in ill health and could not serve. Additionally, she believed the Coast Guard offered better opportunities than the other women’s reserves. Educated at the Pawnee Boarding School, Goslin gained secretarial skills afterward at the Haskell Institute. In addition to her yeoman duties at Tampa’s Coast Guard office of the Captain of the Port, she used a jeep to transport service members. A reporter sensationalized her service by reporting that Goslin was “not at all reminiscent of her blanketed forebears.” Proud of her daughter’s Coast Guard service, Goslin’s mother was a founding member of the Otoe War Mothers. Her father commissioned a veterans flag song in her honor, using the Otoe language to tell and preserve the story of her Coast Guard service. After the war, she married another Native American Coast Guard veteran, and they worked at Bureau of Indian Affairs educational institutions. Enlisting together in May 1943, Lula Mae O’Bannon and Lula Belle Everidge, both of Choctaw descent, were childhood friends who met as boarding students at the Goodland Indian School. The two returned there to teach after graduating from Southeastern Oklahoma Teachers College. Their mentor encouraged them to think big, follow their dreams, and consider possibilities outside of Oklahoma. Neither Lula had ever seen the ocean, but they chose the SPARS. After boot camp and yeoman school, the two Lulas were assigned to Philadelphia, living with the rest of the SPARS at the stripped- down and no longer luxurious Benjamin Franklin Hotel. O’Bannon worked for the distinguished Coast Guard officer Capt. Eugene A. Coffin. She and her roommates invited him for a simple dinner in their barracks suite. As he sat down on the loveseat in the sparsely furnished room, it buckled beneath him, mortifying the SPAR roommates. Unruffled by the incident and impressed by her work as well as her demeanor, Coffin recommended her, along with Everidge, for officer training. Upon their departure for the Coast Guard Academy, the press again sensationalized O’Bannon and Everidge as part- Indian maids who figuratively went on the “warpath” against the Axis by joining the SPARS. Described by SPAR officers as “two peas in a pod” in an Academy memorandum, they were very responsible but too “quiet” to be officers. In the meantime, Coffin was promoted to commodore and transferred to Hawaii. He valued O’Bannon’s dependability, so he arranged for her reassignment to his office. She remembered that she “had just arrived in Honolulu... when the Japanese surrendered. There was dancing in the streets, the whole town was celebrating. What a glorious day that was.” After the war, she married the Army artist she met while in Hawaii, moved to New Jersey, earned a graduate degree in teaching, and enjoyed a long career. Lula Belle Everidge initially served as a typist in Philadelphia. After her Academy experience, she went to Boston, where she interviewed and tested sailors applying for service schools. She could have transferred to Hawaii with Lula Mae, but she was dating a Navy sailor in Philadelphia. Returning there, she enjoyed working for the district engineer. When the war ended, she used the G.I. Bill to earn her master’s degree, teaching in the Northeast until her retirement. Living to 99 years and 11 months, she was proud of her country and Coast Guard service. Information about June Townsend Gentry’s service in the Coast Guard is lacking. Newspapers reported that her mother was Yuchi and her father was Choctaw. She attended Oklahoma Presbyterian College for Girls and worked at the Douglas Aircraft Company before she enlisted. Joining the Coast Guard two months after the initial Sooner Squadron departed for boot camp, Nellie Locust was proud of her Cherokee heritage and the chance to serve. Leaving the family farm to attend Chilocco Indian Agricultural School and the Haskell Institute, she acquired secretarial skills by taking a commercial course. Locust was not the first to serve in her family. Her maternal grandfather served the Union Army in Company C, 3rd Regiment, of the Indian Home Guard Volunteers during what was then called the War of 1861, and her brother was in the Army. “I’m very proud of the fact that many Indian boys are serving in the armed forces,” Locust told a reporter. “Several of them have received recognition for bravery in combat overseas.” Locust chose the Coast Guard because the SPARS was the smallest organization of the four women’s reserves. Sensationalist newspaper stories described her as a “Cherokee Princess.” She addressed stereotypes in one article, relating that she learned how Indians were supposed to live from the movies and how “we were even asked, sometimes, whether we were still at war with another tribe.” Nevertheless, the reporter employed stereotypes in the same article by writing that “tomahawk and flame tipped arrow have been displaced... by less lethal typewriter and fountain pen.” Locust served at the repair base in Fort Pierce. She later transferred to Miami, working at the Coast Guard identification office in the DuPont Building. Her service is honored by a military headstone at her grave site. The SPARS from Oklahoma’s tribal A platoon of SPARs, including Yeoman Lula Mae O’Bannon, marches in the V-J Day parade in Honolulu in 1945. nations were patriotic and searching for new opportunities. These Sooner Squadron members left their landlocked state, serving their country as yeomen and seamen in Florida, Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Hawaii. Their service contributed to victory and brought honor to Oklahoma. � Photo courtesy the O'Bannon family. Issue 4 • 2021 � RESERVIST 43
