Cold War Era Camp Lejeune Officers Wives Club
By Matthew M. Peek, Military Collection Archivist, State Archives of North Carolina
Editor’s Note: This blog post is part of our March 2021 series of posts featuring female veterans stories, stories of women on the home front, and women in the world of the U.S. Armed Forces as part of our commemoration of the 2021 Women’s History Month.
For many years within the various branches of the U.S. Armed Forces from the 1940s through the 1980s, lives for military spouses could be extremely isolating and lonely. I frequently read references to this in letters from servicemen’s wives back home to their families, or letters to their servicemen spouses in overseas service, where the challenge of being confined alone or with children within a military environment could feel suffocating. With constant moves for duty station changes, inability to hold long-term friendships due to the frequent moves, and the long absences of their significant others, military wives would feel an unspoken strain that was often misattributed in the Cold War era where women’s health and psychology were just beginning to grow as recognized fields.
One way that military wives dealt with the stress was the formation of unit wives’ groups or clubs. Every military base had their own formal or informal wives organizations. Formal groups were much more common for officers’ wives, as many officers were more likely to stay in place at assignments longer than the rank and file servicemen. These groups were informally and inadequately documented, in terms of their membership, their regular operation and activities, and the unreported operations that really defined the strength and heart of these groups.
These wives’ groups provided personal, social, and family support for their members. They offered social interaction, friendship, and understanding from other women who also experienced military spousal life. Some such support was codified in manuals or welcome booklets, that offered a structured introduction for these women into lives at the military bases, and a list of contacts in the form of those leaders of different group committees to whom they could reach out and find support. The support found in these groups was some of the only support outside of the wives’ family when they would go through such experiences as their husbands being held as prisoners of war during the Vietnam War.
Camp Lejeune Officers Wives Club
Lives for Marine Corps officers wives could be greatly different than those of officers wives in other branches. The U.S. Marine Corps’ primary bases were and are on the East and West Coasts of the United States. Apart from training missions, new jobs, or overseas service, the chance was that officers likely would remain stationed at Camp Pendleton, California, or Camp Lejeune, NC, for their service. This allowed during the Cold War for wives to be able to establish friendships, participate in local groups and associations, and have some semblance of being grounded in one location. That was not the case for the great majority of officers wives in general, regardless of branches — particularly those of lower ranked officers who had to travel to attend military universities and schools, build their service record and experience, or other similar service duties.
Following World War II, married housing construction began exploding around and on Camp Lejeune, NC, which had begun being built during that war as more and more Marines were going through the base. Such communities included Midway Park, just across from the main gate of Camp Lejeune; it was a community of 531 small, 750-square foot cottage-style houses that had started being built in 1942. Marine wives of all ages ended up moving their existing families or starting new ones in these apartment-sized homes which housed many Marine Corps families through 2009. The houses had the husband and wives identified with name plates on the front porches in those early days. With the end of WWII and the growth of the Marine Corps during the early Cold War era, the need for social groups and family support also expanded.
Katherine Costello Hart, wife of the recently-appointed commanding general of the Marine Barracks at Camp Lejeune, Gen. Franklin A. Hart, was 50 years old when she founded the Officers Wives Club of Camp Lejeune, on September 17, 1949. According their own literature, the Officers Wives Club “has been organized to give the Wives an opportunity to get acquainted , and to participate in social and cultural activities as well as community problems and volunteer services” (Resource 1). Sometime in the 1950s, the club began producing a booklet around 50 pages long entitled “Welcome,” which listed all of the various club groups, group leaders, membership responsibilities and opportunities, and club organization. It was produced by the Hospitality Chairmen [their word] of the club. The Officers Wives Club had their own 8-page constitution, which gave the official club name as the “Officers’ Wives’ Club of Camp Lejeune.”
The Officers Wives Club was divided into nine groups consisting of wives of Marine Corps officers serving in specific units, with the women preassigned their groups based on their husbands’ unit affiliation. The groups had their own chairperson and hospitality chairperson. The club consisted of an executive board, different activities chairpeople and representatives, and chairpeople of nine groups. Each of the groups had a meeting or luncheon every month that only featured the group members and their guests. Each group was charged with sponsoring a special event each year to entertain all the club members.
The club organized projects to “interest wives in learning a hobby or participating in some worthwhile charitable organization,” which included a women’s bowling league, a fine and applied arts activity, and others. The key word there is “worthwhile” — in an age before many had televisions and there were no computers, having something to be interested in outside of the home or something to contribute to that felt fulfilling were the focuses of many women’s groups during the Cold War era.
The club’s Welcome booklet included information to assist families related to on-base facilities, recreation opportunities, social groups and programs, educational opportunities and schools, medical care facilities and options, and typical daily personal needs information, on and off base. There was also a fold-out map of Camp Lejeune and the various facilities on base in the back of the booklet. Although little is known about the detailed history and operation of the club past the 1950s, this 1950s-era Welcome booklet includes names of women living on and off base, who would otherwise have disappeared to the annals of history due to the nature of the documentation of women’s history in the 1950s.
One element of the club’s own Welcome booklet is the representation of the confusion of social and cultural norm expectations for women in their writing and labeling of identities for the time. Women are only identified with “Mrs.” and their husband’s name as the representation of their own identity, an identification and cultural style that was common up through the 1990s even. This does make identifying the women’s own names to be challenging without doing a lot of research. Still, to have the names identified at all through this booklet is important for the history of Camp Lejeune. Also, the use of “chairman” and “chairmen” for women — again, a practice quite common grammatically and socially for many years in the U.S. — demonstrates the terminology that women referred to themselves within the defined social roles of the Cold War era. Another element of this period identification terminology is the section containing information on activities, facilities, and resources published in the Welcome booklet, which is labeled with the stereotyping of women and wives phrase “Wive’s Chatter.”
I believe the significance of the Officers Wives Club booklet and their own history, is the demonstration of the manner in which women found to survive and thrive in a culture and time period that looked down on women, treating them as property of their husbands. The formation of such clubs for self-support among women — civilian spouses and service individuals — in the U.S. Armed Forces continues to this day. Such groups as crisis support, widows, post-service support, and other groups formed by women continue to fill the gaps where the U.S. Armed Forces and the U.S. society at-large cannot meet their needs. The Camp Lejeune Officers Wives Club demonstrates the ways in which women of all ages and backgrounds came together to support each other as they suffered the losses of spouses, raising families, frequent moves, and suffering with the pressures women of the Cold War era faced.
The original “Welcome: Officers Wives Club of Camp Lejeune, NC” booklet is available for viewing at the State Archives of North Carolina in their public Search Room. It is part of the new Greguras North Carolina Military Bases Collection (MMP 24) in the Miscellaneous Military Papers of the Military Collection at the State Archives.
Resources
- Box 1, Folder 17, Greguras North Carolina Military Bases Collection, MMP 24, Miscellaneous Military Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C.
- Lance Cpl. Paul Peterson, “Midway Park, AMCC move into new era for housing,” July 13, 2012, U.S. Marine Corps website, viewed online at https://www.lejeune.marines.mil/News/Article/Article/513013/midway-park-amcc-move-into-new-era-for-housing/
- Delbert and Leona Tenney Photographs, WWII 230, WWII Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C.
