Horton, Mildred Helen McAfee

(b. 12 May 1900 in Parkville, Missouri; d. 2 September 1994 in Berlin, New Hampshire), educator, college president, and head of the WAVES in World War II.

One of three children of Harriet Brown, a homemaker, and the Reverend Cleland Boyd McAfee, Horton grew up in Missouri before attending Vassar College, where she played hockey and baseball and was a member of the debating team. Vassar awarded her a B.A. degree in 1920. Horton’s first position was as a teacher of English and French at Monticello Seminary in Godfrey, Illinois. In 1921 she taught the eighth grade at the Francis Parker School in Chicago, and in 1922 she was selected by the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago to become director of girls’ work. In 1923 she became acting professor of economics and sociology at Tusculum College in Greenville, Tennessee. In 1927 she was appointed professor of sociology and dean of women at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, where she stayed until 1932. Horton obtained an M.A. degree from the University of Chicago in 1928. In 1932 she became the executive secretary of the Associate Alumnae of Vassar College, and in 1934 she was appointed dean of women at Oberlin College.

Horton’s most prestigious move came in 1936, when, at the age of thirty-six, she became the seventh president of Wellesley College. Even though Horton said she would make no changes at Wellesley, she hoped that all persons in academic or nonacademic fields could obtain an education. An upholder of women’s rights but not a feminist, she wanted to see that career patterns be made without sex discrimination and that marriage would not interfere with a woman’s career. Horton was on the board of trustees of several schools and colleges, vice president of the Associated Boards of Christian Colleges in China, and a member of the Educational Advisory Committee for the Navy Training Program of the Bureau of Naval Personnel. By 1942 her work had gained national attention in such newspapers as the New York Times and such magazines as Scholastic, Newsweek and Time.

In mid-1941, anticipating a shortage of men if the nation went to war, Joy Bright Hancock, a civilian employee, was sent by the navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics to study how Canada utilized women in its armed forces. After canvassing the bureau chiefs, Rear Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, chief of the Bureau of Navigation (later Personnel), requested on 2 January 1942 that the secretary of the navy petition Congress for a women’s reserve. Meanwhile, the navy obtained advice from colleges and universities that were training male reservists and civilian personnel. Particularly useful were the recommendations of an advisory committee chaired by Virginia Gildersleeve, dean of Barnard College, and a report made by Professor Elizabeth Reynard, who traveled around the United States and Canada investigating the type of work women did. Reynard came up with the name for the organization—Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES)—and Gildersleeve’s committee suggested that it be headed by Horton.

On 30 July 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed PL 689, a bill that canceled the 1925 requirement that naval reservists be men and created a women’s reserve which, unlike the WACs (Women’s Army Corp), an auxiliary service, was independent. Women between the ages of twenty and thirty-five could apply. Taking leave from Wellesley on 3 August 1942, Horton was sworn in as lieutenant commander and was put in charge of the WAVES as the first permanent woman officer of the armed forces. With her engaging manner and excellent communication skills, Horton convinced old sea dogs of the value of women in navy work. She was a popular woman who did not drink or smoke—but she liked to dance and go to the movies. She directed an organization with 75,000 enlisted personnel and 12,000 officers. Confined initially to the United States, these women did what had traditionally been considered men’s work for comparable pay. Horton helped the Navy Bureau of Personnel establish schools in colleges and universities in which candidates received two months of training. Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and Mount Holyoke College at nearby South Hadley, Massachusetts, both trained officers. Oklahoma State University of Agriculture and Applied Science in Stillwater, Indiana University in Bloomington, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison were the first to train enlisted women.

WAVES were naval personnel first and women second. When Horton became head of the WAVES, she directed that the women could date only when on leave and use only minimal makeup. As per her directive, they were to follow the same rules about drinking that applied to men (no drinking while on duty, liberty, or leave), and they were also not allowed to smoke in public. With the aid of Gildersleeve’s committee and women liaison officers in each naval district, Horton directed an administrative and technical program that trained women for thirty occupations. Ultimately, they served as flight instructors, truck drivers, weather observers, air-traffic controllers, maintenance workers, communications specialists, and Link trainer (teaching simulator) operators. Women at first clamored to join the WAVES, but by the end of 1942 a spirited recruitment campaign competed for personnel with the other branches of the armed services.

In 1945 Mildred McAfee married the Reverend Douglas Horton, who later became the dean of the Harvard Divinity School. That same year, she was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. She resigned from the navy at the rank of captain in 1946 and returned to Wellesley as its president until 1949, when she became vice president of the National Council of Churches and president of the American Association of Colleges. The Reverend Horton died in 1968, leaving her with four stepchildren. She died of natural causes in Berlin and is buried in Randolph, New Hampshire. Her career with the navy helped unify the sexes in that service and improved women’s position in general throughout the nation.

Horton’s work as a teacher and educational administrator is covered in Newsweek (31 May 1923); Time (23 May 1925); and Who’s Who in America, 1942–1943. The basic records of the WAVES are on microfilm (twenty reels) under the title of United States. Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel for Women. The WAVES: Records of the Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel for Women, 1942–1972 (1991). The transcript of two extensive interviews of Horton by Dr. John T. Mason of the U.S. Naval Institute (1971) covers 115 pages and fully describes her objectives and results as the commander of the WAVES in The Waves of World War II (1971–1979). The origin of the WAVES, Horton’s acceptance speech, the locations of the training schools for both officers and enlisted personnel, and the impact the WAVES had on World War II up to 1943 can be followed in Nancy Wilson Ross, The WAVES: The Story of the Girls in Blue (1943). Photographs and brief reports of the careers of WAVES for the period covered here are in the two volumes of A Pictorial History of Navy Women, 1908–1988 (1990). An obituary is in the New York Times (4 Sept. 1994).

Paolo E. Coletta