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
Issue link: https://uscgreservist.epubxp.com/i/386902
Local SPAR celebrates her birthday at Coast Guard Sector Lake Michigan On August 1 2014, Mrs. Delores Schubilske, a WWII member of the Womens Reserve of the Coast Guard -- better known by their nickname "SPARs" -- celebrated her 90th birthday at Coast Guard Sector Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, Wis. More than 30 people attended the celebration hosted by Coast Guard Station Milwaukee. Mrs. Schubilske was introduced by Cmdr. Max Moser, Sector Deputy Commander and presented a proclamation from Milwaukee alderman Jim Bohl. After the introduction and presentation of awards, Mrs. Schubilske spoke of her memories as a SPAR (from the CG motto: Semper Paratus, Always Ready) during World War II and her fondness of the Coast Guard. At the conclusion of the celebration, Mrs. Schubilske, along with her son and daughter, took a boat ride on Station Milwaukee's 45 Response Boat-Medium. Schubilske, born in 1924 in Wausau, Wis., grew up with three brothers and one sister on her parents' farm. After high school, she moved 200 miles southwest to Milwaukee, where she landed a job as a seamstress, sewing parachutes. While living and working in Milwaukee and seeing Coast Guard Station Milwaukee on occasion, Schubilske developed an interest in the Coast Guard. So much so that on Aug. 4, 1944, on her 20th birthday and on the 154th birthday of the Coast Guard, she joined the Coast Guard's Women's Reserve which had been created by Congress in November 1942. Like everyone else who joined the service, Schubilske went off to boot camp. After three months in "A" school, Schubilske, then a parachute rigger third class, landed at Air Station Elizabeth City, N.C., where she spent the next several months until the end of the war with about 15 other parachute riggers, all women, packing parachutes for jumpers and for air sea rescue packages that were dropped from the back of airplanes. There were only 18 women in the entire Coast Guard rated as parachute riggers. World War II ended in 1945 beginning with Germany's surrender in May and Japan's surrender in September. Schubilske was honorably discharged in Detroit on March 21, 1946 along with many other men and women. "I was disappointed that the Coast Guard would not allow women to remain," she said. "I could have joined the Navy at that time because they were allowing women to remain affiliated, but I didn't want to join the Navy." Schubilske moved back to Milwaukee where she married and started a family. When her husband passed away of cancer when they were both in their late 40s, she raised three boys and three girls by herself in the same house she lives in today. — Story by Ensign Thomas Morrell Issue 3 • 2014 � RESERVIST 23