Oral history interview with Barbara A. Wujciak, 2011

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WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Barbara Wujciak
INTERVIEWER: Therese Strohmer
DATE: December 16, 2011
[Begin Interview]
TS: Today is December 16, 2011. This is Therese Strohmer. I’m at the home of Barbara Wujciak, and I’m in Durham to conduct an oral history interview for the Women Veterans Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Barbara would you state your name the way you’d like it to read on your collection?
BW: Barbara A. Wujciak.
TS: Well, Barbara, thank you for letting me come and talk to you today. How about if you start out by telling me where and when you were born?
BW: I was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on the twenty-first of September, 1961.
TS: What kind of town is Elizabeth, New Jersey?
BW: It’s just outside of New York City. In fact, Elizabeth is where Newark Airport is. It kind of bleeds into that. But family didn’t live there very long. We moved to North Carolina when I was four.
TS: Oh, is that right?
BW: I really don’t recall—
TS: Much about that?
BW: Right.
TS: So, where did you move into North Carolina?
BW: Into Charlotte.
TS: In Charlotte?2
BW: Yes.
TS: So how was growing—is that where you grew up then?
BW: Grew up there, and then eventually moved to Rocky Mount [North Carolina] when I was in between the seventh and eighth grade, so I consider Rocky Mount as my hometown.
TS: Okay. Well, let’s talk a little bit about you, what you remember about growing up. Well, first of all, do you have any siblings?
BW: Yes, I have two sisters. I have one full-blooded sister, Chris, who is two years younger, and then another sister, Susan. My folks got divorced, my mom remarried, and he had a daughter who was two years younger than Chris.
TS: Okay, so two younger sisters.
BW: Yes.
TS: What did your folks do when you were growing up?
BW: My father was a research chemist. Then his division got eliminated during the, kind of early seventies, so he bought a miniature golf course and ran putt-putt for quite some time. My mom has been a stay-at-home mom. My folks divorced, my mom remarried, and Hugh, who is my stepfather, got a job with Hardee Hamburgers in Rocky Mount and so he was an executive there.
TS: Is that Hardee’s?
BW: Yes, that’s Hardee’s.
TS: Oh okay, I didn’t know it was called Hardee Hamburgers.
BW: Well, that’s—yes, that’s the way we always referred to it; Hardee Hamburgers.
TS: Okay.
BW: My father sold his putt-putt and retired down to Myrtle Beach [South Carolina] until he passed away in ninety-three. Both my stepdad and my mom are still living.
TS: I see. So, did you get to play much putt-putt?
BW: All the time.
TS: Did you? Are you a golfer?3
BW: Yes.
TS: Are you? Did that putt-putt help shape your golfing skills?
BW: Of course, of course. No, my dad played golf, so I always—I enjoyed playing golf with him growing up.
TS: Well, tell me what it was like growing up in Rocky Mount then. Was that—that’s kind of a rural area?
BW: It’s a—it’s a small town, less than fifty thousand people. We rode our bikes all over the place. It was just a great town to grow up. You know, if you got in trouble your mom knew about it before you got home, that sort of thing. We lived close to the high school. During lunch we could go home, and every day mom would say “How many kids are coming over for lunch today?” Because we lived really, really close by and, you know, I’d have this gaggle of friends that’d come over and hang out for lunch.
TS: That’s pretty nice.
BW: Yes.
TS: That’s pretty nice. What kind of things did you do growing up? What kind of games did you play—things like that?
BW: Like with my sisters? Board games and stuff like that. I played softball in junior high and high school, and you know, rode bikes, threw Frisbees, you know, all that kind of stuff.
TS: Yes? Did you—did you enjoy school?
BW: Yes. Yes, I did. I had a great, great, great group of friends and I was a big nerd and still am. I mean, being an optometrist you have to be a nerd.
TS: Do you?
BW: Yes. It’s definitely required.
TS: Okay, all right.
BW: But I had—there were so many nerds in my class that we didn’t know that we were different. So we didn’t get bullied or picked on or anything like that because we were all just as goofy as the next one was.
TS: How many kids were in your class?
BW: We graduated 396, and—4
TS: That’s a lot of nerds.
BW: Well, I wouldn’t say the whole class but, you know, my gang of friends. My gang of friends was very special and still am.
TS: What was so special about them?
BW: It’s, you know, just a friendship that endures. In fact I had my thirtieth high school reunion a couple years ago and I brought my mom. We’d—all of us—that’s when I realized like “Wow, I had good friends in high school” but I didn’t realize how good they were. Like they were still—felt—I mean, I don’t see them very often but when we do it’s just a very heartwarming feeling.
TS: I bet they—were they wondering if you mom would bring them—was bringing any sandwiches for them? [laugh]
BW: No, no, they didn’t know—I didn’t tell anybody that she was coming.
TS: Oh really? Oh, that’s kind of neat. How’s your mom enjoy that?
BW: She—she—well, in preparation for this whole trip—my mom lives in Florida now and she had a broken foot at the time, so there was all this things you had to do to prepare for her to get here. And, she was like “I’m not going to miss it. I’m not going to miss it. I’m not going to miss it.” So, I think that provided a little motivation for her to go through physical therapy a little bit more effectively.
TS: Oh, that’s good.
BW: And then when she got here she just, I mean, we both just had a blast.
TS: Oh, that’s really neat. Well, now, what kind of subjects did you enjoy the most in school?
BW: More math and science; I remember having better math and science teachers. That’s what I was more interested in.
TS: Did you have an idea from an early age what—did you always want to be an optometrist, sort of thing?
BW: No, golly, growing up I always thought I’d be an architect, but somewhere the creativity just, just isn’t there or wasn’t there, and when I actually decided on a major when I was in college I just kind of looked and like “Well, who—what class do I have the best grades in?” and I had the best grades in math, so I ended up being a math major.
TS: I see. Did you have, were you encouraged in class? You know, because they talk about how young girls don’t have the opportunity or in classes are not encouraged to do math and science. Did you have a lot of good teachers who encouraged you to pursue that?5
BW: Yes, yes.
TS: Do you remember any particular that were memorable?
BW: I would think one of the more memorable teachers was my chemistry teacher. Her name was Reba Bone, and she just passed away last year. She was a great gal. My calculus teacher, Mr. Rublein, was pretty wonderful as well. He also taught physics.
TS: What was it about them that you enjoyed so much?
BW: Well, for me, I like gathering information and finding an answer, and with all the social sciences you can just kind of elaborate, and with math and physics you have to come—you have to find that one answer and that’s me.
TS: So, having that sort of focus and like a conclusion too, right, some closure to whatever you’re trying to discover was good, right. Well, that’s kind of neat. So, did you always want to go to college then?
BW: I think it was just sort of preprogrammed that I went to college. My mother only went to high school. My dad has his PhD, and it was always thought that we would go to some kind of college. But I never felt any pressure, it was just “Oh yeah,” that’s what you did next.
TS: So, how did you figure out what you wanted to do next; where you wanted to go to college?
BW: That’s a cute story. When I was a junior in high school my stepdad and my mom wanted to go to this boat show which was in Annapolis [Maryland], and so they piled us, all three of us girls, into the car and we drove up to Annapolis and spent the weekend up there. Well, you know, I wasn’t—we weren’t real interested in looking at boats and my stepdad was so he went to the boat show and we toured the [Naval] Academy. I remember driving away and Hugh says “Well Barb, you going to go there?” and I said “Yes I am.”
TS: Why was it that you felt like you wanted to go there, then?
BW: Well, one, 1976 was the first year they allowed women to go to the service academy, so this was all pretty new. If I was a junior in high school that was ’77 to ’78, so this was really, really, really new. And my mom wasn’t particularly a women’s libber or bra burner or anything like that, but she was always all of her children’s biggest fan. “You do whatever you want to do and I’m behind you no matter how kooky,” like going to the Naval Academy sounded in 1977.
