Elizabeth Dugan

Elizabeth Dugan (née Scanlon) worked at the Charlestown Navy Yard during World War II.

Boston Globe, April 7, 1946.

Quick Facts

Significance:

Woman Navy Yard worker, SWON

Place of Birth:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

December 19, 1916

Place of Death:

Charlestown, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

May 10, 1990

Place of Burial:

West Roxbury, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Mount Benedict Cemetery

Elizabeth Dugan worked as a tool keeper in the Charlestown Navy Yard at the height of World War II, from the summer of 1942 to January 1946.¹

At 25 years old, Charlestown resident Elizabeth Dugan (née Scanlon) took advice from a friend to seek work at the Charlestown Navy Yard in the summer of 1942.² Formerly an employee of the Rust Craft Greeting Card Company, Dugan was used to assembly line work, but she disliked her previous job and wanted better wages and working conditions. While Dugan had suffered from arthritis from a young age, she had managed to pass the required physical examination for Navy Yard employees. She was assigned to the tool room in the sheet metal shop. Receiving minimal training, with just a brief instruction by a supervisor concerning the names of various tools, Dugan had to learn everything else on the job.

Dugan enjoyed her work at the Navy Yard. On a typical day, she was in charge of distributing tools to workers in the sheet metal shop. A worker would come to see her at the window to request a tool. They would hand her a chit, a metal coin-sized disc with a hole in the middle stamped with each employee’s ID number. Then, Dugan would then give them the tool, write down which tool had been taken on a piece of paper attached to the chit, and hang the chit on the wall, to be given back once the tool was returned.

Dugan initially worked the morning shift, from 7:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon, but soon changed to the afternoon shift, from 4:00 to 11:30 at night, as a later start time allowed her to sleep in. Later on, she worked the night shift, from 11:30 at night to 7:00 in the morning. Dugan especially enjoyed working at night, as night workers received higher pay and the Yard was less busy. In her spare time, she kept herself entertained by reading the newspaper.

The Navy Yard did not provide workers with uniforms, so Dugan wore a shirt and jeans of her own every day. Though issued with a soft cap, Dugan never wore it. In one humorous instance, a male supervisor ordered her to wear the cap, but Dugan, who was wearing curlers in her hair for an event later that day, steadfastly refused despite repeated protests from her supervisor. "No way could I put the cap on over my curls," she recalled, "there was nothing seriously that would injure you in the tool rooms, so I couldn’t see any sense in wearing a little silk hat."³

During the war, the Navy Yard and the city of Boston was subject to wartime security measures, as Dugan recounted. Marines guarded the gates of the Navy Yard, and Dugan and the others had to show them their passes to enter and exit. Charlestown held brownouts, when streetlights were dimmed and windows shaded in the event of enemy air attacks. Occasionally, Dugan remembered, radio broadcasts would order a blackout, with all lights turned out, but such drills were uncommon.

Dugan received $45 a week for her work at the Navy Yard, three times more than her pay at her previous job. By her own admission, she was frugal by nature, saving money and investing in war bonds. "I was the very penny-pinchy type," said Dugan, "and I stocked away like a squirrel between the bank and the war bonds."

When not on the job, Dugan and her fellow workers found ways to entertain themselves. A Navy band frequently played popular music in the Yard during lunch hour. Dugan had been an amateur singer in her youth, having sung the 1931 hit song "You're My Everything" on a local radio broadcast. "I often wanted to go up and sing [with the band]," Dugan recalled in an oral history interview. Dugan also met with friends outside of work. Once, she and a group of coworkers went to a midnight movie screening in Boston after their shift.

Dugan was laid off from her job at the Navy Yard in January 1946, several months after the end of World War II. That summer, she married her boyfriend Raymond J. Dugan, who had served in the Army, stationed in both California and the Philippines during the war. The Dugans moved into a new home on High Street in Charlestown, and had a son, Raymond J. Dugan Jr., in 1948. Unfortunately, Raymond Sr. died of lung cancer in 1963. Raymond Jr. enlisted in the United States Marine Corps during the Vietnam War and served overseas in southeast Asia. Still grieving over her husband’s death and wishing for her son to come home unhurt, Elizabeth Dugan contacted the Red Cross and various local officials to try to get her son home. Raymond Jr. survived the war.

In her 1984 oral history interview conducted by Carol Cooper of the National Park Service, Elizabeth Dugan looked back fondly on her time working in the Navy Yard. "I loved it," she said, "I adored it. Wouldn't mind working down there now, if I had my health." Elizabeth Dugan was just one of many working women who helped keep the Charlestown Navy Yard running during World War II, contributing to victory and helping break down barriers for women in the United States.

Contributed by: Raphael Pierson-Sante, Digital Content Support Volunteer.

Footnotes

1. Genealogical information from: Boston Archdiocese; Boston, Massachusetts; Sacramental Records; Volume: 60646; Page: 45; The Boston Globe, May 11, 1990, Page 28.
2. This biography recounts Dugan's experience at the Navy Yard based on her oral history: Interview with Elizabeth Dugan for the National Park Service, Boston National Historical Park Charleston Navy Yard, by Carol Cooper, 17 February 1984.
3. All quotes in this biography are from Dugan's oral history: Interview with Elizabeth Dugan for the National Park Service, Boston National Historical Park Charleston Navy Yard, by Carol Cooper, 17 February 1984.