I said, there was a lot of things a woman couldn’t do—that we weren’t allowed into. And some things you could get into them, but you could not proceed above a particular pay grade. For instance, if you were a woman, and you became a boatswain’s mate, you could not proceed above the pay grade of E-5 if you stayed a hundred years at the time, because they had it capped—because women were not allowed to go on board ships at sea—except maybe on a hospital ship, and you had to be a medical person.
So I didn’t want to be a deck scraper for the rest of my life anyway. But at the time they would not guarantee me a school, which would give me a guaranteed occupational field. So I rolled the dice and went anyway. I went in as a non-designated seaman. I went in as an E-1 with no guaranteed occupation, but I didn’t care. I figured, “You know what? I’m smart enough. I’ll figure out exactly what I want to do, and one way or another I’ll get it.” So that’s pretty much what I did. I just worked really, really, really hard until they took me seriously, you know, when I got out into the fleet. And I made up my mind what I wanted to be. And I think they just got tired of me asking to do this, to do this, to do this; so they finally relented, and signed the permission—the chit— and said “Okay, do it.”
TS: [chuckles] Well, do you remember the first time that you got to put on the uniform?
PD: Oh yeah. Big deal. Actually, you don’t put on a dress uniform, of course, when you first go in. You put on your—at the time we put on our dungarees in boot camp. Yeah, I remember that. I remember uniform issue. I remember them putting a hat on my head to measure my head. I remember how the uniforms were new and they all stunk. Yeah, it’s all there. It’s all there.
TS: So how was your boot camp?
PD: Boot camp was—I took it seriously. I worked really hard. It was pretty tough. It could’ve been tougher, I’m sure. I had—
TS: What kind of things did you have to do?
PD: Oh, everything. We—all the menial stuff you know—the cleaning. We used toothbrushes at times to clean. We did all that stuff. We had to do all of our own laundry and everything, and the place had to be miraculously clean. I will say that I didn’t have as hard a time with boot camp as a lot of people did. I grew up in a house where things were done due to the efforts of the people who lived in that house. So I knew how to work. I knew how to iron clothes. I knew how to shine my shoes. I had done all of that stuff for a 12
long time, so things weren’t quite as tough for me as they were for some. Even though I was the baby and, quote unquote, the “spoiled” child. I knew how to do things.
TS: Yes. You mean within your family?
PD: Yeah. In my family I was, you know, “Oh well that’s the baby”, and you know the connotations that go with that.
TS: Sure.
PD: They’re not always correct. But I learned—I knew how to do things. I learned how to iron clothes, because when my—when I was a little girl and my mother took in ironing from people to make money, I always wanted to help my mom. So I would help my mom, and that’s how I learned how to iron clothes.
TS: Well that’s neat. Now did you—you went in in 1977—you said December of ‘77?
PD: Yeah. December 2nd.
TS: So how old were you at that time?
PD: I was twenty-four.
TS: Twenty-four, okay. So at that age were you older than a lot of the other women that were in boot camp, or about the same? I’m not—
PD: No. I was a little older. I was a little older than a good deal of them. And—to this day I’m still in contact with my—the woman who was my company commander.
TS: Oh, neat.
PD: And she told me—I was picked for a staff job. I was the recruit master-at-arms, which means—the master-at-arms was the one who takes care of everybody, cleans up all the messes, and organizes the general condition of the compartment that you lived in. Cleanliness is a huge factor in recruit training, because there’s so many people on top of each other. And you know you have to go through inspection routines and the master-of-arms takes care of all that crap. You know, it’s a big job. So I was picked for the master-at-arms. And later on after, of course, I was out of boot camp and all that stuff—because you don’t speak to your company commander as your pal or buddy or send them email when you’re a recruit. So I asked my company commander one time, years later, I said “What made you pick me for a job?”
And she said, “It was the way you were dressed. and the way you came to—you came to boot camp looking like you were put together”.
And I said, “What does that mean?” 13
And she said, “Well, you were clean [chuckles]. You didn’t look disheveled in any manner.” And she said, “You were not dressed way up or way over, but you were clean and presented yourself well. And you were dressed well.”
She said I was neat. So she picked me based on what I looked like when I got there. Little did she know that I hadn’t been to sleep in a couple of days, but you know when you’re a kid you can get away with—nobody knows that you hadn’t been asleep in two days. Because I was up all night from testing, and it was the night before I left to leave to go to boot camp. So you don’t go to sleep that night. You know, there’s too much anticipation.
TS: Yeah.
PD: But yeah, that’s how I got picked for that job.
