On a lazy Saturday morning, browsing through The Boston Globe, my eye was drawn to a story in the Metro section featuring a 102-year-old female U.S. Navy veteran from World War II, one Zecil Gravitz of Canton.
Having both the time and the interest, I started to read. Lo and behold, this woman had received her naval training as a WAVE at Smith College in Northampton more than 80 years ago. My father, R.L. “Pete” Deane of Athol, had been there at the same time. Might they have known each other?
I dug out a group photo of Dad’s training class from the family records. Across the front, filling the first row, were the women who had completed the training. One of them had an uncanny resemblance to the formal head shot of Zecil that accompanied the Globe piece. Could this be her?
Because this was a long three-day weekend, I was stymied in my attempts to contact her at her Orchard Cove retirement home in Canton. The search would have to wait until the following Tuesday.
That morning, I made the call to the home and was transferred to Zecil herself. Alas, she did not remember ever having been in training with men nor having a group photo taken, but she was interested in seeing the photo anyway, so I emailed her a scanned copy, impressed that at 102 she was using such technology.
A few hours later she called back with the news that, no, she was not one of the WAVES in the photograph.
“But thank you for trying,” she said. “That’s important, too.”
We chatted for a few minutes before concluding by wishing each other well.
I would have to be satisfied with the existing photos and documents and a tape recording of my father’s recollections of his time in the navy.
Following his assignment at Smith, Dad went on to serve as a welfare and recreation officer at the Kaneohe Naval Air Station in Hawaii and on Roi-Namur in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. At home in Vermont were his wife, a year-old son (me) and a second son on the way. He was anguished to be so far away, but he carried on with his duties, doing all that he could for the welfare of his men.
“This may not be the correct thing to do according to Emily Post,” wrote an enlisted man to my mother upon Dad’s eventual departure, “but I felt I had to tell someone just how much Pete meant to me, both as a boss and a friend.
“Pete left this morning, and I just didn’t have the guts, so to speak, to tell him how much I really grew to like him. I had a little speech all set to rattle off, but as I shook his hand, I had to bite my lip like heck to keep back the tears. (I am not a sentimentalist.)
“As is natural in the service, there is a tendency for an enlisted man to begrudge an officer because of the privileges he has over the enlisted man. But Pete, to the majority of us fellas on the island, was just another guy – and a swell one!
“Please don’t think me silly for writing this, but as I said, I felt I had to tell someone, and I know I speak for at least 500 other swabbies.”
This letter had given me some insight into my father as a naval officer that I would not otherwise have been aware of. My investigation with Zecil Gravitz had given me hope for another glimpse, but, alas, that was not to be.
Dad has now been gone for more than fifty years, but each additional discovery fills out the picture of who he was. While it would have given me great pleasure to find an additional piece of the story from Zecil, this time I came up empty.
Still, the excitement of the search for a connection brought my father back to the forefront of my attention. It was a pleasant detour from my normal routine.
A few short weeks later, I was surprised and saddened to discover Zecil’s obituary in the Globe. I hope my inquiry brought back some pleasant memories to her final days as well.
Stuart Deane lives in Newburyport.