The WAVES of Bainbridge U.S. Naval Training Center
1951-1972

By Erika Quesenbery Sturgill
From the Feb. 24, 2017 edition of the Cecil Whig
BAINBRIDGE — There are perhaps few veterans more proud of their service than a Navy WAVE. At least that is the humble opinion of this writer, having taken dozens of former WAVEs on tours of the former Bainbridge U.S. Naval Training Center.
A training school for recruits of the U.S. Naval Reserve’s WAVE, or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, program was established in October 1951 and storied Bainbridge was the sole recruit training center for WAVEs until the program was moved to Orlando, Fla., in 1972. It was, by all accounts of WAVEs who were welcomed aboard at USNTC Bainbridge, a sad day indeed when the WAVE Recruit Training Command moved south to sunny Florida from Bainbridge.
And it was a shock, as well.
Just a few years prior, after all, a brand new WAVE Recruit Barracks had been built at Bainbridge. It was known as Hunter Hall and was dedicated and occupied at Bainbridge exactly 50 years ago this Friday, on Feb. 24, 1967.
A post on the USNTC Bainbridge Association Facebook page last year, recognizing the upcoming 50th anniversary of Hunter Hall prompted a flurry of comments and activity.
“I was one of the first Navy WAVEs to occupy Hunter Hall when it was built,” wrote Theresa Sudul Lakin on the page in April 2015. “We had to sleep in the old barracks for two weeks because Hunter Hall wasn’t ready yet. Those old barracks were spooky!”
Another WAVE, Bonita Wells, agreed. She went to Bainbridge for an eight-week boot camp starting Aug. 7, 1968.
“The first two weeks were in the old World War II barracks — open wooden barracks where even exercise was banned for fear of the building not being stable enough — then it was on to Hunter Hall,” Wells wrote.
Hunter Hall housed 452 recruits with four women to each sleeping area when it was first opened to WAVEs in 1967. Incidentally, that was the same year that the former Bainbridge Hospital, another strong and fond memory for many a local, was deactivated and replaced for an easily forgettable base dispensary.
Hunter Hall does have the honor of being one of only a handful of Navy-era buildings that still miraculously remain standing at Bainbridge. It is the “H” shaped building along Jacob Tome Highway a quasi-guardian of the hillside with a commanding view of the mounds of old barracks that became hillsides.
There is a special bond between the WAVEs who served and trained at Bainbridge. In October 2015, they held their second annual USNTC Bainbridge WAVES Reunion in Cocoa Beach, Fla.
“We had to wear a dress when we traveled to Bainbridge by bus from the Port Authority in New York City,” Catherine Ferguson Guy recalled. “However, when I graduated high school in 1969 there was still such a thing as a dress code. So wearing a dress to travel in and then wearing uniform skirts all the time was no big deal. It was what I was used to.”
Much thanks to our friend Erika Quesenbery Sturgill!