Beverly Sayles came of age when women, who had stepped forth valiantly a decade earlier to take jobs in factories as their husbands and fathers were fighting in World War II, were being sent back home once peacetime returned.
She wasnt having any of it.
Beverly entered the workforce straight out of high school, first in the accounting department of a trucking firm where her father worked as a driver. Then as a scheduler and receptionist at a health clinic in her hometown, Terre Haute, Ind.
Even so, Beverly couldnt let go of a high school memory when a Navy recruiter said students should consider a career in the armed forces.
The Navy was intriguing, she admitted, but her heart lay elsewhere.
With the Marines.
I think it was the uniforms, she said. It was always going to be the Marines.
Her dreams of the military remained just that until she went to California to visit family in December 1954. She was 20.
A recruiting station was nearby.
Beverly and her travel acquaintance went to the station and volunteered to take a competency test.
Beverly passed; her friend did not.
They said Id gotten the highest number anybody had ever had, Beverly said, but they never told me how many questions I missed. It was a hard test. It covered a little bit of everything.
Maybe they were just trying to make me feel good, she laughed, or they really meant it.
While recruiters told Beverly she could pursue a wide array of positions with the Marines, one area beckoned most air traffic control. Id always loved airplanes, she said.
Beverly spent nearly three years with the Marines, from early 1954 through 1957.
