Adeline Ledesma Teague Collection
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Adeline Ledesma Teague beside a structure
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Adeline Ledesma Teague poses outside a building in San Francisco, where she was stationed at the shipyard at Hunter's Point, circa 1945. She wears the WAVES enlisted work uniform, navy shirtwaist and reserve blue tie.
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Oral history interview with Adeline Ledesma Teague
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Primarily documents Adeline Ledesma Horner Teague's early life, ethnicity, service in the U.S. Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), and her career and education in teaching after the war. Teague provides an overview of her childhood, including life as a migrant worker during the Depression and her Hispanic heritage. She discusses her desire for an education, getting a scholarship to attend secondary school, and taking a mandatory War Orientation course in high school. She also describes working at the Wholesale Terminal Market, taking courses at Los Angeles City College, serving as its first female student president, and working for the National Youth Administration. Teague discusses at length the attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent internment of Japanese Americans, some of whom were her close friends. She also talks about working for Pan American World Airways and acting as a Spanish-to-English translator. Teague discusses her reasons for enlisting in the WAVES and the ride on a Pullman train to boot camp at Hunter College. Topics from her boot camp include: celebrating V-J Day; being treated poorly by other WAVES because of her Hispanic ethnicity; and cleaning the barracks. She discusses the navy's policy regarding WAVES post-WWII, and the confusion over what to do with newly enlisted women. She also describes being sent to San Francisco Naval Shipyard; her work in the personnel office there; living in a barracks and having regular drills; working as a hostess at the officers club; being "frozen" into the service; and meeting and marrying her first husband, Lewis Clayton Horner. She recalls a trip to North Carolina where she experienced Jim Crow discrimination for the first time. She shares in detail her struggles to be discharged from the WAVES. Teague also discusses her use of the GI Bill to find housing and receive her education from Elon University in North Carolina. She talks about being hired as a teacher under the Education Opportunity Program at California State University, Fullerton; receiving her master's degree; and becoming a reading clinician. She also shares her experiences working with Cesar Chavez in the early seventies. She mentions marrying her second husband, his death six years later; meeting and marrying her third husband, and his death. She talks about volunteering as an English as a second language instructor at elementary schools in Erect, North Carolina.
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WAVES basketball team
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Group photo of the San Francisco Naval Shipyard at Hunter's Point basketball team, circa 1945. Pictured are: (top row): Jean, Ray, Bessie, LaRae; (middle)"Red" Mary Jane, unknown, Louella; (front, center): Adeline Ledesma Teague.