At the time when I was really seriously looking at colleges, you know, I was pretty focused on the Academy. Because one, you got a good education. Number two, it was much more of a challenge mentally. And the other thing is you had a job afterwards; you didn’t have to do that. Plus, you know, I’m not your typical girl. I wasn’t into clothes 6
or fashion or anything like that, so they told you what to wear every day, you know, I didn’t have to make any decisions. That kind of stuff [laughs].
TS: [unclear] Did you consider any of the other services?
BW: You know, I didn’t. My cousin married a fellow that had gone to [The United States Military Academy at] West Point [New York], and when we were smaller, golly, I was in the seventh grade, our—one of our neighbors, one of the fellows got into West Point, but he—I don’t even think he lasted a year and I remember he came back and he gave me a cap; an army cap. And I thought, well he was just the coolest thing. He taught us how to water ski and stuff like that, so he was just a cool guy. But never really wanted to go to The Long Gray Line [refers to all graduates of West Point]. [both chuckle]
TS: Did you know any—I mean, was anybody in your family had any service experience?
BW: Not really. My stepdad was in World War II for two years but, you know, nothing—
TS: Well, that’s experience.
BW: —nothing spectacular.
BW: I mean, he played the drums for cadence for the training at Great Lakes Naval Base [sic, Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois]. It wasn’t, you know, no. And my father was an interwar guy and he was in college, so he didn’t go. My uncle was in World War II, but you know, ground, a tank guy, but again just two years and boom that’s—that’s it.
TS: No career people.
BW: No.
TS: But you had people that you knew that were in the service.
BW: Yes.
TS: So, when you talked to, like, your friends, and things like that and said “Hey I think I’m going to go to the Academy in Annapolis,” what did they think?
BW: They thought it was great, and I’ve got a wonderful story about that. I was—we were seniors in high school and I remember being in the calculus class, and it must have been during Christmas break and in—I was class of ’79 and so in the class of ’78 there were two guys that got into Annapolis and two guys that got into West Point from my high school. One of the guys from West Point had come back during Christmas break to just sort of see teachers. So, he was hanging out in our classroom and he was sort of boasting. He’s like, “Well, four guys from class of ’78 got into the service academies, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Basically like, “What you got?”7
And I remember one of my good friends Steve, he turns around and he goes “Yeah, but how many of them are girls?” and I just—that was just a tremendous amount of support that he probably didn’t even know that he gave me at that time.
TS: Wow, awesome, that’s a pretty good story. That’s good. So, did you have any negative reaction to it for, you know, people like in your close circle?
BW: No, I couldn’t say that I did, no.
TS: So, you finished high school, then.
BW: Right.
TS: How is that process of getting into the Academy? Why don’t we talk about that because I don’t think a lot of people are familiar with what you have to, kind of, go through to apply and—
BW: You have to be nominated by a congressman, or the Vice President or President in order to just have a chance. You have to submit letters of recommendation, your grades, your SAT’s, all the normal kind of application to college stuff; usually write a letter. Then each representative is allowed to select a certain number for—as—to give them a nomination. And then those nominees then get—they get into a pool at the Academy, and that’s who competes for an appointment, which is admission to the academies.
TS: So, do you remember which—was it a congressman that—
BW: Yes, it was our representative L.H. Fountain [Democratic United States Representative Lawrence H. Fountain] from the second congressional district in North Carolina.
TS: Did you just, like, write him and ask him, or—
BW: I applied. You can apply to your representative and to your two senators, which is what I did.
TS: Okay. So then, how was it when you found out that you got in?
BW: Well, I didn’t get in my first time.
TS: Oh, okay.
BW: So, I got a big rejection letter, because at the time and—one, it was so early on. I was in the fifth class of women. They didn’t know what to do with women, especially in the navy because women couldn’t go on combatant ships at the time, so your jobs afterwards were quite limited. So, they were only accepting a hundred women per class.
TS: Out of how many? Do you know?8
BW: Classes are between eleven and twelve hundred people.
TS: Oh, so like ten percent.
BW: Yes. Yes, and if you’re asking me how many women applied I don’t know that.
TS: No, no, I just meant like how many—how big was the class. So, it was like eleven hundred something, and only about ten percent were women that they—
BW: Right.
TS: Okay, I get that.
BW: Also in the navy, and also in the air force, there’s a vision requirement and I’ve worn glasses since I’ve been eleven years old. So, because I wore glasses I was put in a—had to go into a medical waiver pool. So, if you don’t have 20/20 vision, or if you’re colorblind, or something like that you don’t—yes, there’s certain physical standards they look for. If you’ve got flat feet; if you’ve got asthma; you know, you are just automatically rejected. I mean, you could be the smartest kid in the class, but if you’ve got one of these physical limitations you’re automatically rejected. I wasn’t automatically rejected. Like I said, I was put on a medical waiver.
TS: Okay.
BW: There are a certain number of waivers for a certain number of physical limitations that people have. And I didn’t get a waiver, so I went to [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill my freshman year and had a real freshman year at a civilian college and then reapplied again and got in.
TS: Oh, well, talk about that year at Chapel Hill. How was that?
BW: Oh, it was fine. It was fine. I was pretty focused on doing well.
TS: Did you know you were going to reapply to the Academy when you—
BW: Right, yes.
TS: That was, like, your goal?
BW: Yes, I knew the next day.
TS: [laughs] When you got the letter?
BW: When I got the letter. 9
TS: Is that right? So you were really focused on going.
BW: Yes.
TS: What drove you to want to do it?
BW: Well, one, they said I couldn’t.
TS: Okay, that’s a good motivation.
BW: And, you know, I thought I’d be good at it. So, that’s why I wanted to—
TS: How did you feel about being, like, at the beginning of this, too? Really, only, like you said, only a few classes had really graduated even.
BW: Right. How did I feel being at the beginning?
TS: Yes, was that inspirational for you? Did that—was that kind of neat or did that not even cross your mind?
BW: I don’t think it did. I don’t think it did. I don’t think—you know, now looking back I’m like “Wow, that was pretty something” but at the time it was just—
TS: An opportunity that you saw? And that’s what you saw it as. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. So, you went to Chapel Hill, and you probably took a few math classes or maybe didn’t have to. [laughs]
BW: No, I did. I did.
TS: Okay, so then you reapplied.
BW: Yes.
TS: And then what happened?
BW: Then I got in. Then I got in.
TS: When you got that letter how did that go?
BW: Actually, my sister got the letter because she was at home.
TS: Okay. She saw it?
BW: I was in Chapel Hill, and she got the letter, and she—I remember her reading it to me. Yes, that was a good day.10
TS: You were pretty excited?
BW: Yes.
TS: So, did—then did you start like with the new school year? You went through the whole freshman year at Chapel Hill and then—
BW: Yes.
TS: Okay, so tell me about getting ready to go to Annapolis. What kind of preparation did you have to have for that?
BW: Preparation?
TS: Like, did they say “Here is a checklist of things you need to bring.”
BW: You know, I don’t remember that, but they do do that now, and I’m what’s called a Blue and Gold Officer, so I am a—
TS: You mean right now you are?
BW: Right now I am.
TS: What is that?
BW: I am a liaison from the Naval Academy to high school kids, to fill them in on what you need to be able to do, what you can bring, what you can’t bring, blah, blah, blah. I help them through the application process. I think I’m a little bit more hands on than my Blue and Gold Officer was back then. He basically came in, in uniform, and gave me a diploma, or a certificate saying—and read it—and I remember having a party in our back yard with all my good pals; friends and neighbors, teachers, and stuff like that. But nowadays they inform you a little bit more about what’s going to happen and what you need. As far as preparation, you know, of course doing well in school is always a big thing, and being physically active because—
TS: Were you—were you physically active? I mean, were you into—you said softball, anything—did you play any other sports?
BW: Oh yes. I mean, I’ve always—I’ve run and played golf and stuff like that, so I’ve always been an athlete.
TS: Active.
