By Nina Hendricks
Sarah Maples DAR
The Sarah Maples Chapter of DAR has its very own Navy WAVE or “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service”, (WAVES). Andrea Jean McCallum Breithaupt Small was born in Sedgwick, Alberta, Canada where her father happened to be working at the time. Her father died when she was three years old so her mother moved back to Peoria, Illinois to live with Jean’s grandmother. This grandmother was a DAR member also. Her grandmother worked as a Travelers Aid for Union Station in Peoria. She helped people with children get on the right trains and helped with luggage also.
Jean graduated from high school in Peoria at the age of 17 and wanted to go to Nursing school but she had to be 18 before they would take her. So she went to work to pass the time and instead of nursing school she joined the Navy in April of 1943 when she was 23 years old. She kept putting off nursing school because she was making good money. She took her basic training at Cedar Falls Iowa and then she was sent to Washington D.C. She was one of the first WAVES out of Peoria. Due to the scarcity of manpower and the urgency of protecting our nation, nearly 4000,000 women took on new roles in all military branches during World War II. Jean mostly worked as a secretary doing filing and shorthand,sorting mail to make sure it got to the right people.
At 95 years of age Jean remembers a lot about that time in Washington D.C. She remembers that she lived in a row house with three other girls. She remembers hearing about Pearl Harbor. She had just left church when she heard the news. She had been asked if she wanted to go to Hawaii to work before the bombing but she decided not to go, several of her friends went. She remembers rushing to the windows in the building where she worked to see President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) flag draped coffin ride by on a horse drawn caisson down Pennsylvania Avenue. She remembers his funeral procession was on April 14, 1945. She remembers that this is where she met her future husband at a Navy USO party. She said the Catholic Church had a really good USO for all the service men and women.
Both she and Joe were Yeomen 1st Class. They were both working toward earning their Chief stripe. Joe receive his. She married him on July 13, 1945, three months after they met and were married for 29 years until his death from cancer. They were married in a chapel by a Naval Chaplain. Her mother and grandmother were able to come to the wedding and her mother even managed to have a cake. Joe was stationed on the USS Yorktown when it was hit by Japanese aircraft who managed to land three bombs on its deck. The Yorktown was an aircraft carrier commissioned in the United States Navy from 1937 until she was sunk at the battle of Midway in June of 1942. The ship was being towed back to Pearl when an unknown Japanese submarine sent torpedo’s to finish the job. Joe went over the side which was about a three story drop. The Yorktown rolled upside down and then sank.The men were picked up by other ships in the area. Joe was in the Navy for 12 years and Jean for 2 1/2. Jean and Joe made their home in the Corsicana area where he was from and where they raised three sons. Jean then married Marlyn Small and they were married for 9 years until his death.
Jean just had a birthday on Jan. 3 and we wish her all the best. Jean very quietly goes about doing whatever is ask of her. She rarely misses a Sarah Maples DAR meeting.
