IN MEMORY OF SARAH ANN DAVIS October 13, 1923 - April 17, 2009. On this day in 1942, after considerable effort to overcome opposition in Congress and the military generally, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation establishing the WAVES or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service; returning women to general Navy service after a twenty-three year absence. Since WWI when some 11,000 women were enlisted as Yeomen (F) or “Yeomanettes,” mostly serving in clerical and secretarial positions, only a few women had continued as Navy nurses. By WWIIs end, there would be over 100,000 WAVES. One of them was lesbian Sarah Davis from tiny Independence, Iowa, whose nickname was “Sammi.” Later she said that she joined in 1943 for “the adventure, the excitement. I was going to save the world for democracy. I liked the military life. I liked the discipline. I liked the order. I liked the marching, and the tunes.” Though WAVES could not serve aboard combat ships or aircraft, they supported them; Davis was an Aviation Machinist Mate First Class at the Naval Air Station in Vero Beach, Florida, and wrote news stories for the Naval Flight Exhibition Team in Jacksonville. Before volunteering, she “didnt hear anything about being queer. Didnt even know that word existed when I went into the Navy. We used to go to the bars open to lesbians, and hug and kiss and so on, but we had to keep things under control. And we definitely couldnt acknowledge commanding officers who might be lesbian, because you could get into big trouble. You had to form relationships very discreetly and privately. After the war, she was interrogated during a witch-hunt, a part of the about-face the military did after mostly “looking the other way” during the War once they no longer needed so many troops, and began lecturing new women recruits about the horrors of aggressive lesbians. Davis survived by breaking up with her lover, and denying she knew other gay women, and was ultimately given an honorable discharge. But she told documentary filmmaker Arthur Dong that, “[I]t made me very, very guarded for years and years. It took away what power that I thought I had. It broke my spirit, really, a lot. And thats been hard to recover, very hard.” It took many years, but one of the ways she found healing, and came out publicly, was winning seven gold medals in the seniors category at 1990’s Gay Games. In the interim, she attended Stanford University and USC, and was graduated in 1952 in Occupational Therapy and certified in Physical Therapy in 1956. In 1963, she received a Master of Arts Degree in Photography from San Francisco State College. She also served in the Peace Corps in 1971, serving in Swaziland, worked for San Francisco’s Visiting Nurses Association, and became a deacon in San Francisco’s All Saints’ Episcopal Church. For years she lived with her dog, Rambo, in an 1896 three-story Victorian on Clayton Street in the Haight that she bought in 1960, and ran as a boardinghouse worthy of one of Armistead Maupin’s characters. A 2008 “New York Times” article about it being remodeled by its new owners upon the move by Davis, then 81, to an assisted living facility noted that they had removed, “The mural of a naked goddess that once dominated the entrance parlor is gone, [and] the communal shower with its swinging saloon doors. But a few remnants survive, including a wrought-iron peace sign on the back porch and, in a bathroom, a stained-glass portrait of St. Peter that had been salvaged in the 1960s from a demolished church. Tenants and guests [had] painted walls and ceilings with mandalas, Rastafarian basketball players, and a tree root that morphed into a rabbit, horse, and wolf.” Upon her death the next year back in Iowa, Davis left a trust from her sale of her colorful house benefiting various groups including Marin County’s Canal Alliance that serves low-income immigrant populations with “crisis counseling, a food pantry, classes in English, computers, and citizenship, and affordable legal help to keep families together.” A niece wrote: “Aunt Sarah was a positive influence in my live. She always encouraged me to reach for the stars. She lived her life to the fullest, and had many exciting experiences. She followed her mothers example and continued fighting for women’s rights. She will be missed.” May this American patriot rest in peace. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For stories about other LGBs who served during WWII, Allan Bérubés pioneering Coming Out Under Fire is a must read. amazon/Coming-Out-Under-Fire-History-ebook/dp/B00433SO6M/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406752793&sr=1-1&keywords=9780807899649 Tip of the hat to gay Navy veteran and cofounder of ORAH (Operation Restore Advocate Heal) for those negatively affected by the Pentagon policy ban or DADT Phillip Zimmerman for the reminder about the WAVES anniversary.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 20:21:44 +0000
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