Salute by a WAVE to 5 Recruits
OFF TO JOIN THE WAVES, the five young women in civilian clothes in the picture take a lesson in saluting from Yeoman Third Class Maurene Munger, 1921 First avenue SE. The Waves-to-be are (left to right) Phyllis Gress, 203 First avenue SW; Betty Brown, 1220 Third avenue SE; Doris Fink, 1406 First street NW; Gertrude Hoyle, 2208 Fruitland boulevard SW, and Claire Roberts, 1015 Third avenue SE. Yeoman Munger, home on leave, will leave soon for duty at the Atlanta, Ga., naval air base. The picture was taken Monday afternoon as the 5 entrained for Des Moines.
Source: Cedar Rapids Gazette, May 18, 1943 (photo included)
Phyllis Gress, in company with 22 other girls from Cedar Rapids, who have joined the WAVES, left from that city at 2:20 Sunday morning for New York, stopping off at Chicago for six hours until their train left for the east. Phyllis is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Claude Gress and is the first Clermont girl to join any of the women's auxiliaries of the armed forces.
Source: Oelwein Daily Register, June 19, 1943
Phyllis Gress of Clermont, a storekeeper in the Waves, has returned to San Francisco, Calif., where she is stationed following a visit in the home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Claude Gress, 385 Sixteenth street SE. Miss Gress enlisted in the Waves in the spring and went to the Bronx, New York City for basic training. She finished her training and was graduated Oct 5 in Boston, Mass.
Source: Cedar Rapids Gazette, October 27, 1943
S.K. 2/c Phyllis Gress left Sunday evening for Cedar Rapids after having spent a week at Clermont with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Claude Gress. She expected to leave Cedar Rapids Saturday for Chicago, Ill., to visit over the weekend with Margaret Moen, a student nurse at the Lutheran Deaconess hospital. On Monday, Aug. 21st, she was to leave from there by plane to resume her duties at Treasure Island, Calif. She was called home by the serious illness of her father who we are happy to report is now on the road to recovery.
Source: Oelwein Daily Register, August 23, 1944
