WWII WAVES

Her life before the war

Lucy Inez Bishop was born on June 10, 1924, in South Carolina. She was the daughter of Isaac Newton Bishop and Bessie L. Bishop (née Reaves), and had three brothers and two sisters.

At the time of the 1940 census, the family was living in Inman, a small town in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Her father and one of her older sisters, Bertha Bishop, were working in a cotton mill. He was weaving shoes (made for humidity and snow), and she was a spinner. Their wages combined (in 1939) equaled a total of $1,205, which would be the equivalent of $27,295 today.

Lucy was still attending school in 1940; she was in her first year of high school. She graduated from high school before entering the military.

Her military career

Lucy enlisted in the WAVES on June 10, 1944, in Columbia, South Carolina. It was the day of her 20th birthday.

She entered active duty on July 27, 1944, and went to the United States Naval Training School for the Women’s Reserve in New York (also called Hunter College). There, she underwent recruit training, which consisted of learning about the different Navy ranks (ratings), about the ships and aircraft of the fleet, and about naval traditions and naval history. She also underwent physical training at Hunter College. That part of her training lasted about 5 weeks.

On September 5, 1944, Lucy was transferred to the United States Naval Air Station in Beaufort, South Carolina, where she arrived on September 6, 1944. It was her main station throughout the war.

From March 1945 to the end of the war, Bombing Squadron #2 was posted there, so Lucy was attached to it, though she never flew any planes and did not go overseas. It was during that period that she was advanced to Specialist (Visual Training Aids) Third Class, a Navy rating which consisted in working with training aids such as motion picture films and equipment, photographs, charts, etc…

Lucy was stationed in Beaufort for more than a year, before she was transferred on October 17, 1945, to the United States Naval Personnel Separation Center for the Women’s Reserve located at the United States Naval Air Technical Training Center in Memphis, Tennessee, where she was discharged a few days later.

Her postwar life

She married Howard D. Dugger during her service, in June 1945. Howard Dugger served in the Navy as well (he was a Seabee), but he stayed in the military after World War II, serving during the Korean War and the Vietnam War before retiring after 23 years of service.

They had one son together, Isaac H. Dugger, who was born after 1950.

Lucy lost her father on May 29, 1949, and her mother on December 16, 1978. Bessie Bishop did not remarry after Lucy’s father died, and stayed in Inman for the rest of her life, even though most of her children moved away.

While Lucy was still living in Inman with her husband (not in the same house as her mother) when the 1950 United States census was taken, she moved to Ocean Springs, a city in Jackson County, Mississippi, sometime after that, and stayed there until she died. She might have moved sometime before 1954, because a “Mrs. Lucy I. Dugger” is listed in the 1954, 1957, 1959 and 1960 city directories for Jackson, Mississippi, working as an elevator operator for the Lamar Life Insurance Building.

Her husband died in 2004 (he was 78 years old at the time of his death), and she survived him for more than seven years before she died on August 26, 2011, at the age of 87 years old. One of her brothers, the youngest, Robert, was still alive on that date.

Lucy is buried in the Biloxi National Cemetery in Biloxi, Mississippi, and her epitaph reads “Loving Wife and Mother”.

Sources

• Veterans’ Gravesites database on Ancestry (for Lucy’s date of birth).
• United States census (1940, 1950).
• United States Navy muster rolls (for her military career).
• City directories, Jackson, Mississippi (1954, 1957, 1959, 1960).
• Death record (ancestry.com, South Carolina death records) for Isaac Newton Bishop.
• Obituaries (newspapers.com) for Bessie Bishop, Howard Dugger and Lucy Dugger.
• Find a Grave (photo of Lucy’s grave).