ENS Doris Leta Brogan Oral History

title:

ENS Doris Leta Brogan Oral History

creator:

Brogan, Dorris Leta (Adams) (1919 - )

subject:

Navy WAVES

description:

Dorris Leta Brogan (formerly Adams) was born in 1919 in Coushatta, Louisiana and grew up there with one younger sister and her parents. During the Depression, her father worked at stores until someone else in town had to abandon his farm because he couldn’t pay the bills, giving the farm to her father. After attending local schools, she went to college at Louisiana Normal College to become a teacher. She worked in the school’s library, supervising the National Youth Administration girls who worked there too. After graduating in 1940, Brogan moved to DeRitter, Louisiana for one year, where she taught all-white classes of NYA girls how to plan meals, shop, cook, and sew. She then moved to Alabama to work in record-keeping for a construction company working on the Red Stone Arsenal Plant. From there, she worked as a record-keeper at a B-29 bomber plant. In 1942, she needed to find a new job and saw pictures of Navy WAVE uniforms, so she decided to enlist. She told her parents by sending them a message reading: “you don’t have an Army son but meet your Navy daughter.” After enlisting, she spent a year at the University of Wisconsin learning to type and send and receive Morse Code. After finishing there, she and 25 other WAVES were the first sent to North Island, California, living in divided barracks. After a year in California, she and two other women were sent to WAVES Officer School at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. After finishing there, she was sent to Mount Holyoke to learn how to encipher and decipher messages. After finishing her training there, Brogan was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. At the end of the war, she transferred from Norfolk to San Francisco, California to be with her soon-to-be husband, who she married in late 1945. She was also discharge in 1945, only 16 days before she would have become a lieutenant JG. She and her husband stayed in San Diego, California after they were discharged, liking how little it rained. Although she could’ve gone back to Louisiana to teach home economics, Brogan didn’t feel ready to go back and teach. She had reached the rank of ensign by the time she was discharged, and had received an American Campaign Medal and World War II Victory Medal. No transcript of this interview is currently available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Binker, Mary Jo

date:

2003-03-26

type:

Audio

format:

Cassette

identifier:

108; 2003.108

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk

language:

English

relation:

163999

coverage:

World War II (1939-1945) | 1942-45

rights:

Unrestricted