When
WWII began for
us in 1941, there were nearly as many unemployed as at any point in
America's decade-long Great Depression. The need for workers -- American
armed forces eventually exceeded 13 million in uniform -- produced
the phenomenon of a manpower shortage.
In the civilian sector, this created job opportunities for women and
minorities previously unimaginable. Even within the services there
was a need to put every available man into a combat or combat support
role. Part of the solution was use women in as many stateside military
positions as possible, especially in clerical jobs.
Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall asked Houstonian Oveta Culp
Hobby to head a new organization tentatively called the Women's
Army Auxiliary Corps. The women volunteers were not considered
actually "in" the army, but they endured basic training and advanced
training similar to men and lived and worked military style, including
uniforms. Soon the "auxiliary" was dropped, and the gals in khaki
were simple WACs -- women in the army.
Well, the WACs saved Stephen F. Austin State College. This "teacher's
college," founded in Nacogdoches
in 1923, enrolled about 1,000 students when the war began. Most male
students either enlisted, were drafted, or found work in defense plants,
and soon only a few hundred students mostly women remained.
Fearing he would have insufficient enrollment or finances to continue,
SFA's president, Dr. Paul L. Boynton, convinced the army to "rent"
most of his campus as an instructional facility for WACs who would
receive assignments involving office work. The college had the classrooms,
dormitories, office equipment -- everything the WACs needed for training.
The first class arrived in 1943. The women first endured their basic
training at a camp near Des Moines, Iowa, then arrived in Nacogdoches
by railroad. The first class of uniformed women that marched from
the depot to the campus caused quite a stir in the community, but
soon the town folk became accustomed to their presence. Many families
invited them to Sunday dinner during their six weeks of training,
easing the homesickness.
Clarice Pollard wrote of her experiences in Nacogdoches
and elsewhere in WAC service in Laugh, Cry, and Remember: The Journal
of A G.I. Lady (1991). It is rich in references to her experiences,
and these items are typical.
Clarice was from Brooklyn, where she had followed a kosher diet not
available in Nacogdoches.
She remembers mostly the grease in which everything was fried. And
she remembers the girls mailing home magnolia blossoms to their mothers,
unaware that the delicate flowers would never survive the journey.
What SFA remembers, and it was no laughing matter, is that the WA's
saved the college. |
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