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[Butler sisters at ship christening, 1943]

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[Butler sisters at ship christening, 1943]

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Title	[Butler sisters at ship christening, 1943]
Date	1943-11-30
Subject headings	World War, 1939-1945 United States. Navy--Women
Era	World War II era (1940-1946)
Service branch	Navy--WAVES
Item description	Frances Butler's sisters, Julia Butler and Josephine Butler, pose at the christening of the Liberty ship SSEdwin L. Godkin on 30 November 1943. The Butler sisters worked at the Savannah Ship Building Company prior to joining the WAVES, and Josephine holds the bottle that will christen the ship. Both women wear the WAVES overcoat and officer's cap with blue cover.
Veteran's name	Butler, Frances
Veteran's biography	Sister Frances Butler (1924-2013) of Savannah, Georgia, served in the U.S. Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during World War II, and later joined the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Sister Frances Butler was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1924. She was the fourth of her sisters to attended Woman’s College (WC) in Greensboro, North Carolina, which she did for two years before becoming the third of her sisters to join in the U.S. Navy WAVES [Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service] in the summer of 1944. Butler was sworn into the service in Nashville, Tennessee, and sent to Hunter College in New York for boot camp. She worked in communications while stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, and then the following summer was sent to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii . After leaving the WAVES, Butler returned to Woman’s College in fall 1946, double majoring in French and Spanish, and completing her degree in 1948. She received a French government assistantship and taught at a boys’ school in France for a year. Butler returned to the U.S. and attended Columbia University in New York, but returned to WC in 1951 to serve as a counselor at the request of Dean Katherine Taylor. Three years later she enrolled in a counseling program at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. While there, she met the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who ran nearby Trinity Washington University . In the mid-1950s, Butler joined the Sisters of Notre Dame in Belgium. She then returned to the U.S. and taught French at Trinity, then was sent to Rome for five years in the 1960s. Following a year-long pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Butler returned to Washington, D.C., to establish and direct the sisters' Education for Parish Services [EPS] Faith Vacations program.
Type	image
Original format	photographs
Original publisher	[Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified]
Contributing institution	Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries
Source collection	WV0281 Frances Butler Papers
Rights statement	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Additional rights information	IN COPYRIGHT. This item is subject to copyright. Contact the rights holder noted above for permission to reuse.
Object ID	WV0281.6.002
Digital publisher	The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University Libraries, PO Box 26170, Greensboro NC 27402-6170, 336.334.5304 -- http://library.uncg.edu/
OCLC number	900812588

[Butler sisters at ship christening, 1943]

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