Miss Mac

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With proper ceremony the Navy was winding up a supply training program at Wellesley. Among the college officials on the platform sat high-ranking Navy officers. Although Wellesley's faculty had never really cottoned to the presence of 200 sailors on the campus, one speaker after another politely sang the Navy's praises. Then Captain Mildred McAfee of the WAVES, who is also Wellesley's part-time president, got up. "The Navy reminds me of having a trained nurse in your home," she said. "You are glad to see her come--" She paused, briskly continued: "Now let us go on with the report on endowment."

"Miss Mac," as her colleagues call her, has a gift for getting down to earth. She was getting ready last week to shove off on another one of her frequent speaking and inspection trips to Navy bases. This one would take her to the Ninth Naval District, in the Midwest. Navymen, who like people who get down to earth, looked forward to her coming. As far as her own outfit was concerned, Miss Mac expected to find very little out of the way. There had never been any serious troubles among the women of the U.S. Naval Reserves. Now that they had shaken down into their various assignments, Miss Mac's tours were little more than routine checkups. The WAVES were doing all right. Little was heard about them by the U.S. public, but so far as Miss Mac was concerned that was all right, too.

Womanly Infiltration. Her organization was not autonomous, and Miss Mac herself had no command as such; as director of the WAVES she merely stood in the background, giving advice and, like a wise spinster aunt, smoothing things out. Her WAVES were a womanly infiltration into certain spots where they could pick up, straighten out and perform some chores even better than men.

WAVES who had worked as hairdressers, for instance, had turned out to be deft at rigging parachutes. In such routine jobs as Navy storekeeping, clerical work, stenography, the Navy's women were at least as competent as the Navy's men. In addition they had taken over jobs which no one had thought anyone could do but men. They weather-briefed Navy pilots, made weather observations and forecasts, directed air traffic from flying-field control towers.

They instructed Navy pilots in instrument flying (in Link trainers), taught Navy airmen to shoot. They had become metalsmiths, radiomen, aviation machinist's mates, truck drivers, laboratory technicians, decoders and cooks. There are some 1,000 naval installations in the U.S., and at roughly half of them WAVES are at work. At the Navy Department in Washington there are more Navy women than men. In Hawaii, the farthest place overseas to which Congress would let them venture, the WAVES are competently filling a crying need for yeomen, aviation ratings, hospital corpsmen.

The Big Point. The point that Miss Mac liked most to make was that her WAVES had released more than 70,000 men for combat, which was the same as adding 70,000 men to the Navy's muster.

They were the second largest women's service branch. The Coast Guard's SPARs numbered 9,745; the women marines 19,000. There were 82,000 WAVES in uniform. Considering the difference in size between the Army & Navy, women were carrying a proportionately far greater load in the Navy. The WACs, still struggling to fill their quota, numbered only 92,500.

Just as important as these statistics to Miss Mac was the fact that her blue-clad girls had been models of correct, seamanlike behavior before the U.S. public. WAVES might not like their grim hours, the discipline, the hard work, but almost to a woman they were resolved to stick it out without audible griping.

Well Done. Miss Mac attributed this good record in part to the indoctrination her girls got at the U.S. Naval Training School at Hunter College in The Bronx. The WAVES had filled their quota, but they were still recruiting for replacements.

Every month 850 new boots excitedly arrived in The Bronx to have the symbol of their new responsibility--a Mainbocher-designed hat--clapped on their heads and to buckle down to learning their duty. After six weeks' schooling under the piercing blue eyes of Lieut. Commander Elizabeth Reynard, who once taught English literature at Barnard, they were ready for duty.

In those six weeks they became trim and sharp--factory-made old salts who referred to walls as "bulkheads," windows as "ports," floors as "decks," "reported aboard" and saw visitors "over the side." They had absorbed Navy tradition, had had a quick but thorough briefing on naval operations, naval weapons, history and current affairs. They were also imbued with the idea that if a WAVE quit, it was the same as a battlefront casualty.

The station in The Bronx had done something else. It had taken in Negro recruits, put them side by side with whites without ruffling any tempers. Miss Reynard had colored officers on her staff. Navy officials had held their breaths but, as one Southern-born white WAVE officer said: "We took it as a challenge and just made up our minds we would meet it."

Miss Mac, definitely not given to self-praise, nevertheless could feel very pleased with all that had been accomplished. The Navy, which had once thought of the WAVES as a dubious experiment, could give her a clear "Well done."

The Atmospheric Conditions. The Navy, for that matter, had been an experiment with Miss Mac. As she once declared, possibly with tongue in cheek, "Life in the Navy has taken me out of the cloister in which a woman was unaware of limitations on her freedom or individuality, and has thrust me into the big world where women are women and men are men." She had emerged into what she called "this bifurcated society" like a discoverer and without even the seafaring background of Miss Reynard, whose grandfather had been the captain of a whaling ship.

Miss Mac had been born into the late Cleland Boyd McAfee's staunchly Presbyterian Scotch-Irish household in Parkville, Mo. in 1900--last of the Rev. Dr. McAfee's three daughters. She had grown up in an atmosphere of visiting missionaries, company for Sunday dinner, the Bible, St. Nicholas and the Youth's Companion. She remembers herself and two sisters as "perfect little snobs."

When it was time, she went to Francis W. Parker School in Chicago, which was then, she recalls, "a pioneer progressive school . . . bound by the most unbreakable atmospheric conditions," the objective of which was to keep girls "youthful and wholesome." It was unholy to put up your hair until your last year.

