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BISBEE — It was spring of 1943.
The United States had been at war for less than a year and a half.
Reading one of her favorite magazines, The Ladies Home Journal, which has been published since 1886, Margaret Louise Franzen saw a small “blurb” saying “the leathernecks were looking for women.”
Mind you the item did not say a few good women or even a few good men — the latter an ad ploy for recruiting men into the Marines today.
  
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Then a 21-year-old elementary school teacher in Spooner, Wis., Franzen was interested in donning a uniform to have a more active part in America’s effort during World War II.
Like the vast majority of Americans, service in the military in the 1940s or on the home front during the war was a necessity.
With the United States having been attacked by the Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941, whose naval air forces hit military installations in Hawaii, it was the duty of Americans to fight back, she said.
“As far as I am concerned, it was essential,” Franzen said.
Born in the small village of Turtle Lake, Wis., which today has a population of slightly more than 1,000, she notes with pride, “I was born on the same day as FDR (President Franklin Delano Roosevelt),” although his birth on Jan. 30 took place in 1882 and hers in 1922.
With three years of higher education at the Superior State College, now the University of Wisconsin at Superior, many young women were being tapped to fill in for men who had gone off to war and that was especially true in the education arena.
Having completed practice teaching, she was offered a job in Spooner at the fifth- and sixth-grade level, which she took.
Like Turtle Lake, Spooner is a small town, with a population today of about 2,700.
Before moving to Spooner, she lived in Superior, a city whose population today of about 29,000 is about 15,000 fewer than in the 1940s, where her father, Oscar, was a section foreman for a railroad, she said.
After coming home from teaching Sunday school on Dec. 7, 1941, she said a family friend told her parents to turn on the radio.
“The radio and newspapers is where we got our information,” she noted.
It was then the family heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
It was devastating, and she and other Americans knew they were in for a long-haul fight.
When FDR went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war, Franzen said his speech, which was heard over the radio, “was eloquent, especially the words he used to described the attack as ‘a date which will live in infamy.’ ”
Little did she know she would eventually provide direct support to America’s armed forces around 18 months later.
From teacher to Marine
In Spooner, she and three other teachers took up residence in a private home, each paying $15 a month for a room.
The cost did not include meals. To eat, the teachers would purchase rolls and juice for breakfast, but for lunch and dinner they would usually go to the City Cafe, where they would put the cost of the meals “on the tab,” to be paid at the end of the month, usually running from $22 to $25.
“I made $1,000 a year as teacher,” she said, little knowing when she enlisted in the Women Marines her pay would be a lot less, although it included room and meals.
There wasn’t much free time for teachers, and if she and the others wanted to relax and have a drink, it could not happen in Spooner where parents of the children they taught could see them imbibing, Franzen said.
That meant going to another community to indulge, which was not a frequent occasion, she added with a laugh.
On Feb. 13, 1943, Franzen made her decision to try and become a Woman Marine.
The Army and Navy had been accepting women for some time before the Marines decided to do the same.
When it came to the Army and Navy, “I didn’t give it any thought,” she said.
But there was something about becoming a leatherneck that was intriguing.
Because school was still in session, she could not enlist until after the end of the school year, which was in May.
“I just couldn’t leave my job,” Franzen said.
To her, “education is important” and as such is critical to the nation’s well-being, something she has stressed for most of her 86 years of life.
When she informed her parents, both immigrants from Sweden, about her decision to enlist in the Marines, their reaction was fairly muted.
“My mother (May) said ‘Oh,’ and nothing more,” Franzen said.
Her mother served as a Swedish Red Cross nurse before coming to the United States in 1918 to marry Oscar, who had immigrated in 1912. Franzen has an older sister, Mary Ann, who is still alive and who, like her mother, became a nurse.
To go through with her intent to enlist, Franzen said she sent a telegram to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina seeking information about what she had to do to join the Women Marines.
The response, via telegram from the Corps, was for her to go to Minneapolis, Minn., to begin the process. And off she went, by train, and after a physical and other paperwork, “I was given the oath on the same day,” she said.
That day was May 26, 1943.
