Helen Katherine Priest

Shipbuilding Women of the Navy

Quick Facts

Significance:

Woman Navy Yard Worker, Shipbuilding Women of the Navy

Place of Birth:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

February 28, 1907

Place of Death:

Charlestown, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

March 18, 1996

Place of Burial:

West Acton, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Mount Hope Cemetery

Helen Priest worked at the Charlestown Navy Yard as a sheet metal worker and time clerk during World War II.¹

Boston-born Helen Priest was 35 when she sought a job at the Charlestown Navy Yard in November 1942, nearly a year after the United States entered World War II.² At the time, she was volunteering for the American Red Cross and caring for her diabetic father Lucian Priest. With her mother having passed away and her father unable to work, the family needed a source of income. Priest had never worked a steady job before, but the Navy Yard offered good pay and a schedule that still would allow her to look after her father.

After the Navy Yard hired her, Priest took a test required of all new Navy Yard employees to determine their skill set and assign them a job. Following the test, she landed in the sheet metal shop. In her oral history interview, Priest recalled that she had wanted to work in the electrical department. Her brother Lucian Charles Priest, a World War I veteran, worked as an electrician, and she had learned some aspects of electrical engineering from him. Nonetheless, the Navy Yard assigned her to the sheet metal shop, where she used an electric saw to cut out ship components and riveted them together.

Priest's role sometimes changed during her time in the Yard. After working in the sheet metal shop, she was reassigned as a time clerk, going up and down the piers to check the workers' time cards at the end of their shifts late at night. She preferred this kind of work to her previous, more physically demanding job in the sheet metal shop, which she claimed to have never been particularly good at. Priest also worked in the Navy Yard's office, filling out forms and other paperwork on a typewriter.

With many of Boston's young men serving in the Armed Forces, the vital work done at the Navy Yard fell to women and older men. Years later, Priest recalled that many of the experienced male workers at the Navy Yard were unhappy with the idea of working alongside women. She remembered that if a woman asked a question of a male counterpart, he was frequently unhelpful or even hostile. "Even nowadays," she said, "men are resentful if women get ahead." Despite this reflection, she gave high praise for her supervisors and leading men at the Yard, referring to them as gentlemen.

Between her work at the Navy Yard and caring for her father at home, Priest did not have much spare time for leisure activities. When she did, she liked to go to the theater to see a matinee or a musical, with Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! being a particular favorite. Priest also made a number of friends at the Yard, recalling a particular friendship with an older, married woman from Malden who also worked in both the sheet metal shop and the office. Another one of her friends took part in a ship's christening ceremony, breaking the traditional bottle over the ship's bow.

Helen Priest's time at the Charlestown Navy Yard came to a close with the end of World War II. With many of the workers being laid off, her only option to stay at the Yard would have been to work more directly on the ships, a prospect she found unappealing. After the war, she returned to caring for her father, who passed away in 1953.³ Later on, she worked at the Charlestown Five Cent Savings Bank before retiring at the age of 65. She never married nor had children.

In 1982, Priest was interviewed by Laurie Joslin of the National Park Service on the subject of her wartime work at the Navy Yard. At the end of her oral history interview, when asked what she wanted to see done with the recently-decommissioned Navy Yard, Priest expressed a desire for the empty space to be used for businesses and apartments. "I'd like to see it built up," she said, "it'll help the whole town."

Despite having never worked a steady job and being unfamiliar with the work she was assigned, Priest adapted quickly to her new role. When asked if her new job was difficult to adjust to, Priest said, "it didn’t bother me. Perhaps that's my makeup." As just one of tens of thousands of men and women, her work at the Charlestown Navy Yard was of vital importance to victory in World War II. Helen Priest passed away in Charlestown in 1996 at the age of 89.

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

Footnotes

1. Massachusetts Vital Records, 1840–1911. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts; The Boston Globe, March 24, 1996, Page 73.
2. This biography recounts Priest's experience at the Navy Yard based on her oral history: Interview with Helen Priest for the National Park Service, Boston National Historical Park Charleston Navy Yard, by Laurie Joslin, 4 December 1982.
3. The Boston Globe, October 3, 1953, Page 14.