Reservist Magazine is the award-winning official publication of the United States Coast Guard Reserve. Quarterly issues include news and feature articles about the men and women who comprise America's premier national maritime safety and security
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"I thought, well, the Coast Guard was part of the Navy and my sister was working in a government office where her boss told her that the Coast Guard was the best run of the military services," said Hooker. Soon, she went to the Coast Guard recruiting office, which was right across the hall from the WAVES office, to inquire about enlisting in the SPARs, the Coast Guard women's reserve in World War II. The acronym SPAR stood for Semper Paratus Always Ready. "After a few weeks the Coast Guard sent an officer to try to dissuade me from joining," explained Hooker. "She said 'you're helping your country by teaching and I don't know why you would want to give all that up when all you would do is swab decks and wash pots and pans.' I thought, well, that's what I do at home, wash pots, pans, dishes and swab decks," she laughed. "So I said, 'well, if other women are doing that, I think I can do it too.'" The officer made Hooker promise that she would at least think about it for a week. But once the officer left her mind was made up. She went to the recruiter to sign up. "The recruiter was delighted; she wanted to be the first one to put an African American into active duty," said Hooker. "The recruiter said 'we have to have eight people, we don't send one person to basic training, so I'll call you when I get the eighth person.' None of them, of course, were African American, but she got seven more and off we went to New York." Hooker, who had no military experience, was thrilled to be headed to basic training at the Manhattan Beach Training Station in New York but was completely unsure of what to expect. "I took a trunk full of luxuries. I was amazed when I got there and they said 'we'll have to put that trunk in storage; you can't have a trunk in the barracks.' I was astonished, but I let them put it in storage," she recalled with laughter. Hooker was the first African American woman to report to basic training but the day after she arrived, a second African American woman, Eileen Cook, reported for duty. Though the two were put in different battalions, they soon became fast friends. "We found each other immediately," said Hooker. "[Eileen] said 'if you volunteer to wax the hall every morning and I volunteer to do the stairs then we can get together every day.' So that's what we did," she said with another laugh. Hooker acknowledges her camaraderie with Cook helped her through basic training because, in Cook, she always had someone she could talk to, though that's not to say she felt discriminated against in any way. "Everything was very equal [in basic training]; there was no discrimination that I knew of," said Hooker. "All of us were considered to be molded. They worked very hard to mold us into what they considered to be a good graduate of basic training." After graduating basic training, Hooker took her trunk full of luxuries and reported to yeoman "A" school. Though she passed the shorthand test to get into the school, she struggled with this requirement. While most of the women in her class had been secretaries for large corporations with a lot of shorthand experience, Hooker only had the knowledge she gained from a one semester course in the subject during high school. "There were six of us who didn't write fast enough so [the school] sent a tutor over every night," Hooker recalled. "So instead of doing our hair and doing our fingernails, we had to practice shorthand until we came up to the standard, but we did. We graduated on time. It was fun, in a way, because we learned something." Hooker was then assigned to the separation center in Boston as a new yeoman third class. "The work was interesting because I was assigned to the lieutenant in charge of the separation center," she said. "I did the discharges, and a lot of the men came back from WWII and they wanted to be sure all their commendations were on their discharges and that sort of thing." Hooker enjoyed her work and the time she spent in Boston, never experiencing any outright discrimination. "People were uncommonly good to us," said Hooker. "There was a woman in Haymarket Circle at a little snack bar and when she saw us get off the streetcar she had our place set for us already with coffee and a donut. So when we went in, we didn't have to wait. We didn't have any major challenges. Sometimes when we would go to a restaurant that was a little upscale they would look surprised, but I didn't think that was necessarily color. I thought there were some people that thought that women in uniform were loose women and didn't necessarily want them in their restaurant," she laughed. "But, on the whole we did very well." Hooker fulfilled her service until the time came in 1946 when the SPARs were being discharged. However, at this time Hooker Seaman Apprentice Olivia Hooker in March 1945, when she became the frst African American woman to enlist in the service. 28 RESERVIST � Issue 2 • 2015