Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joy Bright Hancock joined the U.S. Navy in 1918, was a civilian employee in the Bureau of Aeronautics between the wars, a WAVE during World War II, and after the war assistant chief of naval personnel for women, retiring as a captain in 1953.

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Lady in the Navy
A Personal Reminiscence
By Joy Bright Hancock, Captain, U.S. Navy (Retired)

Naval Institute Press

Copyright © 1972 United States Naval Institute.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1-55750-399-0

Chapter One

In Retrospect

    The reviewing officer this morning is a woman who has had a long and distinguished career in the naval service: first as an enlisted woman in World War I; later as a civilian employee in connection with editorial and research matters pertaining to naval aviation; and, finally, as a commissioned officer in key positions of great responsibility in various sections of the Navy Department in Washington, D.C.

    "At the close of World War II, she was commended by the Secretary of the Navy for her outstanding performance of duty of great responsibility, that of the development, expansion, and administration of the complex and comprehensive program designed to integrate women in the naval service and to utilize their various skills effectively.

    "In July of 1946, she was designated the Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel for Women, in which capacity she has served as the director of the WAVES, and, technically, as the official adviser on women's affairs in the naval service.

    "This will be her last official appearance here at Bainbridge. She will be transferred to the retired list of the Navy, effective June 1, 1953....

    "And now, it is with distinct honor and great pleasure that I introduce to you my esteemed friend and colleague, the Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel for Women, the First Lady of the Navy, Captain Joy Bright Hancock."

    As the words of the commanding officer of the Recruit Training Command died away, I rose to perform one of my last official acts before retirement?that of reviewing officer at the recruit review and graduation exercises of the men and women at the U.S. Naval Training Center, Bainbridge, Maryland, 23 May 1953.

    For me it was a day filled with emotion as well as great pride. Before me on the field, in whites, the men and women of the Navy were drawn up in company formation. The women were only a small part of the assembled recruits, of which there were well over fifteen hundred, but they were the living symbol of what we had accomplished in the program for women in the Navy: they were an integral part of the naval service.

    And here was I, standing at attention before this ninety-seventh graduation review, with both the WAVE and male recruit drill teams performing in front of the reviewing stand, Captain Frederick Wolsieffer's words of praise still ringing in my ears: "... a long and distinguished career in the naval service ... an enlisted woman in World War I ... Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel for Women ... Director of the WAVES ... the First Lady of the Navy ...!"

    Captain Joy Bright Hancock ... about to retire! Could this indeed be the same little red-headed, blue-eyed girl who had arrived on 4 May 1898, and was named Joy to offset her father's disappointment that his third child was not a boy? So much has intervened in those fifty-five years. Four wars, tremendous technological advances, make the early 1900s seem light years away and the surroundings of my youth are remembered as some backwater of a little-known civilization....

    My two sisters and I were the sturdy heirs of an even sturdier generation, for our parents lived their early lives under conditions that would be regarded today as primitive. My father, William Henry Bright, was born 21 October 1863, in the first frame house erected in Sanilac County, Michigan, on the shore of Lake Huron. His parents had been living in a log cabin, and the baby might have found this humble, traditional beginning his own had not my grandfather, Henry Bright, determined that his son should make his earthly entrance in a frame house. Skilled as a master carpenter, Henry Bright built the house in time for the arrival of his son, the first of ten children, eight of whom grew to maturity.

    But William Henry's time in Michigan was of no great duration, for by the time he was two years old his father and mother (Mary McClintoch Bright) had returned to Philadelphia. My grandmother found nothing congenial in the forests of Michigan and preferred the City of Brotherly Love where she had spent her early years in this country after arriving from County Tyrone, Ireland.

    In Pennsylvania, my paternal grandparents bought a home in South Wark, now known as South Philadelphia, a section then inhabited by English and German artisans. The family joined and faithfully attended the Church of the Holy Apostles, taking part in all its activities and enjoying the educational and cultural advantages it offered.

    The story of the family in Philadelphia was not unique. As a carpenter, Henry supported his household, which was augmented not only by birth but also by immigration. Many of the people who had known my grandmother in Ireland came and stayed with the Brights until they became accustomed to their new country, a friendly arrangement that was not unusual.

    My father at an early age became a newspaper boy, a fortunate circumstance since his route was large enough to support the family during the business recession of the mid-seventies. When my grandfather became unemployed he helped his twelve-year-old son deliver the papers. Newspaper routes became a kind of family industry as the younger boys, while growing up, became assistants and later took on routes of their own.