BW: Yes.
TS: Okay. So, when you—so, then you’re going to the Naval Academy and this is 1980.11
BW: Yes, 1980.
TS: Okay. Why don’t you tell me about—do you remember anything about, say, the first day or week or anything like that? What was that like?
BW: Well, it was very different from what you’d ever expect. I mean, since I had no family experience of people being in the navy, or much less in the military, all this was very new. It was definitely a challenge, and I had two great roommates up there and everybody was just thrown together, and it became very obvious that if you worked together things were a whole lot easier. I think that was the biggest thing. One of the coolest stories—you have to go through six weeks of something called Plebe Summer, and that’s where they really rake you over the coals. It’s kind of like boot camp in the army.
TS: That’s before classes start?
BW: This is before classes start. Yes, this is the first week of July that you show up in hot, hazy, humid Annapolis and you sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat. I remember towards the end of that time there was a time when I was running down the hall and one of the upper classmen stopped me, and they could stop you at any time and ask you a gazillion questions, and for some reason I was just Johnny-on-the-spot that day, and knew answer after answer after answer. They were just, you know, relentless as far as quizzing me about something and then I remember my company commander kind of walking by and he basically said to his classmates “She’s mine. You can cool it,” and he gave me a wink and let me go. And that, again, was one of those subtle “I’ve got your back. I support you. You’re doing a good job,” without him ever having to say anything about that.
TS: Did that happen very often?
BW: I just remember that one [laughs].
TS: That’s a good validation.
BW: That was just a kind of a momentous thing because I know it was getting towards the end and I know these guys were really harassing me badly, and like I said, my company commander came by and said “No, this is—this is it. You’re done.”
TS: Yes, “You’re done.”
BW: “You’re done. You’re done. She’s mine. That’s it. Get out of here.”
TS: So—so there—I’m thinking, okay, so seventy-six was the first year. The seniors—there would have been some female seniors that year, too, right?
BW: Yes.12
TS: Did you have any interaction with them, or any of the other classes?
BW: During Plebe Summer, no. There was one woman, who incidentally I’m friends with now.
TS: Is that right?
BW: That I—She was not in my company because you really stayed pretty sequestered from everybody else in your company, but she—of course you had the ladies’ room, and you’d run into her in the ladies’ room and I just remember being just scared to death of her. And she didn’t say much, and she was quiet and those are always really the scarier ones; the ones who don’t yell and scream. That was the only one Plebe Summer that I remember, but after the academic year started of course there’s—you know, everybody’s all jumbled up together.
TS: Do you want to say who that was? The name of the person that you—
BW: Her name is M.C. Hennessey.
TS: M.C. Hennessey?
BW: Yes.
TS: Okay. So, she would have been in the first graduating class then.
BW: She would have been the second.
TS: Second.
BW: Yes, the class of ’80 graduated.
TS: Oh, I see, right because then you’re starting—I gotcha.
BW: So, then it was the second—the second class.
TS: Awesome. All right, so when you’re going through that Plebe Summer, and you’re thinking “What have I gotten myself into”—
BW: No, I just thought this was—this was an incredible opportunity, a terrific challenge—I loved being there.
TS: Was there anything that you just really enjoyed doing?
BW: Well, you had to play a sport—13
TS: Okay.
BW: —and I played softball. So, I loved going out, and that’s where I could—where everybody was like “Huh,” takes a big deep breather, you know, you weren’t getting yelled at, you weren’t getting raked over the coals, that kind of thing. You’d actually do what you really liked to do.
TS: Was that, like, intramural? You played between—
BW: Yes, right.
TS: Okay. Did you have a good team?
BW: No [both laugh], but I have very dear friends who are still very dear friends from that.
TS: Okay, so you make it through Plebe Summer, and then you go into your classwork, right?
BW: Yes.
TS: Oh, also, in the summer did you have to do anything on the ships or boats or anything like that?
BW: Oh yes, we learned to sail.
TS: How was that?
BW: Oh, it was great.
TS: You were on the Chesapeake [Bay]?
BW: Yes. I mean, come on, yes.
TS: Had you sailed before?
BW: No.
TS: Did you fall in love with it, or anything like that, or just like—
BW: I just—I like the water. I mean, I can look at the water and just relax. I think it’s very relaxing. Being out on the water and then learning about oceans and tides and currents and all that kind of stuff.
TS: Right. Did you learn to tie a few knots?
BW: [laughs] You know, I don’t really recall that.14
TS: Really?
BW: But, I mean, more about navigation and what all the little things are.
TS: Oh yes, you’re going to be the officer so you’re, right, you’re not—
BW: I’m not what they call the deckie. [slang for deckhand]
TS: That’s right. Okay, so that’s the ones who learn all that, because I hear about that in the navy. Okay, so alright, now you’re starting your first year of classes. How was that?
BW: It was just fine. It was just fine. I had—Since I’d been to a year of college I was advanced academically.
TS: You had to start at the beginning.
BW: I had to start all over at the beginning. But you—they’d place you into certain classes. So, I placed out of a math class, or a physics class, or something like that. I can’t remember all of that.
TS: How is it? I mean, so, I guess describe, like, a typical day.
BW: You have to get up for morning meal formation. Usually there’s a bunch of plebes, or freshman, who—there’s this thing called the chow call and it goes off ten minutes before the formation and five minutes before the formation. You announce the officer of the day, what you’re supposed to be wearing, what the meal is, what the time is, and take off.
TS: And where are you taking off to?
BW: Well, either back to your room if it’s the ten minute formation or if it’s the five minute formation you run the formation.
TS: How did you do on all the dress, and you know, making—did you have things like demerits or something like that?
BW: Yes, yes, I mean, there’s a demerit system. I only got two demerits—two times I got what’s called “fried,” or got demerits.
TS: What were they?
BW: One, my plebe year, my freshman year, I got demerits because I came back late from Thanksgiving, because there was a traffic accident on [Interstate] 95. So, that’s—yes, they give you demerits for that.
TS: You’ve got to get to the gate at a certain time?15
BW: Right, right, and different—different—you know, they make the freshman come back earlier than they do the seniors.
TS: Okay.
BW: That was just unfortunate. It was Thanksgiving Day traffic on 95.
TS: Did you have to get up, like, super early and do—did you do a lot of physical activity?
BW: Well, I mean, every—you have to take a P.E. [physical examination] every semester.
TS: Okay.
BW: Whether it be, you know, the women took gymnastics to hand-to-hand combat, to you know, basketball, to swimming, you know—every semester you had to pass a swimming part. You had to do an obstacle course. You had to do a mile run. Sit-ups and, not push-ups, but the women had to do what’s called a flexed arm hang—you just kind of had to hang there with your chin above a bar. The guys had to do chin-ups. And I think there was maybe a standing broad jump or something like that, for some reason.
TS: Well, some of the—you know, some of the criticism at that time you get from the outside is that women didn’t have to do the same sorts of things as men, and so—
BW: Oh no, no. We had to do exactly the same thing that the guys did. Now, they did give us—instead of going over an eight-foot wall during the obstacle course, I think we went over a seven foot wall. But, no we had to do—and the times were a little bit different—like we had to run in—or for to pass the guys had to run a six-thirty mile and the women had to run a seven-thirty mile.
TS: So, did you ever hear any of your, like, upperclassmen or guys in your class grousing about that at all?
BW: There was a certain sect of guys that didn’t want women there. I mean, this was just still very, very early in all of that. So, given an opportunity to cut a woman down for something they certainly would. But I had the attitude where—it’s not going to happen to me.
TS: Did it happen to some of your friends?
BW: They—You can kind of see the people who couldn’t handle it, and so they became a little bit more targeted as far as that goes.
TS: So, oh okay, so like they could seem vulnerable, and then—
BW: Right. 16
TS: All right, and then they would be more easily picked on or more readily picked on.