TS: So how was it—so you went—you went as a—you didn’t have a job guaranteed or training school, so how did you come to get the—get started in the job that you were assigned?
PD: Well, my first job was—I was assigned as a non-designated seaman. I worked at Water Transportation Division at Naval Station Pearl Harbor [Hawaii].
TS: So you were sent to Pearl—that as your first duty station?
PD: Yes. I was sent to become a boat—a certified navy boat coxswain—which—I learned to drive boats and became a certified coxswain. Before—and what we did initially was we provided transportation all around Pearl Harbor. At the time there was no bridge to drive across to go to Fort Island. Fort Island of course sits right in the middle of Pearl Harbor. There was ferry service that took people over there to work. And there were the small boats, which—that’s what I did, I operated one of the small boats. There was also military housing that fronted Pearl Harbor, and we had to give those people transportation back and forth either over to Mary’s Point Landing—on the main side of Pearl Harbor—or over to Fort Island, just depending on where they worked. So we provided transportation for everybody in and around the harbor.
TS: What did you think about it—when you got to Hawaii?
PD: Oh, I was like—I was like—[laughs] kind of like in heaven. It was gorgeous, absolutely wonderful. I mean, what a bad place to be stationed!
TS: Did you get to pick that? Did you have like a dream sheet, or anything or they just—
PD: Well, yeah. I think they—they went through that little dog and pony show of a dream sheet, but if you didn’t have a guaranteed school you were just going wherever they wanted to send you.
TS: Yes.14
PD: So I drew Hawaii. I went with three other girls that were in my same boot camp company. Four of us got orders to the same place. We were all non-designated seaman, so they sent us all to water-t [water transportation] to drive boats and do all that stuff.
TS: So how—how were you treated at that time as a female in the navy?
PD: Just depend on who you interacted with. I mean I had some really horrible treatment, and I had some people who recognized that until I needed—until I showed them that there was a problem they didn’t present it as if there was one. So it was from one day to the next—just depends on who you dealt with. I had a supervisor that I know gave me a hard time as a female—but sooner or later, I think a light bulb went off in his head that I could work well and I was doing what I was told and I was really trying to do it well. And he came around to the thinking that, yeah, I guess I was okay.
TS: [chuckles]
PD: He ended up being pretty cool about things, but, you know, there were some people that just flat didn’t like it. And out of my job at water-t learning to drive the boats and learning to become certified and all that, I moved on to what was considered a promotional job at that point. Water transportation also provided all the services that went out to the USS Arizona Memorial [memorial built over the sunken USS Arizona to commemorate the 1941 Japanese attack on Naval Station Pearl Harbor], and certain people got picked to do that job. They based it on your appearance, your work ethic, do you show up when you’re supposed to be here—all those kinds of things. So I guess they figured I could handle it. So I got chosen to go work as one of the boat crews for the tours of the public and the private tours for the USS Arizona Memorial.
And so when I went over there. That was quite an honor still is to this day. I worked at the Arizona—we gave—like I said—we gave tours to the public. We took them through all of—a large portion of Pearl Harbor. We explained about all of the ships and things that were in port. We told them about all of the work that was done at Pearl Harbor—this that and the other—the submarine fleet that was stationed in Pearl Harbor. So we had to give a narrative all the way on the boat trip to the Arizona Memorial.
And I’ll never forget that one time we were loading the boat, and it was a whole group of World War II veterans and a lot of them were actual Pearl Harbor survivors. And this old guy gets on my boat one day—and I’m standing on the coxswain’s flat—which is—the flat is the little area that is right behind the wheel where you drive the boat you know. And this old guy comes up. And normally the coxswain’s flat is considered a hallowed place. You don’t approach the coxswain’s flat unless there’s real business or you’re invited there. But this guy, he just comes up on my flat. And he stands there and he looks me up and down, you know, we had to wear a dress uniform to do that job. And he looks me up and down and he says—he called the name of one of his buddies who was dead who had been killed in the war. I can’t remember his name unfortunately. But he called his buddy’s name and he said, “God knows he’s turning over in his grave because there’s a woman standing in his uniform.”15
So I didn’t say anything. I said, “Yes sir, glad to have you aboard today. I hope you enjoy your tour.”
So when it was over with—when he had gone to the memorial and gone through our tour. And I made it my effort above all efforts that I would land that boat on that dock, so that nobody would ever know it had touched anything. So when the tour was over with—we get back—the old boy stops by my flat again. And he goes—that he—he said, “I’m in shock.” He said, “You’re a real coxswain.” So what he basically said to me in all words was that he said—he basically called me a sailor. He didn’t call me a woman anymore. He called me a sailor. And—coming from that source it was the ultimate respect. He doubted me when he got on my boat, but he didn’t when he left. That’s always meant a lot.
