Gladys L. Dimmick Collection

Details

Who's responsible?: Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries (Repository)
How much has been digitized?: Only a part of this collection has been digitized.
What's in the full collection?: 18 March 1999 oral history transcript; Gladys Dimmick's WAVES Navy uniform jacket with 1st Class Petty Officer - Control Tower Operator insignia patch on jacket; WAVES Navy uniform Skirt; white gloves; 3 Navy WAVES hats; brass buttons and National Defense Service Medal; World War II Victory Medal; American Theater Campaign Medal; black WAVES leather pocketbook (shoulder bag); 6 photographs of Gladys in WAVES uniform 1943-1946; 1997 photograph of Gladys posing in front of a PBY plane with Pilot.
Full biography: Gladys Lunsford Dimmick (1923-2011) of Cedar Grove, North Carolina, worked in air traffic control with the United States Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) from December 1943 until February 1947. She was also a longtime employee of the University of North Carolina School of Law. Gladys Lunsford Dimmick was born in Cedar Grove, North Carolina, on 8 November 1923. After graduating in 1939 from Bragtown High School in Durham, North Carolina, she spent several years working at a nearby Liggett-Myers Tobacco Company factory. In December 1943, Dimmick joined the WAVES and attended boot camp at Hunter College in New York. In February 1944, she was assigned to air traffic control at the Naval Air Station in Norfolk, Virginia. She married Jim Dimmick in December 1946 and left the WAVES in February 1947. The Dimmicks moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, where they both attended the University of Florida under the GI Bill. In 1954, they settled in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with their daughter Teresa. There, Dimmick worked as a secretary for several deans of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Law School and later as director of placement and alumni affairs. She later worked as an assistant to Judge J. Dickson Phillips of the United States 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Dimmick passed away in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on 5 May, 2011.
Topics: Women's History
Military
Branch of service: Navy -- WAVES
Conflict: World War II era (1940-1946)
Subject headings: World War, 1939-1945
United States. Navy--Women
Contributing Institution: Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries

: Gladys Dimmick and sailor by USS Franklin D. Roosevelt; Gladys Lunsford Dimmick, in gray and white seersucker uniform, poses with an unidentified sailor by USS Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945.

: Gladys Dimmick at Norfolk Naval Air Station; Gladys Lunsford Dimmick poses on the tarmack at the Naval Air Station at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1944. Dimmick wears the WAVES winter dress blues and hat as she stands in front of a hangar.

: Gladys Dimmick at Women's Memorial dedication; Gladys L. Dimmick at the Women In Military Service For America Memorial Dedication in Washington, D.C., October 18, 1997.

: Gladys Dimmick in uniform; Gladys Dimmick poses outside her home in Cedar Grove, NC, wearing her dress blue uniform and garrison cap, shortly after enlisting in the WAVES in December 1943.

: Gladys Dimmick with Bob Hope; Gladys Dimmick and Anna Tabbert pose with Bob Hope on an airport tarmack on June 29, 1946. The women wear the WAVES gray and white seersucker dress. An airplane with an American flag on the side can be seen in the background and a young girl enters the frame on the left.

: Oral history interview with Gladys Lunsford Dimmick; Documents Gladys Lunsford Dimmick's time as a control tower operator in the U.S. Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) during World War II, as a student at the University of Florida, and as and employee of The University of North Carolina (UNC) and Judge J. Dickson Phillips. Dimmick mainly discusses her time in the WAVES and the jobs she held after WWII. She details her family's reaction to the attack on Pearl Harbor, her reasons for joining the WAVES, boot camp at Hunter College, her control tower duties, President Franklin Roosevelt's death, her opinions about women in combat positions, and social life at the Naval Air Station in Norfolk. " Dimmick also describes her long-distance relationship with James Dimmick, stationed with the army in Western Europe, and their subsequent marriage. Post-war topics include her education and employment at the University of Florida and her work as a secretary for the UNC School of Law and Judge J. Dickson Phillips.