Stratton, Dorothy (b. 1899)

views updated

Stratton, Dorothy (b. 1899)

American educator who was the first woman officer in the Coast Guard Reserve. Name variations: Dorothy Constance Stratton. Born on March 24, 1899 (some sources cite 1898), in Brookfield, Missouri; daughter of Richard Lee Stratton (a Baptist minister) and Anna (Troxler) Stratton; Ottawa University, Kansas, B.A., 1920; University of Chicago, M.A., 1924; Columbia University, Ph.D., 1932.

Became the first director of the Coast Guard Women's Reserve upon its creation (1942); served as director of personnel at the International Monetary Fund (1947–50); served as national executive director of the Girl Scouts of America (1950–60).

Born in 1899 into a family that moved frequently to accommodate her father's Baptist ministry, Dorothy Stratton spent her youth in various small towns in Missouri and Kansas. She was a motivated and enthusiastic student with excellent grades, loving each school she attended and participating in many extracurricular activities. During her undergraduate years at Ottawa University in Kansas, she was an active member of the school paper, assistant editor of the school annual, a member of the student council, and a basketball and tennis player.

After graduating from college in 1920, Stratton began her career in an academic setting, taking a teaching position at a high school in Renton, Washington. She then took administrative posts in two California schools in the mid-1920s, and continued her own education at the University of Chicago, from which she received a master's degree in psychology in 1924. Stratton earned a doctorate in student personnel administration from Columbia University in 1932, with her thesis published the following year as Problems of Students in a Graduate School. That year she was appointed dean of women and associate professor of psychology at Purdue University. The university's reputation rested largely on the strength of its agricultural and engineering courses, so Stratton set about molding the science curriculum to make it more appealing to women students. Her experiment met with such success that women's enrollment doubled at Purdue. Stratton was also behind the construction of three residence halls for women and a center for employment placement for women at the school. Considering the "character, citizenship, and culture" of students nurtured by universities as being as important as the education received there, in 1940 she published, with Helen B. Schleman , Your Best Foot Forward, a social guide for women students based on extensive research. That same year she was promoted to a full professorship.

Though she was comfortably ensconced in the university setting, Stratton uprooted herself with the advent of World War II to lend her energies to the war effort. (She later credited Lillian Moller Gilbreth , then a professor of management at Purdue, with encouraging her to join the military.) In 1942, she left Purdue to serve on the selection board of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, and entered the Women Appointed for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES). After taking the first WAVES indoctrination class at Smith College in Massachusetts that year, Stratton became a lieutenant in this women's branch of the naval reserve.

In November 1942, she began serving in the office of the head of the Coast Guard, organizing a proposed women's reserve for that branch of the service. Towards the end of the month, the Coast Guard Women's Reserve was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with the intention of allowing more male sailors to serve at sea by employing women in onshore jobs. By December, Stratton had become the reserve's director and first woman officer, with the rank of lieutenant commander. It was at her suggestion that the new women's reserve became known as SPARS, from the first letters of the Coast Guard motto "Semper Paratus, Always Ready." Although neither SPARS nor WAVES were combat units (SPARS were prohibited from serving outside the 48 contiguous states, and initially were forbidden to give direct orders to men), they were paid the same as were men in their ranks, and served vital supporting functions in the military. Some 10,000 enlisted women and 1,000 officers had joined the SPARS by the end of the war. Stratton, who had been promoted to commander and then to captain in quick succession in 1944, ended her service with the Coast Guard in 1946, at which time she was awarded the Legion of Merit.

Stratton served as director of personnel of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., from 1947 to 1950, following that position with ten years as executive director of the Girl Scouts of America. In 1962, she sat on the President's Commission on the Employment of the Handicapped and was consultant for vocational rehabilitation to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Still alert and active, and living in West Lafayette, Indiana, Stratton was honored for her pioneering efforts in the military on her 100th birthday in 1999.