Franzen did not immediately depart for basic training. She was told to go home and she would be informed when to report and how, which took a couple of months.
She finally got a telegram from the Marines directing her to board a troop train that was coming from the West Coast. She would be joining other women who had enlisted in the Marines.
That began a many-day journey to the East Coast, where Franzen met a wide variety of women, most in their early 20s.
“It was a highly educated group,” she said.
With humor, she noted that everyone spoke American English, but regional twangs were plentiful.
Life as a Marine, an instructor
Franzen was one of the more than 21,000 women who became Women Marines during World War II. During the First World War, slightly more than 300 women were allowed in the Marines for less than a year, from Aug. 12, 1918, to July 30, 1919, to provide clerical assistance. The only other record of a woman serving as a Marine prior to 1918 was one who disguised herself as a man and who served aboard the USS Constitution during the War of 1812 until she was discovered serving under false colors, as it were, and was removed from the ship.
The object of Women Marines during World War II was to “free a man to fight,” as Marine recruiters put it.
The troop train eventually reach Washington, D.C., and after a night stay in that city, she and the others were off to Camp Lejeune, N.C., for a short three weeks of basic training.
“We learned how to march, the history of the Corps and how to fire a rifle,” she said.
She has no idea why she was chosen to become a Link Instrument Trainer instructor, but that is what she became, heading to the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C. She later would do the same job at Naval Air Station Vero Beach, Fla.
The Link Trainer was used to instruct pilots in the art of instrument flying, without having them watch the ground. The device, invented by Edwin Link in 1929, was critical because in many combat flights, especially over water, flying by instruments was critical.
Pilots were put into the simulator, which became known as the blue box, where they could not look outside and had to navigate by instruments within the Link.
It was a satisfying job, Franzen said, noting many of the women had other highly technical work, such as becoming air traffic controllers and aircraft mechanics.
As the U.S. war effort began to hurt the enemy, she said she knew the efforts of Women Marines were instrumental in the final defeat of the Axis.
During those years, the civilian population, including her family, pitched in to help. Her father volunteered as a guard for the Port of Superior, a major ship building and water transportation hub along Lake Superior. Before enlisting, Franzen and other teachers in Spooner were called upon to register people for the various coupons needed to purchase food, gasoline or other items.
“World War II was bigger than any individual. We won because we came together as a nation,” Franzen said.
For her and other veterans, the federal government’s G.I. Bill was a program where those who served were guaranteed an education, something no other nation has ever provided to their warriors, she said.
In August 1945, Japan admitted defeat, formally surrendering on Sept. 2.
On Sept. 29, 1945, Sgt. Margaret Louise Franzen was discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.
In a document that accompanied her discharge certificate, it was noted her pay as a sergeant was $78 a month, and she was paid 5 cents a mile for her travel from Camp Lejeune to Superior. She was provided $218.77 for the trip home.
The form noted at the time of her enlistment that she was 69 and three-quarters inches high, had blue eyes, brown hair and a ruddy complexion.
Laughing, she said, “At least they didn’t put down my weight.” That is something a lady really doesn’t like to advertise.
The form was still sexist, as in two places it noted that the print of the right index finger “of the man herein” and that “within the named man” the Marines provided travel allowance. Franzen finds it funny they could not take a pen and just add “wo” before man to the form in those two places.
Taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, she went to the University of Wisconsin for graduate studies in political science, even though she did not earn a master’s degree.
Her military service led to some wanderlust to do other things with her life.
As for her time as a Woman Marine, she said, “It was a very simple life. We worked hard, we had a goal, and we were healthy.”
Looking back on those more than two years in the Corps, Franzen said there is a special bond all Marines have.
As an example, Charlie Sotelo, a 1964 graduate of Bisbee High School and a Marine veteran, and she share that connection. Although she supported his campaigns to become Bisbee mayor — he did not succeed — Franzen said political connections are not that important to her. When they meet to this day, their shared Corps experience fills both of them with pride, she said, adding “because we’re both Marines.”
Life after the military
After some graduate courses at the University of Wisconsin, Franzen found herself back in U.S. government service, working for the Department of the Interior and the State Department for the next few years.