BW: Right, right, like I remember there was what they called a rumble, or a little fight, between two classes, like my class who were freshman and then the juniors, I believe, at the time. There, you know, our classmates went and picked on one of the upper classmen, which is a big taboo but, you know, if you have this stuff going on you got to follow it through. So, there was this whole thing, and some heads were dunked in toilets or something like that, and I remember like, this was going down and I ran straight into the fight, and I think got a reputation after that of “leave me alone,” so—
TS: So, you had to back up the other people that you were with?
BW: Right, right. And that I was willing to participate in this as well, so I became part of the—the game.
TS: Oh okay, so that—did that, do you think, help you fit in a little more tightly?
BW: Oh yes, yes. Also, the guys in my company were just super great. They were encouraging of women, rather than discouraging of women. And especially women that were there for the same reason that they were there, rather than some other women who were there for—
TS: What reasons were different?
BW: —the reasons were different, like, I can remember one of my roommates. She was—she was more flirtatious with the guys. I’m like “Come on, you’re not here to do that. You’re here to—”
TS: You’re not here to pick up someone.
BW: You’re here to learn how to be a naval officer.
TS: I see. So, was there some friction between the women because of that?
BW: You can—yes, I can see that.
TS: So, some—because sometimes people have said that not just in the Academy but just in the regular military where, you know, women who couldn’t prove themselves or tried to rely on guys to do things for them really got, [phone ringing] it looked bad for the rest of the—rest of the women. Okay, do you want me to pause? I’ll pause for a second.
[conversation regarding phone redacted]
TS: Okay, so that idea of, like, did you ever feel like you couldn’t make a mistake?17
BW: I still feel like that.
TS: Do you really? [both laugh]
BW: Yes.
TS: Is that just how you are wired?
BW: That’s how I’m—that’s how I’m wired.
TS: Yes, but I mean especially like being in the spotlight, being a very small percentage of women in this academy that’s really, you know, male dominated system. Did you feel like you had to prove yourself as a woman?
BW: I didn’t feel like that, but looking back on it I can see where that was, but at the time I didn’t feel like it. I just felt like I was going to do my best.
TS: Okay. And you felt like you could do it, right?
BW: Yes.
TS: Was there something that—As you’re going along and you said you weren’t quite sure what to expect because you didn’t know anybody that had been through, was there anything that really surprised you about the Academy? Either the culture, or just anything?
BW: Boy, I’m going to have to think about that question.
TS: Okay.
BW: I can answer that later, but I’m going to think about that.
TS: That’s okay. Okay, well was there something you really, really enjoyed, like, “Oh my gosh. I’m so glad I’m here, I’m doing this.”
BW: Just being there. Oh my gosh, I mean the—you know, talk about hallowed halls of people who had been there. [President James Earl, Jr.] Jimmy Carter was president, and he had gone to the Naval Academy, when I was there. He was president when I got in. You know, you name an admiral, I mean, and they were there. I mean, it’s just—it’s a historic place, and I cannot describe what it was like to be there because it was just over the top. It was absolutely over the top to be included into that.
TS: How is that passed on to you? You probably didn’t know about these admirals before you got there, right?18
BW: Right.
TS: So, how did they—how did you learn about this culture?
BW: Well, there’s a class, Naval History, and I remember the instructor was a [United States] Marine Corps captain, I believe, and he started off every class with a reading of a citation of the Congressional Medal of Honor. So, you learn about what folks had done ahead of you.
TS: He started every class with that?
BW: Yes.
TS: Did you have any female role models in the institution at all?
BW: [chuckles] That is so funny, because there were—there were none. There were just none. But, as far as at the Academy, I remember there was one Marine Corps officer who was there. Of course, she’s not an Academy grad because that was past her time, or after her time, but she was there. I didn’t have any interaction with her, but a couple of the gals I played softball with were in her company and apparently she did very, very good things.
TS: Like what? What kind of things?
BW: Just, kind of, stuck up for them. And nobody gave her shit. One, she’s a Marine Corps officer and she was—just had that persona as “tough as nails.” But, the legendary Admiral [Dr.] Grace Hopper came and lectured to us one time. I don’t know where it is but I have one of her picoseconds. [sic, nanoseconds; Admiral Hopper used 30 cm long wire at her conferences to show the distance light travels in a nanosecond]
TS: One of her what?
BW: Picoseconds.
TS: What’s that?
BW: It is the—it’s a piece of wire that she gave everybody, and it’s the amount that whatever an electron travels, in a picosecond.
TS: Oh, okay!
BW: And I don’t know if it’s the speed of light, or something like that, but it was about an eight or nine-inch long piece of wire.
TS: Explain why she’s so significant.19
BW: She was the person that—well, one, she is the person who coined the term a “bug” in your computer.
TS: Is she really? How about that!
BW: Yes, because there was literally a bug in her computer.
TS: Oh, okay.
BW: She was on the forefront of women in—
TS: Computer science?
BW: —computer science, but also in the navy. So—And I remember her lecturing to us at that time. I mean, she was old, old then, but it’s like “wow, wow” you know, to see—because we never saw women with lots of stripes, you know, lots of gold on. Here she—you know, here’s Admiral Hopper coming in and you’re like “Wow.” And she did it at a time way before us; before there was even just a hundred of us together in a class.
TS: Well, there were zero at the Academy.
BW: Right, right.
TS: Did you have—did you feel like you had the support of most of the, say, instructors?
BW: Yes, I really don’t remember, like, not having support or, you know, there being anything—are you talking about as a woman?
TS: Either academically, yes—well, in any way, I mean, just, you know, as you were going through did you—did you feel like you were supported along the way?
BW: I didn’t feel like I was not supported, you know, instructors were instructors, and class is just one of the things you had to do at the Naval Academy. You had to play a sport. You had to do all this leadership stuff. You had to interact with your company mates; that kind of thing. You know, class was just—oh yes, that’s what you did during the day.
TS: Well, talk about the leadership stuff. How was that? How did you feel about that? What kind of things did you do for that?
BW: Well, you know I was only there a year and a half, so like me as a leader—I wasn’t, but I saw people who were going to be good leaders and people who were going to be bad leaders and you could see that.
TS: You mean you recognized that.
BW: You could see that. You could see that early on.20
TS: Okay.
BW: And I’ve got a great story about this.
TS: Well, let’s hear it.
BW: Okay, so after my first year that’s when you’re no longer a plebe. You’re a sophomore and you’re called a “youngster” at the Academy and you’re part of the upper class, you’re part of the leadership. So, I go down, and every squad has an assigned table to sit at, and you eat family-style. The plebes serve the seniors first, then the juniors, then the sophomores, and then they get whatever food is left over, and I remember there was a fellow who was a year ahead of me. He—So, our first meal together he said “Miss Wujciak, would you mind, now that you’re a youngster I realize you are part of the upper class, but would you mind if I still called you Miss Wujciak as a professional—we want to continue—I want to maintain a professional relationship.” Now, he absolutely despised women there. Just had absolutely nothing to do with us.
TS: What was his role?
BW: He was just a guy in my squad. He didn’t have any sort of authority over me or anything like that.
TS: Oh okay. Okay, so he was just like a peer.
BW: A peer. Well, he was a class ahead of me, but at the time he was more of a peer.
TS: I see, okay.
BW: And it was really unusual for someone not to call you your first name if you were part of that upper class, and I sort of sat there for a moment and I was like “Well, that’s kind of strange,” and I said “Well, you can call me Miss Wujciak as long as you call me ma’am also.”
And his classmates sitting next to him said “Hey, do you know[?], wipe the egg off your face” and he pushed himself back from the table and he never spoke to me again.
TS: What did you think about that?
BW: I thought I scored [both laugh], and obviously his classmate did too.
TS: I guess so, I guess so. So, is that how you handled those kind of situations or did they come up very often?
BW: Oh yes. No, they didn’t come up often. I—again, because you say something like that nobody’s going to mess with you.21
TS: You get the reputation, sort of, that word travels; it’s a small community.
