thedrifter
07-10-08, 06:45 AM
Former Marine earns salute for her history projects
By Anna Chang-Yen
achang-yen@VenturaCountyStar.com
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Mary Bacon Hale has a resumé few can match. She's been a fashion model and a Marine, and then a fashion model again.
The 86-year-old Camarillo resident said she didn't necessarily set out to make a groundbreaking career choice when she was one of the first female Marines to enlist in 1944. She simply was looking for a change from modeling.
She suffered a series of personal tragedies at the age of 21, when her husband and mother died at the same time.
"That threw me off my feet for a while," she said. "I thought if I went into the Marine Corps, that would keep me busy. Tragic incidents led me to want to get into something that would be enveloping."
Hale has received a national honor, the 2008 Col. Julia E. Hamblet Award, for her work in preserving the history of female Marines.
Hale spent years compiling the stories of female Marines, from World War I to those currently serving, into three volumes of the Women Marine Association Pictorial. She also has supported the WMA's Oral History Project to record individual autobiographies and is a member of the WMA history committee.
Hale donated more than $60,000 to fund "The History Project," an effort launched by a Colorado WMA chapter. The results were a yearlong museum exhibit, "Women of the Corps," in Castle Rock, Colo.; three temperature-controlled storage facilities and a state-of-the-art computer documentation system; and five women Marine traveling exhibits that are available to museums, schools, universities and veterans groups.
Hale also has provided funding to the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation and the National Museum of the Marine Corps, and she has supported the Women in Service to America Memorial since its development stage. She founded three local chapters of the WMA.
"Mary is a walking history book," wrote Sara Phoenix, a Florida resident and fellow Marine who nominated Hale for the award. "Her knowledge is that of a true historian and preservationist."
Hale "listens and remembers and can bring a story to life for those not there by describing the culture, the time and place of the events that make these Marines' stories so unique," Phoenix wrote.
Hale joined the Marines on the heels of the first enlisted female Marine, Pvt. Lucille McClarren, who signed up in 1943. It wasn't until 1948 that women's presence in the Corps became permanent, with Congress' approval of the Women's Armed Services Integration Act.
Training for the Corps was tough, Hale said.
"Having people yelling at you all the time and making you feel like you were 2 feet tall, it was rough on women. They trained us as if we were men."
As a Marine, she held clerical positions and also reviewed war films to be edited for training purposes. It was "gory" and "very unnerving," she said.
One of her first posts was as a sergeant major's secretary. "He was an old salt and very nasty," she said. "He'd come in drunk and throw up in my wastebasket. It was very unpleasant."
After leaving the Marines, while her husband, Edward "Frosty" Hale, was stationed in Japan during the Korean War, she returned to modeling.
"It became business for me," she said. She later started a protocol and etiquette school that operated in cities around the country.
She lived in more than 30 different homes before settling in Leisure Village in Camarillo in 1979. Since then, she has served on beautification committees in the city, working with the California Department of Transportation to improve landscaping along local roadways.
Hale began her work in preserving the history of female Marines in the 1990s. She said she's always been interested in history, but "after I became part of history, my interest peaked."
Fellow Marine Mary Phillips of Camarillo described Hale as "a very strong person," "definitely a good leader" and "a giver." She once helped put a young woman through college after a Marine sergeant told Hale the woman would make a good officer, Phillips said.
Paula Sarlls of Aurora, Colo., president of the WMA, said Hale has been both a personal friend and an extraordinary colleague.
"I think she knows how important it is not to forget where we came from," Sarlls said. "Living as long as she's lived, you figure that out. This is something we women have gone through and have in common, and we know that if we don't save it, nobody else is."
Ellie
By Anna Chang-Yen
achang-yen@VenturaCountyStar.com
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Mary Bacon Hale has a resumé few can match. She's been a fashion model and a Marine, and then a fashion model again.
The 86-year-old Camarillo resident said she didn't necessarily set out to make a groundbreaking career choice when she was one of the first female Marines to enlist in 1944. She simply was looking for a change from modeling.
She suffered a series of personal tragedies at the age of 21, when her husband and mother died at the same time.
"That threw me off my feet for a while," she said. "I thought if I went into the Marine Corps, that would keep me busy. Tragic incidents led me to want to get into something that would be enveloping."
Hale has received a national honor, the 2008 Col. Julia E. Hamblet Award, for her work in preserving the history of female Marines.
Hale spent years compiling the stories of female Marines, from World War I to those currently serving, into three volumes of the Women Marine Association Pictorial. She also has supported the WMA's Oral History Project to record individual autobiographies and is a member of the WMA history committee.
Hale donated more than $60,000 to fund "The History Project," an effort launched by a Colorado WMA chapter. The results were a yearlong museum exhibit, "Women of the Corps," in Castle Rock, Colo.; three temperature-controlled storage facilities and a state-of-the-art computer documentation system; and five women Marine traveling exhibits that are available to museums, schools, universities and veterans groups.
Hale also has provided funding to the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation and the National Museum of the Marine Corps, and she has supported the Women in Service to America Memorial since its development stage. She founded three local chapters of the WMA.
"Mary is a walking history book," wrote Sara Phoenix, a Florida resident and fellow Marine who nominated Hale for the award. "Her knowledge is that of a true historian and preservationist."
Hale "listens and remembers and can bring a story to life for those not there by describing the culture, the time and place of the events that make these Marines' stories so unique," Phoenix wrote.
Hale joined the Marines on the heels of the first enlisted female Marine, Pvt. Lucille McClarren, who signed up in 1943. It wasn't until 1948 that women's presence in the Corps became permanent, with Congress' approval of the Women's Armed Services Integration Act.
Training for the Corps was tough, Hale said.
"Having people yelling at you all the time and making you feel like you were 2 feet tall, it was rough on women. They trained us as if we were men."
As a Marine, she held clerical positions and also reviewed war films to be edited for training purposes. It was "gory" and "very unnerving," she said.
One of her first posts was as a sergeant major's secretary. "He was an old salt and very nasty," she said. "He'd come in drunk and throw up in my wastebasket. It was very unpleasant."
After leaving the Marines, while her husband, Edward "Frosty" Hale, was stationed in Japan during the Korean War, she returned to modeling.
"It became business for me," she said. She later started a protocol and etiquette school that operated in cities around the country.
She lived in more than 30 different homes before settling in Leisure Village in Camarillo in 1979. Since then, she has served on beautification committees in the city, working with the California Department of Transportation to improve landscaping along local roadways.
Hale began her work in preserving the history of female Marines in the 1990s. She said she's always been interested in history, but "after I became part of history, my interest peaked."
Fellow Marine Mary Phillips of Camarillo described Hale as "a very strong person," "definitely a good leader" and "a giver." She once helped put a young woman through college after a Marine sergeant told Hale the woman would make a good officer, Phillips said.
Paula Sarlls of Aurora, Colo., president of the WMA, said Hale has been both a personal friend and an extraordinary colleague.
"I think she knows how important it is not to forget where we came from," Sarlls said. "Living as long as she's lived, you figure that out. This is something we women have gone through and have in common, and we know that if we don't save it, nobody else is."
Ellie