TS: Do you want me to take some—
PD: No, I’m fine.
TS: I was thinking that when you that you were doing the tours to Arizona that you probably would have a lot of the Pearl Harbor survivors that came through. And a lot of military I’m sure came through on those tours.
PD: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. All the tourists that came to the island—you know—we would have lines that just wrapped and wrapped and wrapped. We treated everyone with the same dignity. We never rushed a tour. We understand why—we understood why they came. We took special pains for World War II veterans, and anybody that identified themselves as a survivor.
Plus on Pearl Harbor Day [December 7th] we did—we’d go to work really early in our work clothes—in our dungarees. And even though the memorial was cleaned everyday without fail—it was spotless. On Pearl Harbor day there were special ceremonies that were held. And there were always groups of high ranking officials. Sometimes it was government people—people from our own government. Sometimes and it was always—always—the survivors were hosted, and any other dignitaries that may be in the area that wanted to come to the services. Special pains were taken. We bent—absolutely bent over backwards to accommodate them in the fashion that they should have been. And we always took real pride in anybody—if they ever gave us a comment about how we—how it looked, or how nice it was—we really took that to heart. The nicest thing about—not the—maybe not the overall nicest thing, but one of the big, big pluses about working at the memorial was that there were lots of opportunities while you were maintaining it to get to be there by yourself.
TS: Yes.
PD: That was an incredible feeling. [pause]
TS: Must have been—
PD: It was just incredible.16
TS: Yeah. It must’ve been incredible.
PD: It was total hallowed ground. It’s just a special place—special place.
TS: How long did you get to do that?
PD: I only got to do that about eight months. And then this was still during my time as being a non-designated seaman, and I was fighting to become designated. And, lo and behold, I wanted to be an airdale.
TS: You wanted to be a what?
PD: I wanted to be an airdale, which meant I wanted to be in naval aviation. That’s where I wanted to be. And I had been working on it for quite a long time. And—so I was doing all the little things that I needed to do, and ten times more, to convince everybody that I was serious. And water-t didn’t want to let me go. They did not want to let me leave. And—so it took me a couple of years to get it done, but finally I got permission to enter the aviation field. And I was designated an airman apprentice.
TS: So what—like when you said there’s certain—that you let everybody know that you wanted to do it and you did little things—what kind of things did you do to try to convince them?
PD: Oh, I would do all kinds of correspondence courses, which at that time there were all of these minimum requirements that you had to meet to show interest in a particular field. I would do all of those courses and ten more. You know. I would go like out to the airfield at [Naval Air Station] Barber’s Point and look around and talk to people and get them to show me around, because you couldn’t just wander around on an airfield just because you had the uniform on. So I would—I made sure I found people who were already in the airman field and I would get to know them. And I would go out to Barber’s Point and look around and start learning things. And then the bottom line was that I had to take all of these tests to see if I knew enough about it to get BUPERS [Bureau of Navy Personnel] permission to actually become a designated airman. So I passed all the tests and did all of the things, plus, that I had to do to show them I was serious—that I really wanted to be in aviation.
TS: Now did you have anybody in the aviation side that was mentoring you at all or trying to get you—helping you get there, or was this something you just had a determination to do?
PD: I just had a determination to do it. I always had a deal with airplanes also, and all things mechanical—it was all scientific, you know. I remember when we were growing up— sometimes we’d go down to Charlotte [North Carolina] airport and sit. There was a place you could go park that they had designated for the public. A lot closer to the airport goings on than it is now of course, because of security concerns. You could sit right 17
underneath and they would fly over your head—landing and taking off—and it was just incredible. I loved the noise, the smell—all of that. So I knew that’s what I wanted to do.
TS: So how did that go then when you got into the—
PD: Well, I went to—when I finally got to Barber’s Point I became a third class petty officer [sic] [petty officer third class] and designated in AMH3 [Aviation Structural Mechanic, Hydraulics, Third Class] based on the examinations I had took. I had never laid a wrench on an airplane at that time. So all of the studying and everything I did I passed that initial test to be advanced, and become an AMH3 based on all of those books and all of those tests.