BW: Right, it’s a very small community. It’s worse than a junior high school girls’ bathroom.
TS: How is that? In what ways is it worse than that? That seems—what kind of things—
BW: Well, I mean you’re just sequestered there. You can’t go out. You—you are in the yard, which is what they call the campus of the Naval Academy. You are in the yard, and you know, that’s that.
TS: Did you get in trouble for anything? Did you ever have to do any extra duty or anything like that?
BW: The only time I got into trouble was because my roommates fought. We had—Our room overlooked this one parking lot, and during football season we had—there were skits that occurred in that parking lot for motivation for the football game. Like, “Beat Army,” all that kind of stuff.
TS: The football game.
BW: Yes, each week, you know, it doesn’t matter if you’re playing you know Duke [University] or Carolina [University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] or whatever there’s—there’s skits that go on.
TS: Okay.
BW: So, it was called “Eighth Wing Players” and we were in the eighth wing of the dormitory. After Eighth Wing Players was over one night we—okay, one of the things is you dump water out your window on the people if they do a bad job. So, we had our bucket of water sitting at our window, and it was still there, and Beth went and she just tossed the bucket of water out the window. There wasn’t anybody down there, but all of a sudden the Officer of the Watch, you know, sword, everything, you know he was all dressed—you know, if you’re an officer of the watch you’ve got to carry a sword for some reason, so he came busting into our room so we got demerits for horseplay.
TS: I see, and so what did you have to—did you have to do any kind of duty?
BW: I kind of remember having to march.
TS: Not in the rain, or do any push-ups, just—
BW: No, no nothing like that, it was like march with your rifle one Saturday evening for, I don’t know, for some period of time.
TS: So, you were pretty straight-laced going through?22
BW: Oh yes, yes.
TS: Because you don’t want to make a mistake.
BW: I don’t want to make a mistake, yes. Although I did drink a beer with somebody.
TS: Uh-oh, when did you do that?
BW: This kind of all ties into why—why I got kicked out.
TS: Okay.
BW: One, I was a freshman and our company commander, a very, very, very good-looking guy, said something about coming and drinking a beer with him one night. This is during the academic year, so it was past the Plebe Summer, it was later in the year.
TS: Describe the company commander as far as hierarchy goes.
BW: He’s the number one guy in our company, and the company was about a hundred people at the time including—
TS: Is he in the same class as you?
BW: No, he was a senior, I was a freshman. But like I said, very good-looking guy, company commander—I don’t think he was company commander that semester, I think it was the second semester, so he had been our company commander. He said something about coming down to his room and drinking a beer. I’m like “Okay, I’ll do it.” Again, part of the—well, if you don’t then what happens, and then, but what is going to happen, you know, there is this sexual tension, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah between not just me and everybody else but men and women, what’s going to happen. Anyway, he turned out to be the sweetest guy. We talked about our families. We drank a beer. You know, we just sat and we talked. He—they had desks at the Academy where one person sat on one side and one person sat on the other, you know, and kind of looked at each other.
TS: Okay.
BW: I remember him doing that.
TS: Were you not supposed to have any kind of contact?
BW: No, no the doors were supposed to stay open. If there was a male and female in the room the doors were supposed to stay open.
TS: I see, so very strict rules about that, okay. 23
BW: Right, right, and never mind the fraternization thing because he was upper class and I was a plebe.
TS: Right, that’s right.
BW: So anyway, I went and drank a beer with him, came back, no big deal. The next day there’s a shoebox on my desk. I guess there was one beer left over. There was etched in the—or written on the label, “Welcome to the club.” My company had a nickname of being “Club Thirty-Four” as opposed to “Company Thirty-four” because they had the reputation of being really slack. So, I was in the club, you know, even though I didn’t do anything with the guy except enjoy an evening talking and drinking a beer, and that was it. Anyway, my roommates were horrifically jealous. They were like “What are you going to do with that beer?” because you’re not supposed to have alcohol in the dorm either.
TS: Could he have alcohol?
BW: No.
TS: Okay.
BW: No, that was illegal too. I said, “Well, I’m going to drink a beer after dinner.” So, I put the beer in the window because it was chilly outside, so I closed the window to chill it.
TS: Is that not visible?
BW: No, because you lay it down.
TS: Oh, okay, okay.
BW: And there was a storm window and a screen.
TS: Okay, okay, I see. You got it laid in there. Okay, that’s clever.
BW: So after—afterwards I drank a beer and I remember I kept that beer for a long time because it said “welcome to the club.”
TS: Ah, okay, so how does this tie-in to what happened later?
BW: Well, I think my roommate—my one particular roommate was extremely jealous that I was—and I got along with the guys in the company like they were my brothers. She was of the more flirtatious kind. That didn’t sit well with her because I was getting the attention, although it was not sexual or anything like that, from the guys, or help from them, or studying with them, or something like that. She related to men differently.
TS: Oh, okay, well before we get to that let’s cover a few more things. 24
BW: Sure.
TS: Did you notice any kind—like, you talked about the sexual tension and, kind of, you’re talking about it right now, sometimes between the men and the women. How do you act? You all want to be officers and go this route.
BW: Right.
TS: Was there any tension that you saw, like sexual harassment, things like that going on? Actual harassment, or heard about it maybe from somebody that you knew?
BW: Good question. You know, I know there was some. Actually one of my good friends on the softball team was in a company and they absolutely despised women. I mean, just absolutely despised women. On your uniform you had your name that was your name tag, and when women left the Academy they would take their name tag and keep it on their company office—in their company office bulletin board, as the women that they had gotten kicked out; that had left because of them.
TS: Who would do that?
BW: The upper classmen.
TS: Okay, so who did—
BW: They were keeping a roster of the women that had left.
TS: Just for, like washing out, or—
BW: For anything.
TS: Okay, and so were you aware of this at the time?
BW: No. I knew Robin was from 18th Company, which had the reputation of being just the really hard-nosed bully kind of thing, where I was in “Club Thirty-Four” where we’re drinking beer with our upperclassmen.
TS: Who’s Robin?
BW: Robin is my friend on the softball team.
TS: I see.
BW: That was in 18th Company that had to endure—that had a much different experience than I did.25
TS: Okay. Did she make it through?
BW: No.
TS: She didn’t? What happened to her?
BW: Same thing that happened to me.
TS: Really?
BW: Yes.
TS: So, did you—when you said that about [phone ringing] —
[Conversation about phone redacted]
TS: When they’re playing—Was there anything about the sports that triggered any kind of animosity from the men at all?
BW: Well, they really liked me because I played varsity sports, and every company is in this competition called the Color Competition and you got points if you made the Dean’s List, points if you were on a varsity sport, points if you made an Excellent on your physical fitness kind of thing. So, I was scoring points for the company by being on the varsity team.
TS: I see, so that all supports the whole company, and then at the end of the year you get some sort of recognition for—okay.
BW: Right, right.
TS: So, you didn’t actually experience any tension yourself, but you knew that, like, your friend Robin had this going on.
BW: I don’t think hers was sexual in nature, it was just that they hated women.
TS: Who’s “they”?
BW: They; that whole company.
TS: Just that whole company?
BW: That whole company, yes.
TS: Do you think that—where did that come from? Where did that—26
BW: I have no idea.
TS: Have you thought about it at all?
BW: Yes. I really don’t know. Probably have to have a discussion with her about where it came from. I don’t if it was just tradition.
TS: But your—
BW: Was it the tradition in Club Thirty-Four to be a bunch of slackers? I don’t know!
TS: Well, were they really slackers, or do you mean it just wasn’t as intense as this other one?
BW: No, I don’t think they were really slackers.
TS: Right.
BW: I think—I think they just saw that “Wow, women are going be here. We got to do this.” I don’t even think it’s a male-female kind of thing. I think they perhaps had that reputation even before the women were there.
TS: That particular unit?
BW: Yes.
TS: Okay. All right.