    Grandmother Bright, ambitious for her children, insisted that each of them have a trade. Thus, when young William Henry reached his fourteenth year, he was apprenticed to a machinist. But this vocation was not to his liking, and, immediately upon completing his apprenticeship four years later, at eighteen, he took a job in the office of a painting concern where he was introduced to the fundamentals of salesmanship.

    A few months later, he went to work in the Philadelphia office of an attorney, one of the original members of the Holly Beach Land Company, organized to develop an island on the New Jersey coast as a resort area. This island, which later became known as "The Wildwoods," is really a sand bar, five miles long, varying in width from one to two miles. The Atlantic Ocean lies to the east and an inland waterway to the west. The sand of the beautiful, gradually sloping beach is like pulverized white sugar.

    My father at his own request was sent to the island to represent his employers, and this move opened up an opportunity for him to embark in a new enterprise, and led to the acquisition of land. Dad had recognized the resort potential and the opportunity he had to grow with it. He had purchased a team of horses with which he hauled beach sand to fill the land of his employers. On his own time he started filling in additional salt and marshy land, and since little money passed hands he was usually paid for this labor in tracts of unfilled land. Later my father ventured, independently and successfully, into the business of real estate and insurance.

    A further expansion of his real estate business was made possible when he teamed up with John Vance, a man who owned some moving equipment. The annual equinoctial storms and the gradual encroachment of the ocean meant the loss of houses that had been built too near the high tide mark. When it appeared certain that a house was threatened they would telegraph the owner for permission to move it. If such permission were given Vance, dad and the men of the town of Holly Beach would move the house to safety and collect a fee. If permission did not come through and the house was washed down, the lumber was carefully collected and piled on dry land. From this cache houses could be built on the newly filled lots and rented or sold.

    There being no railroad to Holly Beach, my father used his horse and carriage to transport, at low tide, potential buyers from the northern tip of the island. The beaches at that time were the only surfaces that could be used as roads. Later, probably around 1885, a spur of the Pennsylvania Railroad was run to the southern part of the island and a small station and a telegraph office were erected, a development of importance to the future of the island.

    My father, who was not only interested in business, but also in the community, served for many years, though himself an Episcopalian, as Sunday school superintendent of a small Methodist church, situated facing the ocean at Taylor Avenue, which area later became the site of our home called Castlereagh.

    It was, however, a community church, built later but nearby, that involved the destiny of my family, for the sister of a young evangelist conducting religious services there became my mother.

    Like my father, my mother, Priscilla Buck, was one of ten children. Born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, 5 April 1872, on the family farm at Stony Run, she grew up with her four brothers and five sisters in a rural setting that had its own abundance: a large family with a multitude of tasks and the energy to match them. Since the family furnished the manpower for the cultivation of about four hundred acres, each member was committed to a schedule of "early to bed and early to rise." The chief crops were wheat, corn, hay, and potatoes with the addition, of course, of all kinds of vegetables that were canned and preserved for family use.

    The dairy herd was the money crop, so the milking schedule, morning and evening for twenty to twenty-five cows, was arranged to include all the children from the time they reached eight years of age. By then they were accustomed to shouldering their share of the chores, having at the age of four or five learned to do such simple tasks as whitewashing fences and collecting eggs.

    The school my mother attended with her brothers and sisters was only a mile away, but getting to Clovermill Academy in winter was not without its problems; occasionally snow drifted higher than the children themselves. Arriving at school clutching their lunch bags, the pupils were not coddled. They were expected to do their share of the work?cutting wood for the next day's fires, cleaning the blackboards, pumping pails of drinking water and, should the pump be frozen, bringing in snow to be melted.

    Within limitations, English was the language of the school. The textbooks were in English and the pupils read aloud in that language, but all instruction and recitations were in Pennsylvania Dutch. A similar linguistic duality prevailed at church: the Bible was read and supplications were made in German, but the minister's sermon was preached in Pennsylvania Dutch.

    But not all the time was devoted to work and worship. Barn dances, sleigh rides, coasting and skating parties, church socials, husking bees, quilting parties, barn raisings, and wedding celebrations assured the family of a frequent change of pace.

    Strangely enough, funerals were the best of all, for these occasions spelled reunion as kith and kin from miles around arrived, laden with pies, cakes, chicken dumplings, spiced hams, cider, and many other items of food and drink. The desire to excel in preparing the best culinary offerings assured rich feasts for the reunited families.