So I just went from there and said, “Well, I got to put some of this knowledge in my hands.” When I got there I worked with some really good people who had a lot of time out in the fleet. There were a couple of senior women there, which was nice. I mean I—there was a woman who was—there were two petty officer second class there when I got there— when I checked in to where I was working at NAS [Naval Air Station] Barber’s Point. And that was nice, to have a couple of women who were above an E-2 or something, and they were looked to as—I guess you’d say specialists in what they did, because they were already E-5s, you know. So that was good for me to be able to latch onto. They were professionals. One of them was an electronics technician and the other one was in aviation—she was in aviation records. Which was a very—is a very pivotal part of keeping an airplane operation going. Records are absolutely essential—all of your flight records and things and maintenance records and things of that nature.
And they all taught me from the get go that basically there’s not a heck of a lot of gray matter when it comes to flying an airplane. There are two variables and they consist of life and death. And I took that very seriously, and if you didn’t, you didn’t need to be there.
TS: Yes.
PD: Because you had a lot of—when you were fixing an airplane you had a lot of other peoples’ lives in your hands. But I loved it. I took to it, you know, as the old saying goes: “like a duck to water”. I did everything they would allow me to do as quickly as I could.
TS: What kind of planes were you working on?
PD: Well, in the beginning my first airplane that I ever laid a wrench on was a four-seater Aztec Piper Cub. I became fully qualified on that aircraft. I got to the point where I was allowed to turn the engines on the airplanes to do maintenance checks. I was quality control inspector on that aircraft. I was also lucky in the fact that the beautiful Hawaiian islands were just all around us. Every once in a while my department head—who was one of the pilots of course—it was the station aircraft so it was used to do business that Barber’s Point needed to do. And also that airplane was used to help younger pilots qualify for other platforms. And if a naval aviator was on shore duty then they had to fly a certain number of hours to maintain their qualifications. That was one of the airplanes 18
that they flew to get their hours. So there were times when somebody would look around and say, “What are you guys doing tomorrow as far as maintenance or anything?”
And I said, “Well sir”—if it was one of the pilots I’d say, “Well sir, we’re going to do da-da-da-da-da and just do things around the place, because you guys are going to take the plane tomorrow. So, you know, we don’t—we won’t be working on any actual aircraft tomorrow, because you’re going to be taking it away.”
And he’s like, “Well would you like to go up in it?”
That was the ultimate to get to fly in the airplane that you worked on. That showed—that was an unspoken bond of trust, is what it was. I had one of them ask me one day—he said, “Do you enjoy doing what you do?”
I go, “Yes sir, I love it.”
And he asked, “Do you enjoy it enough to trust yourself to go up in it, because if you won’t fly in it, and you fix it, that’s not good.”
I said “Yes sir, what time are we taking off?”
So that turned into—Pam got to go flying in the plane, and got to see the Hawaiian Islands like nobody’s business. I mean, we’d do the little fly-ins on the beaches that no one knew existed, and go around the mountains. It was incredible. They’d just try to make you sick sometimes. But I never puked in my own airplane, because I knew I’d have to clean it up.
TS: [laughs]
PD: So that went into—we were up one day, and I don’t know—this probably—nobody will get in trouble, it’s been too long. We were up flying one day, and my department head—I respected him a great deal, because he really cared about his people. And he showed that. His name was Commander Dietz. I’ll never forget him, I want to make sure that’s in there. That’s spelled D-I-E-T-Z—wonderful man. He looked at me when we were up flying one day—he had me in the copilot seat. And he just turned around and looked at me, and he threw his hands up in the air and he says, “It’s yours.”
And I thought, “Oh, he’s kidding”. But he wasn’t. So he let me fly. That was the first time, that day. [Of] course, he wouldn’t let me put it down, because I’d never flown before. So every time I went up with him, he’d always let me fly.
TS: How neat!
PD: So that was great. I got to fly a good bit. Because he knew I knew about the engines and all that stuff, because I was ground term qualified. And I could do whatever I needed to do except it wasn’t legal for me to do the take-off and landing. It wasn’t really legal for me to fly it, but, like I said, long ago and far away. He really put an impression in my head, because he trusted me. That was cool. That’s where I learned how to fly. Through the years I flew some more. I actually have a few landings and take-offs—not in a navy aircraft I might add, because that was illegal! That was truly off bounds, and they didn’t want to risk their careers. I have some landings and take-offs in an aqua plane, which I flew on the lakes of Florida a few years back. But it’s still there—all that’s still there.19
TS: Well, how would you say—so you worked—the navy’s interesting in that you have the aviation and you have the boats. So there’s different cultures—I would think—within the navy because of those things. Would you like to speak to that at all?