From there she went to Vassar. There she burgeoned. She was president of the Christian Association, a weak reed on the hockey and basketball teams, and a shining member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Teacher's Career. Her sisters are married to a minister and a college president; Mildred chose another career. At 20, she launched into teaching: at Monticello Seminary, Godfrey, Ill., a job which her father arranged; at Francis Parker, where she taught eighth grade; at Tusculum College in Greenville, Tenn., where she arrived with her hair bobbed, shocking Tennesseans in 1923; at Oberlin, where she was dean of women; and finally to Wellesley, where she became a college president at 36.

This leap would have scared lesser women than Mildred McAfee. She had to step into the shoes of the late Ellen Fitz Pendleton, in itself a terrifying job. Miss Pendleton had ruled the conservative New England college for 25 years and was tenderly remembered by Wellesley alumnae. Miss Mac stepped carefully. She started no revolutions. She was smooth and diplomatic, with just the right touch of tartness.

One official was heard to remark: "She gets less things done wrong than anyone I ever ran into." One of the things she got done was a boost in salaries, which endeared her to the faculty. She settled firmly into the president's chair, surveying the academic world with snapping brown eyes and an air of self-sufficiency.

Life was all any young unmarried woman could ask for. Occasionally she visited her sisters and delighted her nieces with her brisk wit. They always looked forward to being with "Aunt Milly." Wellesley students called her "Milly Mac," but not to her face.

Then the war came.

The Evangelists. It was Barnard's determined Dean Virginia Gildersleeve who talked Miss Mac into it. Dean Gildersleeve was head of an advisory council of university women set up by the Navy to help get something started. It was decided that the head of the WAVES should be Mildred McAfee.

Why Miss Mac finally took the job, after much soul-searching, she explained to a graduating class at Smith one summer's day.

"Human beings are the most important things in the world," Miss Mac told them, "but the interesting discovery which hundreds and thousands of your contemporaries are making is that the supreme satisfaction comes to the person who is willing to give his own life so that other human beings can have opportunities he will never have. . . . The achievement of any woman of responsibility for the large purposes of the nation, the world, will speed the day which I used to think had already dawned, when women and men can be judged first as persons. . . . America calls on you to do your part in carrying your common load."

Two girls fainted during the sermon. Miss Mac remarked afterward: "Now I know how Frank Sinatra feels when he sends them."

Elizabeth Reynard, Dean Gildersleeve and the advisory council spearheaded a campus blitzkrieg. For their key officers they were frankly looking for the best products of the colleges. "We had to," Miss Reynard explains. "We had to have the best to set the tone." That selectivity, they are convinced, was another factor in the success of the WAVES.

No Glamor Girls. They profited by earlier mistakes made by the WACs. The WACs had used a publicity man's appeal to get results. Many a glamor girl got in a WAC recruiting line just for the gag. The WAVES hewed to a line that was dignified and stern. On one occasion a Brooklyn reporter heckled Miss Mac for a story on WAVE underwear. What was going to be regulation lingerie? Miss Mac set her teeth; the Navy did not care what the WAVES wore under their uniform. The reporter finally gave up. There was no story on WAVE underwear.

She took the transition into a world where "men are men" in her stride. At first the Navy's odd terminology baffled her. She was taken aback when a male officer, discussing uniforms for WAVES. said he thought they should be designed so that blouses could be removed in the office. When another officer talked about "procuring" 10,000 women, Miss Mac's eyebrows climbed. But she quickly caught on.

She quickly caught on to everything.

Beyond genial Vice Admiral Randall Jacobs, Chief of Naval Personnel, the idea of women in the Navy had few champions. The harumphs of the admirals on Constitution Avenue could be heard all the way to Arlington.

Certain Niceties. Unruffled Miss Mac adapted herself to Navy ways and used her wit to tactical advantage. At a Navy Day dinner in Manhattan the star of the speakers was Captain Mildred McAfee. With some misgivings, she salted her speech with a story of a British poster which WACs in England had hung in their barracks. The poster, she explained, was designed to make Britons appreciate the sacrifices of their soldiers. It showed a figure in bed under warm blankets while a British Tommy looked on from a muddy foxhole. The caption was: "This man would like to be in your bed tonight." The Admirals roared.

WAVES were given more comfortable quarters than Navy men are used to. "There are certain niceties it would be lovely for men to have too," Miss Mac said. "But if women don't have them their efficiency is jeopardized." One of those niceties was stall compartments for bunks, giving an effect of privacy. This was not pampering. Dr. Overholser, who has the job of caring for psychoneurotics among WAVES, thought that lack of privacy might be one factor in mental crackups among girls in uniform.

Miss Mac also insisted on lounges for WAVE barracks. Men are permitted in these recreation rooms because, as Miss Mac says, "it usually takes two to achieve recreation."

Life in the Navy. As for Miss Mac, she lives alone--in a studio apartment in Washington. She does only what cooking is necessary. "It was a major event in my life when I learned to make a tossed salad." She reads herself to sleep. Her social life is moderately paced.

She drives to work in a Chevrolet which she expects "to have some intelligence itself." Midmorning, her executive, Mrs. Tova Petersen Wiley, and the rest of her staff gather in her office for coffee and a conference. That is where problems really get thrashed out, to be settled later more formally.

One of the current problems is the married WAVES. Many would like to rejoin soldier and sailor husbands who have come back from overseas. It is a problem which is giving Miss Mac much concern. As she once said, "Women can be efficient and professional and still be women."

She would also like to get back to the life she left. She remains steadfast to her duty in Washington, but she will get out "just as fast as the law and the Navy will allow." Actually, Miss Mac vows, she may wait only for the law. "I am still sure colleges are my role and nothing has made me more sure of it than life in the Navy." Miss Mac could only guess at the feelings of 82,000 other WAVES.

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