Elizabeth Reynard, an English professor, was the second in command of the
WAVES, or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, during World War II. Together with Virginia Gildersleeve, the politically and socially well-connected dean of Barnard College, Reynard laid the foundation for the Women’s Reserve, which opened doors to naval service for nearly 100,000 women during World War II.
In the winter of 1941–42, the necessity of organizing a naval women’s reserve became apparent after manpower projections revealed that the Navy would not have enough personnel to man their new ships and stations. Sailors on shore duty would need to vacate their positions and go to sea—leaving the shore billets gapped.
During World War I, the Navy had established the Yeoman (F) rating, allowing women to serve, but only as enlisted personnel. They primarily held secretarial and clerical positions, although some were translators, draftsmen, fingerprint experts, ship camouflage designers, and recruiting agents. The new women’s reserve, however, would include officer as well as enlisted billets. In addition, more occupations would be open to women on naval installations nationwide, including positions requiring academic degrees, such as doctors, lawyers, bacteriologists, chemists, and engineers.
Building on this concept, in early 1942, the Navy sought advice from educators at the country’s most prominent women’s colleges on the best way to organize the new women’s reserve. The service contacted Gildersleeve to ask for a name of a faculty member who could serve as the special assistant to the chief of the Bureau of Naval Personnel (BUPERS). The person in this position would assist the Navy in developing a plan for the women’s branch of the U.S. Naval Reserve.
Gildersleeve suggested Reynard as the best candidate to assist BUPERS chief Rear Admiral Randall Jacobs. Reynard had recently headed a faculty national service committee dedicated to creating new courses to prepare Barnard women for wartime service. The Navy appointed Reynard, and she departed for Washington, DC, in April 1942.
Reynard and Gildersleeve first met in 1918 when the former entered Barnard as an undergraduate. After post-graduate studies at Oxford University, Reynard joined the Barnard faculty as an associate professor of English and American studies. The two did not become close, however, until the onset of World War II, when they began working together to increase women’s access to professional employment. Both believed that women should be able to assist in the war effort. As the nation needed trained scientists and engineers, Barnard began offering these courses to its students in the hopes that graduates could assist in the war effort.
It was during this time that the two women developed an intimate relationship. It would span the next 20 years.
According to Nancy Woloch’s biography of Gildersleeve,
The Insider: A Life of Virginia C. Gildersleeve, Reynard once recounted that Gildersleeve would “be my boss for twenty-five years and for fifteen years a constant comrade in work and play and retirement.”
To the outside world, they referred to each other as close friends, housemates, or cousins (since they were distant cousins on Gildersleeve’s father’s side).
Gildersleeve did not see Reynard much during her time as the bureau chief’s special assistant. Reynard spent most of 1942 traveling to U.S. naval stations around the country to investigate what type of personnel requirements existed and how women could fill the positions. She also traveled to Canada to inspect the women’s military services there and visited U.S. college campuses to scout for potential locations for an officer training school.
One of Reynard’s first assignments was to create a name for the members of the potential new women’s branch. In Gildersleeve’s memoir,
Many a Good Crusade, Reynard recalled how she developed the WAVES acronym on a train ride from Washington to New York in early 1942:
“I realized that there were two letters which had to be in it: W for women and V for volunteer, because the Navy wants to make it clear that this is a voluntary and not a drafted service. So I played with those two letters and the idea of the sea and finally came up with ‘Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service’—W.A.V.E.S. I figure the word ‘Emergency’ will comfort the older admirals, because it implies that we’re only a temporary crisis and won’t be around for keeps.”
Shortly after appointing Reynard, Rear Admiral Jacobs established a women’s advisory council to assist the Navy in formulating policies for the new reserve. The council, chaired by Gildersleeve, was staffed by academics from the country’s most prominent women’s colleges.
In the midsummer of 1942, Congress passed the bill
establishing the Women’s Reserve, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law as Public Law 689. On Aug. 3, 1942,
Mildred H. McAfee was commissioned as a lieutenant commander and director of the WAVES. Reynard was sworn in as a lieutenant two days later and was appointed assistant director.
In 1943, Reynard became the special assistant to the commanding officer at the
U.S. Naval Training School (WR), Bronx, New York. Known as USS
Hunter, this enlisted training facility, or
boot camp
, provided indoctrination training for nearly 86,000 WAVES. In 1944, after being promoted to lieutenant commander, Reynard became commandant of seamen at
Hunter. She directed
Hunter’s six-week training program, wherein she instructed recruits on naval traditions and tactics.
Reynard left active duty in October 1945 and was placed on inactive duty in the Reserves. She returned to her former position at Barnard College where she taught and led the American studies program. Four years later she was forced to retire due to poor health.
For her wartime service, she was awarded a letter of commendation by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal. She is one of the few former members of the WAVES to have been heralded for wartime service in both World War I and World War II. (In World War I, she had served as a volunteer nurse for the Red Cross at a Belgian hospital located behind front lines.)
On Feb. 1, 1953, Reynard was placed on the retired list for the Naval Reserve. Upon her retirement, Reynard moved into a house in Bedford, New York, with Virginia Gildersleeve and Reynard’s 90-year-old mother.
Reynard died Jan. 9, 1962, at the age of 64. Gildersleeve, who was 20 years older, died three years later. They are buried together in St. Matthew’s Episcopal Churchyard in Bedford, New York.
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Bureau of Naval Personnel, Office of Naval History. U.S. Naval Administration in WWII: History of the Women’s Reserve, vol. 2. Washington, DC: internally distributed publication, 1946, available in Navy Department Library
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