PD: Sure. Well, there was always the big deal of coming up as an airdale. There was a distinction made between the boat people—that’s what we called them—and the aviation people. We called them the black shoes, and we were the brown shoes. And that went to the uniform differences, is all that was. The black shoes were the people who were in the sailing—strictly the sailing navy. With their—as a chief petty officer, that’s really where it was the most prevalent. When you made chief—if you were a sailor of the sailing navy—you wore black shoes with your khakis. But if you were an airdale you wore brown shoes.
And you want to talk about a badge of pride—that was the ultimate—to be an airdale—because everybody knew you were an airdale, because if you had those brown shoes on. So we really—we ate that up, we ate it up. It was just beyond anything—the pride of wearing the brown shoes. Because—number one—you had to be a chief to wear them, because prior to that is an E-6 and below you don’t wear any brown shoes—as an airdale, you wore black shoes. But when you got to the brown shoes, the mountain had been scaled. It was just incredible pride. Now—Not to say that airdales didn’t go to sea, because that’s not true by any stretch of the imagination. We do have aircraft carriers. The squadrons went to sea on the aircraft carriers. Of course, when I first went in the navy I wasn’t allowed to do that. That was the ultimate goal for me. I did finally get to achieve that goal, but much later in my career.
TS: Yeah.
PD: I went to sea on the USS Enterprise. I got to feel the ground shake beneath me—the ground being the flattop [deck]. I finally got to be a flight deck chief, and be on the deck when they were being shot off. I mean that was the ultimate. You couldn’t be—I couldn’t have been an airdale, and done twenty years in the navy without having gone to sea on the flattop.
TS: What year did you get to go?
PD: I didn’t get to go to sea until 1995, two years before I got out of the navy. But I fought and terminated shore duty, and did this and did that, and did nine thousand other things to make sure that it happened before I left.
TS: Excellent.
PD: And it did finally.
TS: We’ve been talking for about an hour. Do you want to take a little break? Okay.
[End CD 1—Begin CD 2]20
TS: Okay, back here with Pam, and we’re talking about your time in Hawaii and getting into the naval aviation. So—about what time, what year is this, this is in the—
PD: When I was in Hawaii?
TS: Yeah.
PD: Well, I left Hawaii on December 10, 1981, on the red-eye flight.
TS: Okay.
PD: That’s when my tour was up, so I was there about four years.
TS: You were there four years?
PD: Yeah.
TS: Okay. Well, what did you do besides flying around in an airplane—like socially?
PD: Oh! I never went to—I am proud to say that I never, ever went to a commercial luau. I lived among the locals, when I got to where I could move off base. You know, I had, like, fifty roommates of course, because—you know—we didn’t have any money. I had neighbors at one point who—that’s what they did on weekends. They were locals— Hawaiians. They had an imu pit in their backyard and they made kalua pig for luaus. And every time they had one going they always invited us to go, because we were, quote unquote, the haole—the white people.
But they didn’t treat us bad, you know. They didn’t mind us, because we immersed our self in their situation. We knew it was their—even though it was the United States, it kind of wasn’t. You know what I mean? It wasn’t like being on the mainland. So we wanted to be like part of the Hawaiian experience—my roommates and I. So we got invited to all of these luaus. And the Hawaiians have a tradition, they would have a baby luau, which when the kid was one year old they had the luau for the babies. And you went and it was just—oh man—talk about a party and a throw down. Oh God! The food—it was incredible. Incredible! Like I said my neighbor made the kalua pigs, so we got invited to everything! And it was always locals. Dancing—all of that stuff. It was just wonderful. And they’d have another big ritual luau when the kid was sixteen. And both of those times people would bring gifts, but they also brought a lot of money. They would give them money for their education and for the upbringing—hence the one and the sixteen year old deal. And I remember they always had gambling tables at the luaus, and they would take part of the money from the winnings—everybody had to agree. They’d be gambling either throwing dice or playing cards or whatever they did, and they took a certain percentage out of the money that was won at the gambling tables, and gave it to the person that the luau was for.21
TS: Well, that was sweet.
PD: It was all about raising money and honoring the child that the luau was for, and helping the families—the child’s family—support them and bring them up. So it was really great. And I ate some things that I had never seen before, and some of them were good and some of them I didn’t eat anymore. But I didn’t realize I liked baked squid, but I did! You know, we didn’t have a whole of that here in the country in [North] Carolina—wasn’t much baked squid flying around, you know what I mean?
TS: [chuckles]
PD: I learned a whole lot of different things. I absolutely loved the food. I had never—even though I’ve eaten pineapple all my life—I had never tasted one until I ate one fresh out of the field. That was just indescribable. They—the pineapple fields were everywhere. And I know they’re not so—not as much there like they used to be, because friends of mine went back last summer, actually, for a visit. And they were telling me about all the pineapple fields that we used to drive past and stop and get the fresh ones right on the side of the road—that all of those fields are gone now. They’re all houses, you know, so—but anyway it was just incredible.
