U.S. NAVY

Elvie Ramsdell

After completing basic Navy training with the WAVES in 1943, Elvie Ramsdell received the rank of radioman third class.

It would not be the last time she took on a traditionally male role.

Ramsdell was 27 years old and working in an office for an insurance company in Worcester, Mass., when she enlisted in the WAVES. She had held the job for 10 years and wanted a change.

She used to rush home at lunch hour to catch a radio program about a radio operator, which influenced her to take a course in Morse code at the local YMCA.

“I was all set to join the Navy and become a radio operator,” Ramsdell said. “But it was not as easy as it sounds. With 10 years of office experience, they couldn’t see me being a radio operator. But I had my certificate.”

Her Morse code certification, insistence and a little luck prevailed, and the Navy sent Ramsdell to Hunter College in New York for boot camp and the first step in becoming a radioman.

She remembers boot camp as an endless series of “marching, blistered feet and fire drills in the middle of the night.”

From New York she went to Madison, Wis., for basic radio training and then to Suitland, Md., for advanced radio communication training.

Ramsdell was one of only six WAVES in her group to complete the specialized training.

“It was all top secret,” she said. “My whole background was investigated. They went to my neighbors, my best friend and school teachers.”

While learning her job in the Navy, as well as performing it, “nothing was ever in plain English,” she said.

Instead, all Navy communication was given in five-letter codes.

Ramsdell spent her wartime duty in Washington, D.C., where she worked eight-hour watches with one other WAVE in a small radio shack.

“When we first arrived in Washington — this group of WAVES — we had no assignments yet,” she said. “I remember a whole big room of Navy men. When we walked in, they just jumped up and cheered because they were released from desk duty. They were happy to see the WAVES.”

Ramsdell knew the Navy men were eager to see active duty, but she also might have read more into their excitement at being relieved from desk duty.

She described her Navy work as “dull to steady.”

On duty, Ramsdell would type coded messages that came over her radio headphones and pass the messages to a decoding operation in the next room.

“Often there was nothing but radio silence,” she said. “It was miserable from midnight to 8 at work. Unless you were busy, it was hard to stay awake. You never knew when a message would start.”

Ramsdell was monitoring radio messages from Recife, Brazil, where the Navy was tracking enemy submarine activity.

“We were listening for submarines to break radio contact,” she said, “but they never did. That’s why it was so dull.”

After leaving the Navy in 1945, Ramsdell entered the Worcester School of Business Science where she studied new shorthand methods and advanced accounting.

She took a job as a private secretary for the president of a manufacturing plant that employed 400 workers.

She stayed on that job until she married Robert Ramsdell in 1948. Twelve years later, Robert died, leaving his wife to raise their four children.

She also took over the business that her husband’s father had started in 1920.

“How many ladies did you know back in the ’60s that ran an automotive machine shop?” she said. “Life was much more challenging than in the Navy.”

Ramsdell learned the business from the ground up, doing everything from deliveries to working the machine shop.

In 1977 she decided to relocate to Blue Hill, an annual vacation destination since she was married.

She came alone to Blue Hill to find a location for her business, turning heads as she went about it.

“Imagine a 60-year-old woman walking into a real estate office and saying, ‘I’m looking for a building to start an automotive business,’” she said.

It took a little effort to convince the real estate agents that she was on the level, but eventually she bought a building in Bucksport and opened Ramsdell Auto Supply and Machine Shop.

After selling her business and two houses in Worcester, Ramsdell moved her family to Blue Hill. She worked in the Bucksport business until she was 79. Two of her sons continue the business today.

“I planned to work until I was 80,” she said, “but the kids said, ‘Why not take the summer off?’ I did and never went back. I went sailing instead.”

She is looking forward to turning 89 later this year and spending time with her nine grandchildren and one great-grandson.

— James Straub