Her life before the war
Bernice Irene Andrews was born on August 4, 1922, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of William and Amelia Andrews, and had many siblings (five sisters and seven brothers, almost all older than her).
Her parents married in 1894. Her father was employed as a brakeman in 1940, and her mother was a housewife and thus unemployed.
Bernice was still attending high school in 1940; she was a senior at the Greater Johnstown High School in Johnstown, where she was still living. It is noted that she was taking the liberal arts course and wanted to be a music teacher. She probably graduated that year.
Her military career
At the time of her enlistment, Bernice was still a resident of Johnstown.
She enlisted in the WAVES on March 16, 1944, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when she was 21 years old. She entered active duty on May 4, 1944, and went to the United States Naval Training School for the Women’s Reserve in New York (also known as Hunter College). The training she received there was recruit training, and she learned about the different Navy ranks and ratings, the ships and aircraft of the fleet, about naval traditions and naval history. She was also trained in physical fitness.
Then, on June 14, 1944, she arrived at the United States Naval Training School for Yeoman women in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where her training was more specific and was meant for her to become a yeoman. In the United States navy, yeomen perform administrative and clerical work. That training lasted for 3 months.
Her main station was at the Receiving Station in Norfolk, Virginia, where she was stationed from September 14, 1944, to November 25, 1945, for more than a year. There, her rating (the Navy term for rank) was advanced from Seaman First Class to Yeoman Third Class. Given her previous training and new rating, she was probably employed in administrative or clerical work.
Bernice was discharged on November 27, 1945, at the United States Naval Personnel Separation Unit for the Women’s Reserve in Washington, D. C., after more than one year and a half of service.
Her postwar life
She married Robert Owen Ketterer in November of 1945, just before she was discharged from the naval service. Robert also served in the Navy during World War II. She had two children with him, William Ketterer who was 3 when the 1950 United States census was taken, and Karen Ketterer, who was 1 in 1950.
On the 1950 census, Bernice was listed as a housewife and was not employed. The only record of employment found for her after the war was in 1953; in the Johnstown city directory, she was listed as an organist for the Trinity Lutheran Church of Johnstown.
Bernice lived most of her postwar life with her husband and her children in Johnstown and its surroundings.
On a sadder note, she lost her mother on September 5, 1946, and her father on January 28, 1953. Her siblings also all died before she did, on January 4, 2020, at the age of 97. Her husband Robert died four years before her, but both her children (and her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren) outlived her.
Sources
Different sources were used to write this biography. Information was found in the United States censuses of 1940 and 1950, in the Greater Johnstown High School yearbook of 1940, in her bonus application for the World War II bonus given out by the state of Pennsylvania after the war and in the Navy muster rolls for her military career, and in the Johnstown city directories of 1953, 1954 and 1960 for her postwar life. All these documents can be found on Ancestry and other genealogy websites (notably for her obituary, which was found on Find a Grave, along with any record of death found in the biography, and her marriage notice, which was found on newspapers.com).
The pictures were taken from the Greater Johnstown High School yearbook of 1940, and from the website of the Military Women Memorial and World War II Registry, where she is listed.
WWII WAVES 