We lived—we spent every moment we could possibly squeeze away from work— we spent it at the beach. We body surfed. We had boogie boards. We rode surf boards. We camped on the beach. You didn’t have to—no big deal—just go out there and take your little tent and some sleeping bags, and sometimes we’d rent little—if there was a shack to rent or something, we’d do that. And if we had a long weekend at work we might have a hundred people out on the beach, and we wouldn’t leave the place for the entire time. I’ll never forget, we had one on the beach at Barber’s Point. The base had a nice beach. They had lots of camping spots, just for tents, you know. No fancy trailers or nothing like that. We’d take tents, and we’d stay the entire time. And one weekend these people that came—they had gone somewhere to some slaughterhouse—and they brought half of a cow to that cookout—to that campout—and we cooked that. We had beef all weekend long. And plus fresh fish, [be]cause we’d just step right over there and fish, and bring them up, and gut them, and cook them right there on the grill. So we had the best of all worlds, you know.
TS: Very nice.
PD: And if you knew some folks which were—there were a large Filipino population—you’d have fresh lumpia too.
TS: What’s that?
PD: That’s like a Filipino version of a Chinese egg roll, but actually I like lumpia better. I like the Filipino version better. It’s very, very, very thin little wrappers—lumpia wrappers—and they put meat in them and vegetables and all of that. Different from a Chinese egg roll, and not as big around as a normal Chinese egg roll. And I was lucky that I worked with a guy—who was my supervisor, actually, at Barber’s Point—his wife was Filipino,22
and she would make the lumpia. Every week a great big fresh pot of lumpia—or pan you know—[be]cause it was little rolls. And she would get up real early in the morning and cook it, and he’d bring it fresh. So we had it made. You know, we had it made.
TS: That sounds great.
PD: My family came to visit a few times you know so—we—I got to be the island tourist over and over and over, because when someone came you showed them the island, you know?
TS: Yes.
PD: And all the tourist trappings that went with it. Plus, I would take off and explore a lot. Lots of times I’d take off by myself.
[comment regarding barking dog redacted]
PD: I enjoyed the cookouts and the parties as much as anybody else, but I liked to explore also. Because I—remember, I grew up running around in the woods, so I like my solitude here and there. I would get out and go to places where I knew I’d never been and nobody else seemed to be interested in going. So I’d just get out and explore. I found beaches where I could sit for an hour, or ten hours, or twelve hours, and never see another human being. I found all kind of things. I went to the other islands on my time off, and explored them. I went up in the volcano regions.
TS: How was that?
PD: Oh, it was absolutely gorgeous. It was kind of a barren flat land, but it was gorgeous. We got to see the Kilauea erupt a couple of times while I was there. We could see the landscape change because of the lava flow. That was—you know I like that science stuff.
TS: That’s right. [unclear]
PD: That was beautiful. It was all just great—just great. Black sand beaches, pink sand beaches, white sand beaches—
TS: So is that—
PD: Waves twenty-five feet high—just blow you away.
TS: Yeah.
PD: Humpback whales migrating—got to see all of that stuff.23
TS: Any of the sharks?
PD: I never saw but one shark while I was in Hawaii for some reason. We never even thought about them, and we stayed in the water all of the time.
TS: I only ask because I have an irrational fear of sharks so—[laughs]
PD: Well, luckily we were so into the water and all the stuff, and enjoying it and all that, that it never entered our minds.
TS: Yeah. Well, I bet you hated to leave it.
PD: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And I couldn’t wait to go back on vacation after I left. I’m still really drawn to it. One of the people that I was stationed with was who I was speaking of earlier that went back last summer—the summer of ’08. And I was so mad that I couldn’t go. When she was there she kept sending me these pictures in email, and I sent her an email back one day and I said, “You’re going to die in Hawaii if you send me one picture.” I said, “Don’t send me any more, because all you’re doing is making me sick.” So she stopped sending pictures, and she was gone for like three weeks. But I’ll go back again, sure.
TS: Well, where—where was your next duty station then?
PD: Then I went to Naval Air Station Oceana: the East Coast master jet base in Virginia Beach [Virginia]. And I worked in the intermediate maintenance department, which it was a higher level of maintenance from what I had done before. So I got to work on every kind of airplane that the navy was flying at that base.
TS: What kind of planes did they have there?
