In February 1946, Commander Hancock became the Assistant Director (Plans) of the Women’s Reserve and was promoted to WAVES’ Director, with the rank of Captain, in July of that year. She guided the WAVES through the difficult years of Naval contraction in the later 1940s and the expansion of the early 1950s, a period that also saw the Navy’s women achieve status as part of the Regular Navy.
She became a Navy Nurse in September 1917, subseqently serving with Naval Base Hospital Number 3 in the U.S. and in Scotland during World War I, holding the grade of Chief Nurse for most of that period. Following the war, she was placed in charge of nursing activities at the U.S. Naval Hospital at San Diego, California.
As the founder of Central Reference, Dr. Julia Ward significantly affected the future of a key function across a wide variety of targets and problems at the NSA. Her pioneering efforts to build a library of classified and unclassified resources to aid analysis greatly advanced the American cryptologic effort.
As the Soviet Union’s Communist regime collapsed Wetzel was Chief of a major operational analysis group at the NSA. She saw the Division through the critical time of the Agency’s restructuring to align with new world issues. She moved through several managerial positions in the 1990s including Commandant of the National Cryptologic School.
Premier linguist and codebreaker at NSA reconstructing many codes during her 30-year career.
Nellie Locust was one of a few Native American women to join the SPARS. Her service during World War II is an example of Native American servicemembers’ commitment to both tribal pride and American patriotism.
During the 1980s, Laura Holmes served as a career cryptanalyst and supervisor against a series of challenging manual cryptosystems at the NSA. She also developed considerable expertise in an impressive number of target languages.
An innovative linguist who was a prime advocate of new ways of exploiting language materials and developed highly-valuable intelligence information at a time when the U.S. lacked other sources.
Signal Security Agency (SSA, later NSA) cryptanalyst
Dr. Delores Leon became the first woman to become a flight surgeon in the United States Army and the first woman to serve as commander of the 545th General Dispensary, Camp Humphreys, Korea in 1975.