BW: Oh, incidentally, that company commander that I drank a beer with? He was a member of Congress.
TS: Is?
BW: Yes.
TS: Still?
BW: Yes.
TS: Really? Do we get to say who that is?
BW: I don’t know if I should.
TS: All right. [both laugh] Okay.
BW: That was the other thing that—27
TS: You’ll have to—you can add it in in the transcript if you want later.
BW: That was also part of the whole Naval Academy thing, having the opportunity to see people advance to that level of, you know, even, government. The guy that I sort of put the egg on his face?
TS: Right.
BW: He’s the undersecretary of the navy now, so that’s—like I said, just to have those kind of opportunities, those doors open for you by going to the Naval Academy.
TS: It’s definitely a power place to go to excel.
BW: Yes.
TS: Okay. Was there—At that time that you were in, did you feel like you had male role models that were helping you along the way? We talked about you really didn’t have any female role models. Did you have any male role models?
BW: I wouldn’t say—
TS: Or mentors?
BW: Mentors? You know, you’re supposed to have an upper-class that you’re supposed to do that, but the guy I was assigned was pretty much a dirt bag and didn’t do a whole lot. Maybe that’s part of the slacker attitude of the Thirty-Fourth Company, but again you could see “Oh, I want to be a leader like that guy, because I certainly don’t want to be a leader like that guy.”
TS: Would you try to model yourself after that person that you admired, even maybe if they didn’t realize that you were doing it?
BW: Yes, yes, probably so, like, okay “I’m going to do that when I’m a senior” rather than something else.
TS: How was this one guy a dirt bag? What kind of things—
BW: He just didn’t pay a whole lot of attention, and didn’t spend a whole lot of time with—well, then again, I was really busy because I played varsity sports, so I was gone or at practice or in the weight room.
TS: Oh, you didn’t just do intramural, you played the varsity?
BW: Yes, yes.28
TS: So, you traveled.
BW: Yes.
TS: How was that?
BW: Oh, it was fun, of course.
TS: Well, that’s the short answer. What’s the longer answer? [laughs] Where did you go?
BW: One, it was time away from the Academy.
TS: Right.
BW: Time to spend with my friends, and you were all together with all the ladies. We got to travel and just have fun and just, kind of, decompress.
TS: Right.
BW: You know, you didn’t have—you weren’t on guard, you didn’t have to—well, yes we did have to stay in uniform because I remember we went somewhere for a ball game ,and they were coming back and we stopped at a restaurant. It was somebody’s birthday, like somebody in the restaurant; it wasn’t one of our parties or one of our team members’ birthdays. So anyway, they started singing “Happy Birthday” so we were all singing “Happy Birthday” and they were like “Oh, you must be the Glee Club from the Naval Academy,” and we were like “No, we’re the softball team.” [both laugh]
TS: That’s a good story. You must have sang very well. So, where did you get to go? How is that—like, did you—who did you play, I guess is what I’m saying? What—did you play other naval bases?
BW: Colleges. No, other colleges.
TS: Oh, you played other colleges?
BW: Yes.
TS: Oh, who did you play? Oh, kind of like “You beat army.”
BW: Exactly.
TS: Did you play army?
BW: We did not play army. We were not in—navy—all the service academies were independent at the time so they didn’t have a conference. Now they’re actually in the Patriots League or something like that conference so they have a set schedule. But I 29
remember playing Lehigh [University], and Lafayette [College], Delaware, University of Maryland-Baltimore, UMBC [University of Maryland, Baltimore County], University of District of Columbia; you know, smaller colleges in the area.
TS: So, that—how many—so, there wasn’t very many on the team probably? Out of—if you’re thinking about the hundred women—so it’s a small group. But there’s other varsity teams that they could be on that they could travel?
BW: Right.
TS: I’m just trying to think, as a percentage of women that are playing sports and doing varsity compared to the percentage of men that are playing, probably then, a higher percentage of women—
BW: Well, either that or women played multiple sports.
TS: Okay, oh probably because there’s less that could do it. Did you play multiple?
BW: Right. I did not.
TS: Okay, enough just to do the softball and study.
BW: Right, go with my strengths. Yes.
TS: Okay, all right. So, did you—that was an enjoyable experience to have that—
BW: Oh yes.
TS: —pressure relief as you talked about it.
BW: Oh yes, totally.
TS: Did you guys—were you like—did you make sure you didn’t drink or—
BW: No, we certainly did! [both chuckle]
TS: Wasn’t that against the rules?
BW: Yes, that’s against the rules.
TS: Okay. How did you get away with that? Isn’t there somebody like watching over you every second?
BW: There was a little bit of freedom.
TS: Yes?30
BW: There was a little bit of freedom.
TS: How did you find that freedom? Where was that crack? Where did it come from?
BW: You’re with a bunch of Naval Academy girls. They’re all smart and innovative and everything else, yes.
TS: Ah, I see, all right, okay. Well, let me ask you a couple of—before we get to what happened and why you had to leave, let’s talk a little bit about that era, okay, that you’re in. So, you’re looking at the Iran Hostage Crisis.
BW: Right.
TS: Did you have any sense of what was going on with that?
BW: Oh yes, because as a plebe you’re supposed to read the paper and you’re supposed to be conversant in three articles off the front page every day.
TS: Oh, okay.
BW: That was on the front page every day, and I remember there was—when you—I mean, because you had to wear the uniform all the time, and a lot of people on the inside of their covers had a sticker that said “Fuck Iran.” So yes, that was—
TS: Okay. Do you remember the sales of the AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control System, referring to the sale of Boeing E-3 Sentry planes in 1981] to Saudi Arabia at that time that was going on?
BW: Golly, I don’t recall that particular—
TS: That was something; should we sell them or not. Did you have—did you admire Jimmy Carter or any of the leaders at that time?
BW: Oh yes, yes.
TS: Yes, so did you feel—were you, like—a sense of patriotism by being—like, wearing a uniform and how did that feel?
BW: Well, it was just great. Patriotism, I think I feel it more now than I did then.
TS: Okay, in what way?
BW: Because now I see more of a big picture. Before, at the Academy, you’re just so jammed into the Academy and that’s it. You can’t really see beyond that. And I think the Academy actually now is doing a much better picture of allowing mids [midshipmen] to 31
see outside of the Academy, and certainly my position now is I definitely see the big picture of stuff.
TS: Were you still in when [President] Ronald Reagan was shot, after he became president?
BW: Yes, I remember that day.
TS: Tell me about that day.
BW: We were—my softball coach was, like, in the forefront of cross-training.
TS: What’s that?
BW: You know, you do something else in order to make your sport better. You know, like if you’re a runner then you swim more.
TS: Oh okay.
BW: That kind of thing. It’s a methodology of coach—of training. She had the bright idea that we should be playing basketball that day, so you get a bunch of cloddy, softball players playing basketball. It was—it’s not as fluid as—
TS: Not a pretty sight?
BW: It wasn’t a pretty sight, and I remember one of my teammates coming in saying, “Reagan got shot.”
We’re like, “Oh man, who would want to shoot a dog?” because our coach’s dog’s name was Reagan [chuckles], and we’re like “Oh man, I can’t believe they did that.”
TS: Did you have a male or a female coach?
BW: We had a female coach.
TS: Okay; named her dog Reagan because she admired Reagan?
BW: You know, I don’t know. I need to ask her that.
TS: I think that would be a good question to ask her. Well, tell me a little bit more, to give a sense to somebody who’s listening to this transcript or reading this transcript, of, like, that down time. I mean, you talk a little bit with—on your softball team, but outside of being able to leave the Academy and Annapolis did you have a lot of down time or was it just intense?32
BW: It was intense, like pretty much—pretty much all the time when I was there. So, getting out, you know, traveling with the softball team or going to practice or something like that was—that was the time to decompress.
TS: What’d you do on weekends? I mean, when you weren’t playing sports.
BW: Well, studying for one.
TS: Yes.
