Person

Ruth L. Kaplan

A portrait picture of a woman with dark hair smiling. — Ruth Kaplan served as editor of the "Boston Naval Shipyard News."
Boston Naval Shipyard News

The editor of the Boston Naval Shipyard News from 1966 to 1974, Ruth Kaplan collected and distributed information to the employees of the Charlestown Navy Yard.

Ruth Kaplan attended Connecticut College and received a bachelor's degree in English. After graduation, she aspired to work in a publishing house, but most job opportunities available for women at the time were secretary jobs. Such positions required someone who knew how to type and take shorthand. Kaplan did not have those skills at the time, so she enrolled in a secretary course for people with college degrees and subesequently took the clerical civil service test.

Ruth Kaplan came to the Charlestown Navy Yard as a clerk typist PS2 in 1951. In this position, she typed in the supply department (building 149) in purchasing and requisitioning. In January 1956, she became the assistant editor of the Boston Naval Shipyard News, a weekly publication for Navy Yard employees. There, she worked under the editor, Jim Harrington. As assistant editor, she conducted interviews, wrote stories, and composed editorials. In July 1956, Kaplan won the best newspaper editorial for the Red Cross Annual Contest for Industrial Publications. Her award-winning editorial, published in the March 16, 1956 edition of the Shipyard News, was titled "Red Cross Blood Helps You."

In 1964, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara sought to close down military bases and shipyards. As a result, the Navy instructed the Charlestown Navy Yard to decrease costs wherever possible. In these budget cuts, the Shipyard News changed from a weekly 4-page paper to a biweekly 8-page paper that could be published with only one editor. Thus, the Navy eliminated Kaplan's position as assistant editor. However, she did not leave the shipyard and was hired for a personnel position in the industrial relations office. Here she spent two and a half years as a member of the shipyard's Board of U.S. Civil Service Examiners.

As part of the 1964 cuts, McNamara announced the closing of the New York Naval Shipyard in Brooklyn.¹ To facilitate the closure, the shipyard required additional personnel, including a personnel office position that was to be filled on a rotating basis with staff from the Charlestown Navy Yard. When Kaplan arrived on her rotation in November 1965, she filled the vacant newspaper editor position and biweekly published the newspaper of the New York Naval Shipyard, The Shipworker, until the yard closed.² Afterwards, in June 1966, she returned to the employment division in Charlestown.

In November 1966, Jim Harrington, then editor of the Boston Naval Shipyard News, left for a job in the public affairs office of the First Naval District. Kaplan replaced him one month later. As the sole editor of the Shipyard News until the Yard's closure in 1974, Kaplan traveled to different shops in the yard, writing stories about important announcements, highlights of events, profiles of workers, and features of ships that came to the yard. She negotiated with printers, scheduled photographers, and laid out the paper every other week.

Kaplan was well-known around the Navy Yard, and her final issue of the Shipyard News in March 1974 became a bit of a collector's item. In this issue, she detailed the history of the Charlestown Navy Yard since its founding in 1800. Following the closure of the Navy Yard, Kaplan became a personnel staffing specialist with the U.S. Civil Service Commission in Boston. She looked back on her role as editor fondly, saying in an oral history conducted by Boston National Historical Park, "I always said the yard was made for me, and I was made for it."

Footnotes

The Oneonta Star (Oneonta, New York). November 20, 1964, 1.
Archives Guide to the Shipworker Collection 1941-1966 MC/63, (Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation Archives: 2019).