World War II veterans: Mary Kay Mason

BY ANGELA BROOKS

The train was packed full of strangers, but she found an empty seat.

She was alone now, surrounded by hundreds of women she’d never met before and headed to a place halfway across America, over 2,000 miles away.

It was May 1944, and Mary Kay Good was terrified by what she’d gotten herself into.

Her younger sister, Georgeann, stood outside the train, waving farewell. Mary Kay wished her mother, Clyde, had also come along, but secretly knew she stayed behind because it would be too tough saying goodbye.

Soon, she would miss the days when her mother tenderly cared for her when she was sick, and the good times with her friends back at the bank where she had worked.

It was a frightening experience for a 21-year-old woman who had spent most of her life on a farm seven miles north of the small town of Burns, Wyo.

“Being a farm girl, I hadn’t been out and about too much,” she recalled, 60 years later. “I was like a scared little rabbit.”

Mary Kay couldn’t hold back the tears as the train began rolling away from Burns Depot. As she sat there alone, another girl noticed her crying and approached her.

She introduced herself as Dorothy Hibberd and said that she too was headed to boot camp at Hunter College in New York City.

“She noticed how upset I was and comforted me,” Mary Kay said. “From that day on, we were together for the duration of our service.”

As the train continued on its journey, the indoctrination began with a lesson in naval jargon. The walls of the train were referred to as bulkheads, the kitchen as a galley and the floor as a deck.

When the trip ended several days later at Hunter, the women learned two other words: “seaman’s hair.”

“Our hair had to be short enough not to touch our collars,” Mary Kay said. “If they caught you with your hair down, they’d holler at you.”

Mary Kay was assigned to a small apartment, which she shared with five other women. They were expected to get up at 5 a.m., endure grueling exercises and then spend the day in class, learning naval office procedures.

How it started

Mary Kay, now 81 and known by the last name Mason, was a passenger on a Navy recruit train that collected women all across America.

Facing a shortage of men for active and support jobs, in January 1942 the Secretary of the Navy petitioned U.S. Congress for a women’s reserve, called Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service).

In June of that year, the Navy Women’s Reserve Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In just three years, more than 84,000 women had enlisted in the Navy.

Once training finished, the women were sworn in as ensigns — a rank below lieutenant junior — and some were sent overseas to cover non-combat duties as World War II continued.

For Mary Kay, the decision to join had a little to do with peer pressure. But she had the courage to take the final step on her own.

“I had two female friends who wanted to join the service, and they got me all excited about the idea,” she said. “Then when it came time to go, they backed out. But I went ahead on my own.”

Her parents were proud of the decision, especially since the family had no recent military history.

“My folks weren’t really military people,” she said. “During World War I, my father was a farmer, so he was deferred.”

One of her four sisters, Jewel, later followed her back East and worked at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Her mother got involved in the War Mothers program in Cheyenne, writing letters and sending cookies to troops.

Looking back

Basic training lasted six weeks, and the women spent most of their time attending classes and doing drills. But one day, they had a brush with fame.

“We starred as extras in the movie production, ‘Here Come The Waves,’ with the leading roles played by Bing Crosby and Betty Hutton, a vivacious blond actress,” Mary Kay recalled.

For compensation, the women were given a weekend of freedom in New York City.

Once training ended, the new recruits boarded a train and were sent to destinations west of New York. Mary Kay’s first stop was yeoman school at Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Classes focused on naval office duties, including shorthand.

“I had never studied shorthand before, and three months of training hardly qualified me as an expert,” Mary Kay said. “To my utter dismay, I was ordered to report to the pay office, Naval Repair Base in San Diego, to replace a Navy man (who was) secretary to a lieutenant.”

She agonized over the situation, wondering what she would say if asked to write a letter. Luckily, the man was never sent overseas and she was given a reprieve to work on pay records.

“If I took shorthand for two or three years, I still don’t think I would be able to take a letter,” she said.

One day in early 1946, Mary Kay received a surprise visit from an old high school classmate who had just been discharged from the Marine Corps.

When Clarence “Buck” Mason heard Mary Kay was in San Diego, he borrowed a car and made the short trip from Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, Calif.

“I knew he always liked me, but we never really dated,” Mary Kay said. “But during the visit, we really liked each other, and more than we had when we were in high school.”

After returning to Wyoming, Buck called Mary Kay and asked if he could visit her again. She agreed, and he made the long trip back to California and asked her to marry him.

They married in Cheyenne on April 1946, just a few weeks after Mary Kay was discharged.

“I always thought I would never be able to get along with anybody, but he had a wonderful disposition,” she said. “We really got along well.”

Settling down

Over the course of their 27-year marriage, the couple had two sons, Ken and Doug.

Tragedy struck early.

“We really had a beautiful life together, but it didn’t last long enough,” Mary Kay said. “Buck had a very serious heart attack and died when he was 50.”

Both sons also died in separate vehicle accidents in 1961 and 1978.

Mary Kay never remarried. In 1979, she moved to Laramie and attended the University of Wyoming on a scholarship she received for being high school valedictorian.

She graduated with a degree in fine arts in 1983, and was project director for the “Laramie-Gem City” history book published in 1987.

Later in 1995, she released “The War Years — Albany County,” a book containing 318 biographies of Albany County veterans who served during WWII.

“Many people told me they were really glad I did the book, because their family members had never talked about the war,” she said.

Mary Kay is currently working on a new scenic guidebook of Medicine Bow National Forest, featuring some of her work over the years as a professional photographer.

She later reunited with the young woman she befriended on the train, serving as a maid-of-honor at her wedding. The two have since lost touch, and Mary Kay often wonders what happened to her.

Nearly 60 years have passed since she first walked onto the train, a scared young woman. But she has no regrets.

“The women served a purpose because we took the jobs the men weren’t doing while they were overseas,” she said. “They probably couldn’t have gotten along without us.”

From:http://www.laramieboomerang.com/news/more.asp?StoryID=101062

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