PD: F-14s [Grumman F-14 Tomcat]. They had oh geez—there was still some old A-7s [Ling-Temco-Vought A-7 Corsair II] still around, but it was mostly the F-14s; because that’s the master jet base, and that’s where the bulk of the fleet, you know, for the East Coast—the fighter jets. That’s where they were all located.
TS: Well, you talked about the first time you got to work in aviation that there were two women that were more senior rank. Now as you’re getting along in time in the navy are there more women getting into the field, or are you—
PD: Yeah. I was still kind of a—I don’t want to say a rarity, but when I got to Oceana, of course, it was a bigger place—a much bigger station with several squadrons. I actually met a couple of women who were in what we call the FRAMP [Fleet Readiness Aircraft Maintenance Personnel] squadron. The FRAMP squadron served as the training squadron for a particular type of aircraft for a platform—whether it be males or females—everybody that was going to work on that particular type of aircraft, in this instance it was an F-14, they had to go through the FRAMP for their training, And I knew some 24
women who were attached to VF-101 [Fighter Squadron-101], which was the FRAMP for Oceana. They were actually getting to go to sea occasionally to work on qualifications. Because they had—the pilots came to the FRAMP to learn how to fly the F-14. And the maintenance people—when the pilots went to sea to fly it—they had to go with them. So even at that stage—which was the early eighties—I knew a couple of women who were attached to VF-101, who got to go out to sea for like four days at a time. But they got to go.
And they were the pioneers as far as going to sea for the airdale women. They got to go first. They knew their way around the block—we’ll say it like that. And the guys couldn’t really talk so much junk to them, because they were right out there humping it, dragging chains on the flight deck with the rest of them, you know.
It was pretty cool to get to see that part of it right away. And then I started working and everything, and I knew that I wanted to be in squadrons. I didn’t want to do any more shore duty. I mean, I wanted to do some of it—don’t get me wrong, but—[be]cause there was a lot to learn. And I became—I walked into that place as a—in my shop at that time I was the only female. And I worked with people who were permanently attached there, plus, when you were in an AIMD [Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Division] situation—the guys who were on sea duty—but their squadrons were not currently deployed—they would work from the air station. And the ones that would do the intermediate level maintenance at sea, they would come to us when they were on shore—at the shore station—and work with us. We were permanently attached to AIMD. They would come as the supplemental crew, because when their airplanes were at home they had—there was much higher demand, you know—maintenance demand—because everything that was happening with those airplanes, We had to take care of that as well. So they supplemented our work force with their people when they were at home.
TS: What does AIMD stand for?
PD: AIMD? It’s called—Aviation Intermediate Maintenance Department.
TS: I see, okay.
PD: And every major naval air station—if they’re a major air station—they will have that level of maintenance. It’s just a higher—to equate it—it goes in steps. Like if you’re in a squadron and working on the flight line, that’s called organizational maintenance, and when certain things beyond what you can fix right on the spot occur—if something big breaks—if it’s more than a repair or replacement thing—then it has to go to I level. Which you can rework components and you have testing capabilities, where you can rework a component—you test it to make sure it works like it’s supposed to on big pieces of equipment. You know, testing equipment. And then you send it back out into the supply, so the squadrons—if they need it—then they draw it from the supply system.
TS: I see. Okay. Well, so now how would you say—was there anything in particular during your time in the navy that was particularly hard, physically, for you? 25
PD: Well, I guess the hardest thing was when I reported to VP-16 [patrol squadron-16] in Jacksonville, Florida, after I went to Orlando to be a company commander. So when I got out of Orlando and went to my squadron in “Jacks”—VP aircraft are P3s [Lockheed P-3 Orion]. They are huge—huge airplane. So when I got there part of my job as an AMH [aviation structural mechanic-hydraulics] was we maintained all of the landing gear components—all of the flight controls. We—[maintained] everything that was attached to a landing gear: i.e., the brake systems, the tires you name it, all that huge stuff. And P-3 tires are quite huge. And the brake assemblies weighed close to a hundred pounds. And I probably weighed all of a hundred and twenty. But I was in really good shape because I had been a commander for—a company commander—for three years, running all those miles every day and all of that crap. But anyway [I was] still a little small woman.
So we’d get there, and I’m like “God almighty, this is tough.” So I noticed—I went in as a senior female by the way. I was an E-6. So I went in as a—basically they were grooming me to take over the airframe shop—based solely on my pay grade, you know. And I noticed that the other women who were there—they were all junior to me—they were all third classes. There were three of them as I recall—no, four. I take that back. There were four. Pretty big airframe shop. We had quite a few people attached there. I noticed that when they went out to change a tire—or do something heavy—that they’d come back in and tell one of the guys that they got it off the airplane, and you had to take a lot of gear out to change a tire out on a P-3: all of these big jacks and a nitrogen cart, and all this stuff. But all that stuff was on wheels. But that huge tire had to be gotten off the flight line. You had to take another one out there. And if you had to take a brake assembly off, that was a big deal.
