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Dorothy Eileen Livernois Scannell
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Birth: Dec. 2, 1918
Death: Dec. 13, 2013
From: Martenson Family of Funeral Homes
Mrs. Dorothy Eileen Scannell
December 2, 1918 - December 13, 2013
Riverview, Michigan | Age 95
"Our Dearest Dorothy"
Obituary
Scannell, Dorothy Eileen. Age 95. December 13, 2013 of Riverview. Dorothy was born in Wyandotte, MI on December 2, 1918 to Daniel and Matilda (nee: Friske) Livernois. She was preceded in death by her husband Leo and is survived by all her loving family and friends. She proudly served her Country in the United States Navy and was proud to have been one of the first women along with her friend Ethel to have enlisted with the United States Navy WAVES (Women's Auxiliary Volunteer Emergency Service). In addition to her Military Service, Dorothy was a Personnel Administrator for General Motors.
As written by Dorothy in June of 2012:
Dorothy Scannell's Memoirs...
My name is Dorothy Scannell and I am a relative of Whitman Redman. Whitney's great-grandfather, Albert Livernois, was my first cousin, and Whitney's grandmother. Andrea Livernois Just, put us in touch with each other for this project.
The year 1943 is such a long time ago, almost 70 years actually. My memory is beginning to falter, but some events are still vivid in my mind as though they happened yesterday. It was the year I joined the Navy- just a little short of my 25th birthday. I had been dating a sailor and became fascinated with his stories of Navy life. I quit my job as a stenographer at a small firm in Detroit and on October 21, 1943 joined the Navy WAVES (Women's Auxiliary Volunteer Emergency Service)
At the recruiting office we were given several tests: "intelligence, interests, skills, personality, etc." and had to submit a letter from our family physician. We recruits were to meet a few days later to depart for basic training. It was called "boot camp." On that day, this eager beaver was the first to arrive. The second woman who arrived became my best buddy and we remained friends until she died in July 2008 at the age of 94. "Boot Camp" was an upscale apartment complex in the Bronx, New York. We did a lot of drilling. My feet swelled so badly I had to borrow shoes from another recruit who wore shoes 2 sizes larger than my own.
We also had classes on Naval history, regulations, identification and Navy ships and airplanes, and more drilling-probably for fitness and endurance.
One saturday night while at Boot Camp, we enjoyed and had the privilege of having a new young singer by the name of Frank Sinatra. There was lots of swooning in the audience.
Boot Camp lasted three months.
In January 1944, after another week at my home, my new-found friend and I were assigned to Iowa State Teachers College for yeoman training (yeoman meaning clerical) to further our shorthand and typing skills.
At the end of our training three months later, we were given choices as to where we wanted to be assigned. My friend and I chose California, but instead we were sent to Washington, D.C., to join 10,000 other WAVES. (We found out later that when given a choice of where you wished to be assigned, indicated the opposite direction to which you wanted to go.)
There was more testing when we arrived in Washington. My friend and I were assigned to Intelligence Units- she to the Courier Intelligence Service at the Navy Department in downtown Washington, D.C. and I to Communications Intelligence at a radio station in Silver Springs, Maryland, a suburb of Washington. My friend could not be assigned to the same unit because her mother was born in Canada, and the requirement for placement in the Communications unit was that both parents be born in the United States.
The Communications Intelligence Unit at the time was a secret agency. We had ships at sea with radio operations who intercepted messages of the Germans in the Atlantic and the Japanese in the Pacific. I was a teletype operator. We teletype operators did not know what the messages were that we were typing (they were in code, in letters or numbers), but when volume was heavy we knew something big was happening and we would dash out after work to get a newspaper to find out what was going on.
"Traffic" was extremely heavy at the time of the invasion in Europe. In January of 1945 my WAVE officer informed me that I was one of six WAVES who had been recommended for officer candidate school (OCS) in April. However, by April the war in Europe was nearing an end and the assignment to OCS was cancelled.