    Years later, with my mother, my sisters and I, in turn, attended these reunions where we met our many cousins and the "freundschaft." On such occasions, we were initiated into the fun of "laying spoons," a practical and necessary arrangement by which one double bed could be made to accommodate five or six children if each individual lay parallel to the headboard and followed the same body contour. This arrangement, which saved space and insured warmth as the children huddled together, permitted the maximum use of blankets. The child who wouldn't "lay spoons" was swiftly brought into line by his or her parents.

    At the age of fourteen, my mother went to Lansford, Pennsylvania, to help her older sister Louisa, who had three children. During the year the young Priscilla learned the rudiments of tailoring from a neighbor who had such a shop. Her skill was so pronounced that the neighbor arranged for her to go to Reading, Pennsylvania, to a dressmaking school. After a year's study, during which Priscilla lived with another married sister, she was certified a "couturiere-seamstress."

    In the summer of 1891, my mother went to Wildwood, New Jersey, to visit her brother Amandus Buck and his wife Flora, both evangelists. There she met my father. At that time, she was nineteen and he twenty-nine years of age. She stayed in Wildwood throughout the following year and in December of 1892 they were married in the Dutch Reformed Church near her home at Stony Run, Pennsylvania. Thus was inaugurated a remarkable partnership in which the burdens of family and church, business and politics were light because they were shared.

    During the first years of their marriage, the realty business flourished in Wildwood as the island became increasingly popular as a resort. My father no sooner built a home than he, on being made a good offer, would decide to sell it and build another. My mother scarcely became used to a new dwelling when she would be forced by the exigencies of prosperity to move to another. My father's office continued to be a part of each new home, which enabled my mother to tend office as well as tend children. His real estate and insurance transactions were something of a monopoly since he was, until 1904, the only real estate agent in town.

    Early in 1898, as the nation headed toward the Spanish-American War, father wanted to enlist in the Army despite his "hostages to fortune"?two daughters and another on the way. Mother, nothing daunted, decided she could carry on the real estate business and execute the duties of city clerk, to which office my father had been elected. Her willingness to do this was never put to the test. When my father and one of his brothers went to Philadelphia to enlist, both returned crestfallen, rejected on physical grounds. The criterion for passable teeth was the ability to chew hardtack, and neither dad nor my uncle had the required number of teeth.

    On 4 May 1898 I arrived on schedule. To offset my father's disappointment that I was not a boy I was named Joy. By all accounts, I was a happy child and a healthy one, with my red hair and blue eyes proclaiming a direct descendance from my English-Irish father. He took me to heart and often, holding me on his knees, would croon, "We called her Joy because she came to teach the meaning of that name. She is a girl, she's not a boy and, best of all, she is my Joy."

    Though an acknowledged girl. I was the one, even after the arrival of three brothers, who cut the grass and did the gardening. I also assisted my Grandfather Bright, who lived with us, and, working with him, I learned to do many a practical task in various fields. Since he was an expert carpenter and cabinetmaker, I learned to handle tools properly before I reached my teens. I could sift unburned coals from the clinkers and ashes of the furnace. I could paint anything from houses to bicycles and bedsteads?white-enameled beds being de rigueur at the time. Each spring, when the family project of getting our several boarding houses ready for summer rental began, I with the others, went into action.

    When I was about eight years old, my parents thought I showed some talent for drawing, so I took painting lessons. The difference between the fine and applied arts did not bother my practical mother at all. Each spring she would say, "Now Joy will enamel the beds and radiators because she can paint."

    Our time after school, on holidays, or during vacations was filled, but it wasn't all work. Mother exerted every effort to accommodate our wishes for parties and never to my knowledge was a reasonable request refused.

    When automobiles came on the market, our family became the proud possessor of a five-passenger Hupmobile. In those bygone days of hand cranks, dirt roads, and infrequent filling stations, punctures and flats were repaired en route. Mother was the chauffeur on the Sunday drives. My father persistently refused to learn to drive or look at the motor, a decision based upon his unhappy apprenticeship as a machinist when he was a boy. Consequently, we all learned to jack up cars, repair tires (demountable rims were to come later), patch inner tubes, mount the tires, and replace the acetylene tanks used for lighting. When our athletic teams played schools in other towns, mother could be depended upon to take at least nine in a five-passenger car, in any kind of weather, and this was long before hardtops.

    Mother's talent as a "couturiere-seamstress" was put to good use. As the third girl I wore the dresses my sisters had outgrown, but my best dresses were made for me. This progressive use worked well until I was twelve, when I suddenly outgrew my second sister just at the moment I was due to inherit a georgeous red wool coat with brass buttons.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Lady in the Navy by Joy Bright Hancock, Captain, U.S. Navy (Retired). Copyright © 1972 by United States Naval Institute. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.