Over 300 Navy Wives Form Club for Entertainment, Work

The first meeting of the recently formed club of wives of the communications officers was a highly dramatic affair. A club chairman was elected by the 30-odd wives present, and she was in the process of appointing an executive committee to aid her in the club administration. In came the chairman's officer-husband, who walked abruptly through the club functions to his wife, and taking her by the arm, announced that the club would have to get a new chairman. He had just received his orders.

Yet the ladies club has gone a long way since that bud-nipping of their first session back in mid-November. Present membership is slightly over 300, and the possibilities for more are excellent.

Germinated by the Navy authorities, in the words of a club member, "to make the Navy wives happy," the group is nourished by support from the P. B. H. Wartime Relations Committee of Harvard Wartime Personnel, which works under the leadership of Mrs. James B. Conant's group, and was provided with a well-furnished meeting place on the second floor of the Harvard Union by the University.

Can't Find Wives

The club is limited in only one way. They have a wonderful clubroom, equipped with radios, victories, bridge tables, ping-pong tables and a coke-machine, but they cannot get in touch with the other communication officer's wives who are not as yet club members. It was explained that there were so many of these wives housed in many different parts of Cambridge that it was hard to look them up.

Every Tuesday afternoon the club has a big business meeting at 2 o'clock, and usually has one or two prominent guest speakers. Thus far celebrities such as Commander Charles A. MacGowan, head of the Navy Communications School units at Harvard, and Mrs. Katherine S. Owens who lectured on China, have attended.

Specialize in Parties

Speakers and lectures and high-pressure business meetings are not the chief features of this ladies club, however. They specialize in parties and teas and coke-sessions, which take place on a once a day and twice on Sunday schedule. The last real fete was the Christmas party, at which the members are said to have consumed several bowls of fruit punch.

Not even fazed by the Valentine party Sunday, they are already planning get-togethers for St. Patrick's Day and several other far-away occasions. At the St. Patrick's Day party the Navy will show the club a series of semi-confidential films on early war developments, which were shown to their husbands a few weeks ago.

Club Serves Purpose

Although the club is primarily a source of entertainment for the war-time Navy wives, it serves a very definite purpose. The Navy husbands during their first four-months of training can only see their wives one night a week. Other than that they are off-duty from 5 to 7 o'clock and from 8 to 9 o'clock, and during those periods they can drop over to the clubroom and meet their wives.

Though admittedly on a small scale and primarily for escaping boredom, the idle club ladies do charity work in connection with the Red Cross and several Cambridge relief agencies. At present a good number of them are planning to take charity positions such as typists in relief headquarters, child-workers in local hospitals, and teaching sewing and cooking in the community centers in Cambridge and Boston.

Chairman of the wives' club is Mrs. John Pfenner, who was not only a charter member but one of the greatest contributors to the club's development. She is assisted by three faculty wives who have offered to help with the club activities, Mrs. Sargent Kennedy, Mrs. Frederick B. Doknatel and Mrs. Charles H. Taylor.