Shortly after the chief of Naval Operations instituted a program to bring home the sailors who were assigned to the radio station in Hawaii. In essence it would be an exchange of the teletypes. A WAVE would be listed by name to take a sailor's place in Hawaii and that sailor would take the WAVES place in Maryland. I was one of 21 WAVES to be assigned to the Hawaiian station, which was directly behind the Admiral's Headquarters and looked out on Pearl Harbor, near Honolulu, on the Island of Oahu.
In June of 1945 we were sent to Camp Shoemaker near Sacramento, California to await transportation to the new placement.
Six weeks later we were flown to Hawaii on a Navy plane. Several hours after departure, the pilot announced that we had lost one engine, but we were at a point of no return. Everyone on board was very anxious and one WAVE kept asking when we were going to be issued parachutes. Imagine being dropped with a parachute in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
We arrived at the Honolulu Airport about 1:00 a.m. and since the war in Japan was still not over, the Island was under black out. We were taken to barracks close by, but the facility had not been in use for some time and everything was covered in red dust. We had to clean the place before we could hop in bed, so we were very tired by that time, but happy to be in Hawaii.
Very shortly after I reported to the station at Pearl Harbor, the United States dropped bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan. The message of the bomb droppings were sent to the radio station where I worked (because as I mentioned earlier we were right behind Admiral Nimitz's Headquarters). The report was not encoded so we all were able to read the message.
The Truce was signed on August 8, 1945 and the war with Japan was over. Our radio unit was closed.
The ratings of the women I worked with was "Specialist Q", to represent communication specialists. But since I received my rating at school, I was classified as a Yeoman and my last rating was Yeoman 3/c. Since the unit was closed my co-workers went home, but since I was a Yeoman I had to stay for six months and I was assigned as a secretary to one of the officers at the District Communication Office. I had to make friends all over again. My friend who had stayed stateside also was discharged at that time and went home from her post in Washington.
In April 1946, I and several other WAVES who were being sent home boarded the USS Jefferson ( a personnel carrier) at Hickman field. Several hundred servicemen were also on board. We left port a little earlier than planned because a tsunami was headed for the Hawaiian Islands. The first two days aboard ship were very rough (waves higher than the ship almost), but the rest of the trip was calm. Five days later we embarked at San Francisco where a huge "Welcome Home" sign was painted on the side of a building. From there we boarded a train for home.
I did not receive any special medals, but I received from the Chief of Naval Operations a letter of commendation for meritorious service. This letter was sent to only 43 of the 1500 servicemen and women who were attached to the Communication Intelligence Agency.
In July of 1948, after I was married and out of the Navy for two years, I received a phone call from the commanding officer of the unit I was with in Washington asking if I would help establish a communications office at the R. Thornton Brodhead Armory in Detroit. I said I would, I did, and I served another 2 1/2 years in the Navy Reserve at once-a-week meetings. I had to request a discharge when my boss at General Motors suggested I request the discharge because General Motors was opening a tank plant and he was to be the executive in charge and we were going to be very busy.
The day after I received discharge, all requests for discharge were cancelled and I would have been recalled to Navy service. Two of my friends with whom I had worked in Washington were recalled and had to serve another year.
When I was stationed in Washington I did get to other places around the east coast. Since we had a strange work schedule while there, every so often we would have 2 or 3 days to visit other areas. I was able to visit relatives in Boston, Massachusetts; Philadelphia; Richmond, Virginia; Alexandria, Virginia; Chester, Pennsylvania; and New York City. I made the trip to New York City to visit Whitney Redman's great-grandfather and grandmother. her great-grandfather was in the Army Engineer Corps and had been sent to New York to await shipping overseas. The Army had taken over an apartment complex to house the men, and those who were married could have their wives with them for a week before they were sent overseas. While her great-grandparents were there I visited them and we had a wonderful time.
Burial:
Glen Eden Memorial Park
Livonia
Wayne County
Michigan, USA
Created by: Kurt Johnson
Record added: Mar 04, 2015
Find A Grave Memorial# 143319294
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1918 - 2013 (95 years)