Home

Women Veterans Historical Project

[Ruth Kent Petker holding hands with serviceman, 1943 ]

Reference URL

Save to favorites

To link to this object, paste this link in email, IM or document
To embed this object, paste this HTML in website

[Ruth Kent Petker holding hands with serviceman, 1943 ]

View Description

Download

small (250x250 max)

medium (500x500 max)

Large

Extra Large

Full Size

Full Resolution

Loading content ...

you wish to report:

Your comment:

Your Name:

...

Title	[Ruth Kent Petker holding hands with serviceman, 1943 ]
Date	1943
Subject headings	World War, 1939-1945 United States. Navy--Women
Era	World War II era (1940-1946)
Service branch	Navy--WAVES
Item description	Ruth Kent Petker, in the WAVES service dress blue uniform and service hat, holds hands with an unidentified soldier in downtown Norman, Oklahoma, where she attended mechanics training in 1943.
Veteran's name	Petker, Ruth Kent
Veteran's biography	Ruth K. Petker (1923-2005) of Greensboro, North Carolina, served as an aviation and machinist mate in the U.S. Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services) from February 1943 to November 1945 . Ruth Kent Petker grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, and graduated from Greensboro Senior High School in 1941. She worked for a year or two at F.W. Woolworth’s and then at a Burlington Industries hosiery plant." In February 1943, Petker joined the WAVES, and in March she was sent to basic training at Hunter College in the Bronx, New York. She also completed six months of airplane mechanics training in Norman, Oklahoma. Petker’s first duty station was Opa-locka Air Base in Miami, Florida, but she was not needed there, so she went to Jacksonville [Florida] Naval Air Station instead, in November 1943. There she worked in the assembly and repair shop, taking engines apart, before her transfer to a fighter squadron, where she taught instrument training. She left the WAVES in November 1945 as an aviation and machinist mate, third class . Petker attended the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina (now University of North Carolina at Greensboro) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the GI Bill and studied art. She worked at a department store, Morris and Neese, in the drapery department, and later went to New York City to work as a technical illustrator for an engineering company. She met her husband, also a navy veteran, in New York. Ruth Petker died in March 2005.
Place	Norman (Okla.)
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	WV0125 Ruth Kent Petker 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	WV0125.6.001
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	900811109

[Ruth Kent Petker holding hands with serviceman, 1943 ]

Page/Item Description