Navy Wives — Frances Smalley Mitscher and Mary Alger Smith
(1890–1982; 1892–1987)
The two memoirs in this volume are, coincidentally, both from the widows of officers who were graduated in the Naval Academy’s class of 1910. Even so, they are strikingly different in tone.
Frances Smalley Mitscher (1890–1982)
Frances Smalley Mitscher was born on 25 Otcober 1890 in Tacoma, Washington, the daughter of attorney and judge Francis A. Smalley. She married Ensign Marc Andrew Mitscher on 16 January 1913. Admiral Mitscher, born in Hillsborough, Oklahoma, on 26 January 1887, died while serving as Commander in Chief Atlantic Fleet in February 1947. Mrs. Mitscher died in 1982 and is buried beside her husband at Arlington National Cemetery.
In her oral history, Mrs. Mitscher provides a wife’s-eye view of one of the U.S. Navy’s most famous admirals of World War II. In so doing, she reveals facets of his personality that only she saw. She recognizes that he was a different man at home than on board ship, and she describes the portion of his life that she shared. One gains a realization of the large degree that her life was shaped by her relationship with Marc Mitscher. She went where his career dictated, and thus her interests were dictated largely by her husband’s interests.
In this clip from her first interview with Commander Etta-Belle Kitchen, USN (Ret.), Mrs. Mitscher speaks of her husband, Admiral Marc Mitcher, and his keen sense of humor.
Mrs. Mitscher: In those early days of aviation, there were so few of us, and so few aviators, that we all wandered around together in Washington or out here, so there was a group that knew each other very well.
Commander Kitchen: Were you able to be with him much after Pensacola?
Mrs. Mitscher: Yes, except in the Second World War. He went first on the San Diego. I think, on a convoy, but when he came back he was ordered down to command the training station in Miami, Florida.
Commander Kitchen: Let me go back a bit. What number was he, in aviation?
Mrs. Mitscher: Thirty-three.
Commander Kitchen: Can you describe the life around Pensacola at that time?
Mrs. Mitscher: It was a very pleasant life, very attractive people, and the sort of life that you would live in a small town and in a navy yard. We really enjoyed ourselves very much. Of course, he learned to fly, and he was busy. We were together for that whole year and a half.
Commander Kitchen: Did he seem to love aviation, flying?
Mrs. Mitscher: He was very dedicated, but again I say he was not a man who talked about himself or what went on. He wasn't that sort of person.
Commander Kitchen: What did you talk about when you were together?
Mrs. Mitscher: Many things. I became the talker of the family, really, which I hadn't been too good at. He was a man who liked his close friends and small parties. He was a very good host.
We had a very close association. We didn't quarrel, except for the small quarrels that I suppose any married couple has, but I don't think we did have any. I would have quarreled, but he never would.
Commander Kitchen: He sounds as though he were an easy man to live with.
Mrs. Mitscher: Very, a very gentle man and very generous. It's hard to describe him, because I was a little while understanding him. Whether I did or not, I can't answer. We became very close. And he became a wonderful person to me. It always seemed to me that I really grew up under him. I had such a wonderful feeling of respect for him. He could be lots of fun. I never knew when he was teasing me. He could tell me something with a completely straight face.
Commander Kitchen: Do you have any recollection of any of those instances?
Mrs. Mitscher: Yes, I have one. When the Akron crashed, we were packing up to come out here on sea duty, and so were the Cecils.[*] Then, of course, he was killed on the Akron. We motored out, and I was very tired when we left Washington. We were not talking very much, either one of us. We finally were going through Kansas.
He said, "We have to get through Kansas in one day." I thought I won't ask him, I'm too tired, why he has to get through Kansas in one day. Then he said, "If a tremendous black cloud comes up over there, it's probably a cyclone. If we stop the car, just lie down and grab hold of something." And I didn't see anything out there to take hold of. We got into Colorado late that night.
The next day I said, "Why did we have to get through Kansas in one day?"
And he said, "Why, no beer." I could have strangled him. He had a great keen sense of humor, very puckish sense of humor, too. He could be a lot of fun.
[*] The rigid airship Akron (ZRS-4) crashed in a storm off Barnegat Light, New Jersey, on 4 April 1933. Among the 73 fatalities were Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, USN, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, and Commander Henry B. Cecil, USN.
Mary Taylor Alger Smith (1892–1987)
Mary Taylor Alger Smith was born on 1 May 1892 in Washington, D.C., the daughter of naval officer Philip R. Alger and the former Louisa Taylor. She married Ensign Roy Campbell Smith Jr. on 1 August 1912. Commander Smith, born in the quarters of the Naval Academy Superintendent (his grandfather) on 1 August 1888, retired from the Navy with a physical disability in 1938 and died in 1946. Mrs. Smith died in 1987 and is buried buried beside her husband at Arlington National Cemetery.
In her oral history, Mrs. Smith addresses the theme of dependency to an even larger degree than does Mrs. Mitscher. With a wry sense of humor, Mrs. Smith dwells on the inconveniences that go with raising a Navy family at home and abroad (the Smiths had four children). She had to find solutions to a good many problems that don’t confront a mother rearing children entirely in the United States. One reads here about difficulties in dealing with the cultures in such places as China and Panama, and the ways in which her children got into the sort of scrapes that children inevitably do. In addition to being a Navy wife and Navy mother, Mrs. Smith was also a Navy daughter. Her earliest recollections in this memoir extend back to the early 1900s when she was living on the grounds of the Naval Academy, where her father was a professor and an early secretary-treasurer of the Naval Institute. In engaging fashion, Mrs. Smith describes the simplicity of an era long since past—a time before telephones and automobiles were common and when radio and television had yet to be invented.
About this Volume
Based on two interviews of Frances Smalley Mitscher conducted by Commander Etta-Belle Kitchen, USN (Ret.) in January 1971, and two interviews of Mary T. Alger Smith conducted by Dr. John T. Mason Jr. in March and October 1978, the volume contains 227 pages of interview transcript (63 for Mrs. Mitscher and 164 for Mrs. Smith). The transcripts are copyright 1986 by the U.S. Naval Institute; the interviewees placed no restrictions on their use.