BW: Going out to town. You know, college student stuff; drinking beer and eating pizza, you know.
TS: Okay, and did you have—did you get breaks for the holidays like a regular college or did you—
BW: Yes, we did. I remember having Thanksgiving and Christmas, and in Easter or spring break that’s when we were in season so we traveled.
TS: Oh, okay, you mean for—
BW: For tournaments.
TS: The sports. So, not a lot of down time?
BW: Not a lot of down time, no.
TS: Did you—were you exhausted? Did you feel like, you know—
BW: No, I was nineteen. [both chuckle]
TS: Okay, different sense of exhaustion at that time, it’s true you can go and go and go.
BW: Right, and also during the summers at the Academy you are required to do what they call “cruises,” and so unfortunately at the time women weren’t allowed on some ships so the guys got to go on submarines and aircraft carriers and all that kind of stuff. We were sort of relegated to these little boats called “Yard Patrol Crafts.” I mean, yes, they were eighty-five-foot boats but they were like a navy ship but just compacted down into eighty-five feet. We went from Annapolis all the way up to Boston and then back down to Annapolis because our boat got hit by lightning so we off-loaded everything—unloaded everything, and then loaded everything back on another ship, or another boat, and we went down to Norfolk and had weapons training. Then went back up to Annapolis, and that was, like, a three or four-week excursion.
TS: Oh, for three or four weeks, okay.33
BW: You had, maybe, a month off during the summer.
TS: Did you do weapons training—is that for the ship or is that individual?
BW: You had your individual handgun sort of thing at the Academy, you know, got the little ribbons and stuff. But no, when we went down to Norfolk, no that was big guns training.
TS: Big guns, okay, that was what I was wondering about.
BW: It was like the ship that shoots planes.
TS: How was that? What kind of experience was that?
BW: That was pretty tremendous, you know, learning how to aim and fire and then, you know, seeing bullets that are—well, I call them bullets, I suppose they’re called shells, that are two to three feet long.
TS: Yes, that might not be a bullet. [chuckles] Even I might recognize that, in the air force. Okay, so did you enjoy that experience?
BW: Yes. It was fun. Yes, I’m thinking “Who else in my high school class can do this?”
TS: What other things did the people in your high school class—did anybody go into the military that you knew?
BW: Not the gang that I hung out with.
TS: Any—So, no females? You were the only female that—in your group that went into the military at that time?
BW: Male or female.
TS: Male or female?
BW: Yes, of my kind of brainiac group, yes.
TS: Okay. Okay, well tell me then what happened and why you left.
BW: Why I left. Well, it was during the summer after my freshman year. I started a lesbian relationship with one of the seniors on my softball team. She had just graduated, so the softball team kind of hung out altogether supporting her during graduation. Her folks came up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We started this relationship at that point in time. Since she was graduating she was going to go to Newport, Rhode Island for her first duty station.
TS: Okay.34
BW: And, so we were apart, and this was back in the day before email and text messaging and unfortunately cell phones, so we wrote letters to one another. Then when I got back to Annapolis, what happened was my roommates went into my locker and took a letter and read it and turned it in. There was an investigation and I was put on trial, and found guilty of being a lesbian.
TS: Okay, so that’s the short story.
BW: Yes.
TS: What’s the long story, about like?
BW: What’s the long story?
TS: Well, the story about when your roommates—why did they go into your locker?
BW: You know, I don’t know.
TS: Isn’t that a violation of some code?
BW: Yes, yes, you know, I don’t know to this day and it’s thirty years later. I mean, it’s exactly thirty years later.
TS: Is it really?
BW: I really don’t know why they went—and the only thing that I can think of, and I’ve talked to another woman that was in my company and she’s now a child psychiatrist and so she has this insight into all of what happened back then. She thinks it was just girl jealousy. That I was successful, not only academically and athletically but with the guys, and I don’t recall her being not successful though. I remember her getting good grades. I think she rowed crew, but maybe not varsity. My other roommate, she was bright and she played basketball. It was just—she was just jealous. She was one of those mean girls they have.
TS: Was there any, you know, that discourse that’s going through that rumor mill about lesbianism in the Academy?
BW: There had been a—there had been an investigation or something like that before we got there, but I wasn’t part of that and you just kind of heard crazy rumors. Like I said, the rumors fly and you just never know what to believe. But as far as, like, me, we weren’t connected with anything like that.
TS: Well, when you went in, when you signed your papers, I mean it wasn’t “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. [refers to Defense Directive 1304.26 issued in December, 1993 mandating 35
the discharge of openly gay, lesbian or bisexual service members while also prohibiting military applicants from being asked about their sexual orientation]
BW: Right. This is before that.
TS: Did you get any kind of lecture about “Here’s some things you can’t do.”?
BW: I don’t recall anything. I didn’t think I was a lesbian. I didn’t—I mean, that was also my first relationship.
TS: Your first relationship was with this woman on the softball team?
BW: Right, right.
TS: So, were you nervous about that at the time? Did you have any fear of people finding out?
BW: You know, it was weird. I didn’t think I was a lesbian. I just was really attracted to this woman.
TS: So, there wasn’t this category. It was just, like, this relationship you’re having with a person who happened to be a woman.
BW: Right, right, but then as we kind of got into it, it was like “Oh, this is”—I remember she bought a book and it had the word homosexual in the title and that freaked me out.
TS: Why?
BW: Because, I wasn’t going to be considered a homosexual. So that—that was really scary, and actually I broke off the relationship because, like, “I can’t handle this. I can’t do this.”
TS: How old were you then, Barb?
BW: Nineteen.
TS: Nineteen?
BW: Yes, nineteen, twenty; somewhere around there.
TS: Twenty, okay—so you—tell me—walk me through the steps of when you come back and you find out that you’ve got these charges or whatever against you.
BW: Okay, I had spent this—my girlfriend at the time had come down from Newport and we’d spent the weekend together and I had broken up with her and it was a gut-wrenching, heart-wrenching weekend. It was just awful, awful, awful—36
TS: Oh my gosh, okay.
BW: —because I had done this, “Oh, I can’t do this—oh but I really like you—oh I can’t do this but I really like you,” that kind of thing. I was having a very difficult time with it, to say the least. That weekend was when I said, “I just can’t do this. I cannot do this”—you know, lots of tears and everything else.
Anyway, I came back to the Academy and I just remember going [makes an exhaling sound] “Boy, okay I’m done with that.” I got up to my room and my room was just—it was just a mess, like, after the weekend, because I had gotten back—like, I was gone—I had—you know, we had stayed in a hotel out of town and done whatever, whatever. And I got back and, like, my room was just a real mess, so I was like, “This is really unusual.” And I remember they were standing on the other side of the desk—
TS: Who; your roommates?
BW: —and they said—my roommates, yes—and they were being very stern about it. They were like, “We know what’s going on with you and this other woman. We want your resignation.”
And I was like “It’s over; I’m not like that.”
She said “Well, I know what you did in Chapel Hill.”
I’m like, “What did I do in Chapel Hill?” because I dated guys when I was in Chapel Hill. I’m like “Um, you got the wrong story there. This is not what it is.”
She said—she was like “No,” or they said, “We want your resignation or we’re going to turn this in and take it up the chain of command.”
I was like “Go ahead.”
But apparently they did because a couple of days later I was at an inspection in the main area, because you had to send a representative every night to have fire watch. I remember this guy, he was inspecting my uniform, and he was like “Wujciak, I need to see you in my office afterwards.”
So, I’m standing there in the office and the only book on the shelf was Court-Martial Procedures. That’s when I started getting super-duper nervous. I went back to our company area; our company all lived in—on the same floor. There was our company commander, the officer that was there, and usually the officers disappear at night and that’s where the brigade of midshipmen just sort of run what’s going on. He was there, there was all these other guys with lots of stripes on, and they said “We want your permission to search your room.”