So I noticed that they wouldn’t even attempt to do any of that. They’d come and get the guys, and say, “Hey, come on out here. You got to get this brake assembly,” or “That tire has got to be moved.” And sometimes they’d be talking to people that were senior to them. But, based on the fact that they were men—they were kind of working the system if you want to know the truth.
So I’m sitting back thinking, “What’s wrong with this picture? How are they ever going to learn how to do this if they don’t figure out a way to do it amongst themselves? What if the guys ain’t here that day?” You know what I mean? How are they going to proceed? How are they going to advance if they’re not doing their job, and they’re not learning all the parts of it, and they’re not performing it?
So I became the supervisor pretty straight away. I took over the shop. And when I had my first meeting, one of the things I said was—now me being a woman—and I probably weighed, like I said, probably a hundred and twenty—twenty-five pounds. I said, “You know there’s lots of things on that airplane that there’s no way that I can pick up”. And I said, “I tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to expect the guys that work in the shop to do my job for me.’ And all of the guys—their eyes lit up. They started grinning. They were all happy, [be]cause this was coming from a woman.
And those girls were looking at me like, “Oh, well, who does she think she is?”
But I believed in “fair is fair”. So I just told them. I said, “You are going to have to work as a team. If there’s two of you ladies out there, and you’ve got to pull that big old tire off that aircraft, you better learn how to ask for help or figure out how to do it where you don’t get hurt.” And I said, “If it’s something that you just flat can’t handle, then we’ll talk about getting somebody else out of the shop, because they got work to do 26
too. I’m going to have them working on other stuff. They can’t stop fixing their airplane to come fix yours.”
Well, that kind of went over like a lead balloon; except with the men, they loved it. They were all about it. And they’d never had to work for a woman before. In the beginning they were really uneasy about me, and that kind of bridged the gap. They saw where I was coming from. I think they understood at that moment that I had worked for my rank—that it wasn’t given to me. And that—they—that brought about a type of respect that I’m sure that they had never had for a woman in my position before. They never worked for a senior female.
So you talk about breaking ice? Oh Jesus, you know, I went in there straight from being a company commander. They were all like, “Oh my God”. They were sweating a load. They thought I was going to be some whip cracking something—out of the corner, you know, standing in inspection every fifteen minutes. Well, listen, when I got to that squadron all I wanted to do was do airplanes. I didn’t change. I had always cared about what I looked like. I’d always tried to present myself as a professional—didn’t change. I didn’t go in there and treat them like they were recruits. I treated them as who they were, and so it made things move right along—especially when I told the females, “Hey, we’re all team. We’re all going to work together. It’s not going to be the girls, they’re going to go over here, and the guys are going to go over here. Them [sic] days are done folks. It’s time to move on.”
You see, I was one of the first women in Orlando to push male recruits. I trained male recruits as well. So I had already been there. I had already had the guy who had been in the navy thirty minutes looking at me like, “Well, who the hell is she?” Well, before long they knew who I was. So I had already been there, you know? I was in the navy. I wasn’t in quote unquote, “this man’s navy” or something of that nature. It was my navy. And I made them realize that.
TS: Interesting way to put it. What about the women in that shop then?
PD: Oh, well we went through a few little trials and changes and tribulations for a while. But one of them—a young lady by the name of Marie. Marie was probably one of the most outspoken, that she wasn’t going to do this and she wasn’t going to do that, and I wasn’t going to cause her to get hurt. I said, “You’re right, I won’t cause you to get hurt. But you know sooner or later you’ll get it. You’ll get it.” And over time I really observed her. She fought me tooth and nail. But I knew she was good. I knew she was the pick of the litter for some reason. At that time, of the women that were currently attached to that shop, I knew she had something that a couple of the rest of them didn’t. And she had a lot more going on than a lot of my guys did at that time; not that they didn’t have it, but she put it out there in a challenging kind of way—that you realized that there was something there. So three years later she had—when I was leaving—it was time for me to go—she was in charge of the shop when I left that squadron. I hate to say it, but it was like looking in a mirror.
She was telling them, “Oh no, you will not come in here and get people to go dee-dee-te-dee! You will do it!”
See—and I don’t know—she just—I just knew she had it. I knew she had it.
[Continues in Part Two]