Supercentenarian Charlotte L. Winters was the last living U.S. female veteran of World War One.
When she called on Secretary of The Navy, Josephus Daniels, in 1916 to ask why she could not join the Navy, she may have helped set into motion events that have influenced my life greatly as well as the makeup of our armed forces. A year later she was among the first women to join the service as a Yeoman 3rd Class (F). The “F” stood for Female.
Though Daniels did not say Winters influenced his decision to allow women in the Navy, his niece, Kelly N. Auber of Middle River MD said, “She convinced him that women could be in the Navy, and her visit is corroborated in his journals. While he did not admit that she directly influenced him, he did acknowledge that they had met.”
Secretary Daniels investigated the matter and found that there was no prohibition against women serving in the Navy. It was the start of something big. By 1918, more than 10,000 women joined the Navy.
Winters was assigned to the Washington Navy Gun Factory, also known as the Washington Navy Yard, where she was a typist throughout the war. After the war’s end she returned to her job there as a civilian. She retired in 1951.
Until the early 1980s Charlotte and her husband, John Russell Winters, visited Revolutionary War and Civil War battlefields documenting battle strategies and the lives of the soldiers who had fought there. She donated her uniform and other military objects to the Navy Museum in Washington DC and documentation of thousands of Civil War graves to the Hagerstown, MD Library.
Since WWI many women have served in the U.S. Navy, among them my mother and my wife. It hasn’t been all salutes and parades though. Just as women struggle for equality in civilian society, so too do women in uniform, thanks in no small part to the pioneering efforts of Charlotte L. Winters and others like her. From the day Josephus Daniels asked if women could serve, controversy has raged throughout the Navy (and other services too) about the role of women in its ranks.
Charlotte L. Winters, feminist, war historian, and last of a kind, died Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at the Fahrney-Keedy life care community in Boonsboro, MD at age 109.
To remember Charlotte L. Winters, and all of the women who served in WWI, to recognize my mother’s generation of female sailors (WAVES) from WWII, my wife’s generation at the end of the Cold War and all who came in between and since, I have linked to a great speech by Rear Admiral D.A. Loewer, USN, celebrating Women’s History Month in 2004.
Excerpted:
I began my remarks today with a quote from President John F. Kennedy. “A Nation reveals itself by those it honors, those it remembers.”
If we look into the proud pages of the history of women’s service to our Nation, we remember that not all heroic acts in war were performed by men — many women have performed acts just as heroic, and made the ultimate sacrifice. We remember that standing up for fair and equitable treatment is as honorable and as worthy of remembrance as serving in the Nation’s armed forces. We remember that women who served in World War I, with honor, could travel overseas to work in the mud and grime as nurses, entertainers, or switchboard operators — but they could not vote. And just prior to my own time of service women could serve and die in Vietnam, but they could not serve as line officers in ships at sea or as pilots in combat aircraft.
During this month of March, as we recognize the contributions women have made to our history, we pause to “reveal [ourselves] by those [we] honor, those [we] remember.”
Today, we honor the women who are in military service to our Nation, and we remember those who have gone before us pushing open the “door of opportunity.”
Read Rear Admiral Loewer’s full remarks.
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Lloyd Brown was the last U.S. Navy veteran of World War I.