Many of her jobs involved budgets and special projects, such as the Marshall Plan, which helped Europe and Asia get back on their feet, including the defeated nations of Germany, Italy and Japan, the major partners in the Axis.
Calling those years a “remarkable experience,” Franzen was sent to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and later was transferred to Paris, France, and then on to Turkey.
It was the Paris assignment that was the most exciting.
“I spoke French fairly well, and Paris is such a beautiful city,” she said.
She eventually returned to the United States, left government service and began looking again for a teaching position, a job she said is her real love.
She taught elementary math for a semester on the Hopi reservation in Arizona and then went to what is now Northern Arizona University to finalize her studies for her teaching certificate.
In 1964, Franzen made it to Bisbee, a community she fell in love with. “This is my type of town,” she said.
She taught fourth grade at Greenway Elementary School for four years, but then the travel bug bit her again, and soon she was off to northern Thailand working with a nonprofit international education group where she taught second-grade math in English for two years.
Coming back to the states, she could find no employment in her chosen profession, so off she went to Algeria, a country she said she is particularly fond of, for a two-year teaching stint.
Returning to Bisbee in the early 1970s, she found employment at a school in Double Adobe, where she taught fifth and sixth grades for three years.
“I had to go back overseas again,” she said.
She returned to Algeria for a year and then went on the United Arab Emirates for another year.
Then she returned to Bisbee again, which became her home base during her wanderlust years. She taught at the Naco Elementary School for five years and went on to teach at Cochise College.
Political interests
Now don’t think Franzen is a little old lady in tennis shoes who is uninvolved in life.
Far from it.
She has a strong political streak and does not hesitate to tell anyone how she feels about that world, especially when it comes to presidential issues.
The former Bisbee councilwoman, who served from 1986 to 1988, has a bookcase full of tomes about many presidents, such as John Adams, Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and others.
Although she is highly critical of many Republican stands, she has voted for GOP presidential candidates, including once for Reagan, who she said had wonderful way with words and wrote some of the best presidential speeches ever given.
As for Carter, she said the much maligned former president, who is a Democrat, is one of her favorites because of his work outside the White House and his dedication to public service through humanitarian projects.
Her interest in presidents began at an early age, even before she started kindergarten in Superior.
One day, her mother told her to look out the window of their second-floor rented apartment. Below she saw President Calvin Coolidge, who made that part of Wisconsin his summer White House for some of the years he was in office. He went there to go fishing.
Papers he needed to sign were brought to him in Superior, and he would affix his signature as part of his presidential duties.
Sitting in her third-floor apartment in Bisbee, which was built as a medical facility in 1917 and converted to apartments in the 1930s, Franzen looked out her living room window with the city’s Warren District in the foreground and Mexico in the background.
Reflecting on her early childhood and her interest in presidents, she said that when it comes to the upcoming presidential election “(Barack) Obama (the presumed Democratic presidential nominee) has my 100 percent support, because he is intelligent and beautifully uses English, both in writing and speaking.”
As for U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Franzen said he really hasn’t done anything for Arizona and almost has a messianic belief “that he is destined to become the president because he believes he has earned the position.”
What can’t be taken away from McCain is his military service to the nation, especially the time served as a prisoner of war in the hands of the North Vietnamese, she said. His age isn’t a problem for her, noting she is 15 years his senior.
Of all the presidents she has known or read about, Franzen declared President George W. Bush “is both the least intellectual and least knowledgeable.”
Like World War II, the American people supported, as she did, going after the terrorists in Afghanistan, which also had the backing of many nations. But, she said, Bush squandered that support by going into Iraq to the detriment of bringing the end of the terrorist threat in Afghanistan.
“Bush is in a dream world of his own making,” she said.
Even with the ups and down involving America’s political frailties, Franzen is always hopeful.
That hope is that future generations will be educated to be able to separate fact from fiction, especially in the world of politics.
And the key players to ensure that will happen are teachers she said, noting, “Teachers are the ones who have to excite children about education.”
Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com.
Andy wrote on Jul 17, 2008 8:44 PM: