Blog

Sylvi­a’s View

Feb 19, 2010 3:32 pm

[cap­tion id=”” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“WACs on Gov­er­nors Island. G.S. Grunert Col­lec­tion, U.S. Army Mil­i­tary His­to­ry Insti­tute; repro­duced in Gov­er­nors Island: The Jew­el of New York Har­bor, Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Press 2009 (Ann But­ten­wieser)”][/​caption]

“… I was there when it was First Army Head­quar­ters. I worked in Clas­si­fied in Liggett Hall pro­cess­ing dis­charges using IBM key punch boards. Times have changed haven’t they? It was so beau­ti­ful there and espe­cial­ly when we sat on the sea­wall view­ing Man­hat­tan in the evening even tho it was off lim­its. We use to hide in the bush­es when we heard the MP’s jeep but only to return to the wall after they left. Thank good­ness all of the coast guard build­ings were not there in 1951 which I know was nec­es­sary but it would have changed the entire atmos­phere. Our Island looked like a resort area with it’s run­way for small planes, base­ball field, ten­nis courts and 3 par golf area etc etc. We also had the First Army WAC Bas­ket­ball team of which I was a mem­ber. We had much fun trav­el­ing for the tour­na­ments and espe­cial­ly so when we had to pick up the men’s team at West Point! Gosh I’m begin­ning to feel melan­cho­lia set­ting in so I had bet­ter put an end to this now. I am so pleased with what is being done to save the old and to restore new life to Gov­er­nors Island for it will always be in my heart…”

Sylvia invites for­mer WACs sta­tioned on Gov­er­nors Island to email her at sdsnowbird1[at]yahoo[dot]com.

The Nation­al Parks Ser­vice, stew­ards of Gov­er­nors Island’s mil­i­tary his­to­ry, have been work­ing to col­lect first-per­son accounts of life on Gov­er­nors Island. To hear more sto­ries from for­mer Gov­er­nors Island res­i­dents, vis­it the Gov­er­nors Island Nation­al Mon­u­men­t’s Oral His­to­ry Project.