Also, there was a female Marine Corps captain there, and I remember she looked scared shitless. Her eyes were just, you know, as big as donuts. That’s—She was there to protect my feminine virtues, or something like that, but I said—I looked over at my company commander and I said “Do I have to sign this?”
He said “No, you don’t have to sign it.”
I’m like “Okay,” because I knew I had an iron in my locker and you’re not supposed to have an iron to iron your uniforms because you’re supposed to get them dry-cleaned. But me being anal-retentive and everything, if I wanted to—like, that last-minute iron to have everything look nice, so I know I don’t want them to find the iron.37
TS: You’re worried about an iron?
BW: I was worried about the iron [laughs]. Yes, I’m like “No, if I don’t have to give permission then I won’t give permission.” Anyway, the next piece of paper was an authorization to search my room from the commandant of midshipmen. And I’m like “Well, screw you! If you had the authorization why did you ask my permission in the first place?”
Anyway, they came in and they tossed my room. I mean, it looked like some bad movie scene afterwards. They looked through everything; everything. They looked through tampon boxes and underwear and in shoes, and through inseams and—
TS: Did they find your iron?
BW: You know, I kind of remember them finding the iron but it was like “Oh, what’s this?” and you know, them just kind of tossing it—
TS: It wasn’t the object of their search.
BW: —and there was a little place in the desk where you could hide a fifth of liquor, which I didn’t have a fifth of liquor but it was the perfect size where you could slide one in and not see; they looked there.
TS: They knew all the places to look.
BW: They were all Academy grads, too, so they knew.
TS: Okay.
BW: And the only thing—
TS: Are you standing by why they are doing all this?
BW: I’m standing at attention the whole time.
TS: What are you thinking?
BW: I’m just thinking I felt like I was being raped.
TS: Really?
BW: Yes, because they had—somebody’s looking through your tampon boxes; my God, you know, looking through your laundry—
TS: Very violated, you were feeling.38
BW: Exactly, exactly.
TS: So, was your mind racing about what—I mean, were you allowed—
BW: What was happening, what was happening, what was happening; I had no idea.
TS: Okay, and you didn’t have anybody to talk to? I mean, they didn’t have any legal representation for you or anything like that?
BW: No. No.
TS: Just this scared—was this Marine captain still hanging out?
BW: Yes. Yes.
TS: Was she still looking scared?
BW: Yes.
TS: Why do you think she had that look in her eyes?
BW: I have no idea. Well, one, she’s—she was very junior to everybody else there.
TS: Okay.
BW: I don’t know.
TS: Okay.
BW: She also had a bad perm. I remember that too.
TS: Do you? [both laugh]
BW: Yes.
TS: Okay, fleeting thoughts that you have as your life is flashing before you.
[speaking simultaneously]
BW: Yes, I know, it’s like [makes a popping noise]
TS: Okay, so—oh go ahead. So, then what happened?
BW: Yes.39
TS: So they are rifling through everything that you have and everything; every piece of furniture and—
BW: Yes, and the only thing they took was a photograph. They went through my photo albums, like, page by page by page, and it was a picture of my girlfriend at the time at her graduation and there was—everybody else was in the picture; everybody else, like from our softball team. There was four or five gals in the picture, but I don’t even think I was standing next to her in the picture, but they took the picture out of my photo album. There were other pictures of her in my photo album but they never took those. I don’t think they knew what she looked like.
TS: Oh, okay.
BW: They knew her rank, but they didn’t know what she looked like, so they saw that one and they—and they took it.
TS: I see, okay.
BW: And if I can find my photo album, I’ve kept the whole—I—
TS: Is that right?
BW: Yes.
TS: We’ll have to look at that.
BW: If I can find my photo album. I think it might be in storage somewhere.
TS: Okay.
BW: But that was just interesting. It was like, “Why did you take—
TS: That one.
BW: —that one?” Yes.
TS: Right. It’s not like there’s anything incriminating. It’s like, by association; you’re on a softball team with someone.
BW: Right, right. Well, in parallel with that, I was talking about my friend Robin, and something similar happened to her. Her roommates turned her in because she was seeing this other woman and they did the same thing. They searched her room and they took pictures, and they took this picture of this woman sitting on Robin’s lap. Well, that woman was her mother. So, I mean, just how ridiculous that was.40
TS: Wow, okay. So, now they have your picture, and they have this letter apparently.
BW: I didn’t know they had the letter.
TS: Oh, but you knew that the—did you know your roommates had found that?
BW: No.
TS: You weren’t sure why they were saying that.
BW: I didn’t know why they were saying that.
TS: I see, okay.
BW: That was because I [unclear] crap, and sentimental, and so I had this box of letters in my locker. Who’d a think that they’d have gone through my locker?
TS: Right.
BW: But there’s—there was this kind of underground lesbian group at the Academy that I was not part of because I didn’t think I was a lesbian, but I got a visit from this one gal one night. She said “Barb, do you have anything; any letters, blah,blah,blah?
And I said—
TS: This is while this was going on?
BW: This was just afterwards, because of course shit hit the fan after that and everybody kind of knew.
TS: Okay, and everybody knew. Okay.
BW: Well, everybody sort of kind of knew, but the lesbians found out.
TS: Of course they did.
BW: Yes
TS: Okay.
BW: And so, anyway she came to my room and she said “Do you have any letters?” She goes “You’ve got to get rid of everything. You have to get rid of everything and now.”
I’m like, “Okay.” So, I went to one of my friends on the softball team and I said “Here’s this box of letters.” I said, “They need to disappear, and I don’t want to know what happens to them.”
TS: Okay. They disappeared?41
BW: They disappeared.
TS: Except for this one that’s out there that you didn’t know about.
BW: That they took before—before I knew it was actually missing.
TS: I see, okay. So, then what—so now you’re like probably scared to death.
BW: Yes.
TS: Did you call your parents or tell them what was going on?
BW: Not at that time. I didn’t—hell, I didn’t know what was going on.
TS: Did you talk to anybody?
BW: I did. There was—there was another woman on my softball team who—she was like the mother hen.
TS: Okay.
BW: And so, I went and I talked to her about that. And then there was another woman on my floor who turned out to be in the lesbian group, and she gave me, like, a safe place to stay because one day I came home from class and, I mean, everybody had a rifle that you had to march with during parades. Anyway, one day I came home from class and the bayonet on my rifle had been taken off my rifle and the sheath had been taken off and it was on my pillow. And, yes, so I had to sleep with one eye open until I changed rooms.
TS: Kind of a threat?
BW: No shit Sherlock, yes! I can remember confronting them about that and they were like “Oh, we were just goofing around.”
TS: Your roommates?
BW: Yes.
TS: So, they admitted to doing that?
BW: Yes. But they were like “Oh, we were just goofing around.”
TS: And you didn’t tell—
BW: I’m like “Oh yes, how did the bayonet, like, get unclicked from my rifle and then get unclicked out of the sheath and placed very, you know, centered on my pillow like that?” 42
TS: Wow.
BW: Yes.
TS: How long did you stay in that room with them?
BW: Not long [chuckles].
TS: Okay, so when you say “a safe place to go” what—how do you do that on the Academy? Where do you—
BW: Well, you trade with another roommate—
TS: Oh, okay.
BW: —or with somebody else in your company, so I ended up—that was one of the saddest days. I mean, besides leaving the Academy, that was one of the saddest days; was leaving my company area because I loved those guys so much, and I think they had an appreciation for me too. So, I had to move out of my company area.
TS: When?
BW: Soon—soon thereafter.
TS: But why?
BW: Because of the—
TS: The threat?
BW: [laughing] Because somebody left a freaking unsheathed bayonet on my bed!
TS: Okay, okay, so who did you tell? I mean, did you tell—
BW: It was just the right thing to do.
TS: I see.
BW: I don’t know if the company officer made that sort of decision. I can’t—it’s all very, very foggy.
TS: A little blurry, right.
BW: I remember trading with this other gal, so—End of Part One.
Interview continues in Part Two.