Henrietta Mercer was one of the women that opened the door to naval aviation for future generations of women. Working as a sheet metal worker, an airplane inspector and an aviation machinist for the Navy, Henrietta stepped forward to serve her country.

Henrietta F. Mercer was born on July 16, 1922[i] to Herbert Burnett Mercer and Fern Bernice Goodman Mercer in Coalinga, California. The couple had been married 10 years.[ii] Both Herbert and Fern were from Kansas.

Waiting for their baby sister was a big brother, Herbert Edward Mercer, born 1921 in Oklahoma.[iii] The family continued to grow with another baby boy added after Henrietta. He was Walter W. Mercer born in 1925.[iv]

In 1930, one of the Great Depression years, Henrietta is 8 years old. At some point, the family has moved 217 miles south from Coalinga to Santa Paula, California. Her dad is supporting them by working for the Texas Oil Company. There were large oil fields in Santa Paula, California that Spanish explorers saw Native American’s using in the 1500s.[v] Herbert, her dad, is a clerk in the oil company office.[vi] The family lived in a home they rented on Oak Ridge.

She was active in the Girl Scouts while growing up.[vii]

In 1940, as the war years arrive, Henrietta is in her senior year of high school. Walter is a sophomore in high school with her, but Herbert is in his first year of college. The family is living on Texaco lease land in a rental home supported by her father who still works for the oil company. Fern is keeping house for them all.[viii]

HER LIFE BEFORE MILITARY

After high school, she still lived in Santa Paula, California.[ix] Henrietta enjoyed the social life of the times, attending birthday parties[x] and playing on the softball team of the Ventura Coca-Colas.[xi]

Henrietta attended college 20 miles from home at Ventura Junior College, where she was a member of the Women’s Athletic Association[xii] and manager of the women’s basketball team.[xiii]

“Shoot the Metal to Me Ethel; Gals Weld Now” was the headline of the Ventura County Star newspaper in Ventura, California when Henrietta decided to become part of the very first class for women in welding. At Ventura Junior College, she undertook a class for women sheet metal workers. According to the article, the women pressed the college to offer this skill during wartime. It was part of a national trend to gear a co-ed curriculum to the national emergency. At the end of the class, a vocational certificate was given which allows them to apply at factories.[xiv]

Henrietta graduated from Ventura Junior College. She then worked as a plane inspector at Oxnard Mira Loma Flight Academy in Oxnard, California. The academy held a school and barracks for training WWII pilots[xv] and was located about 7 miles from Henrietta’s college.

While Henrietta joined in the war effort inspecting planes, her two brothers were serving their country. Both brothers, Herbert and Walter, were in the armed forces.[xvi]

HER MILITARY STORY

Henrietta Mercer enlisted in the United States Navy Women’s Reserve during the week of April 26, 1943.[xvii] Her service number was 7358150.

WAVE Henrietta was an aviation machinist mate second class for the United States Navy Women’s Reserve.[xviii]

In the early 1940s, as Henrietta was coming out of high school, the United States Navy was getting ready to have enlisted women as well as the first female commissioned officers. At this time, there were only Navy women working as nurses. President Roosevelt signed the Navy Women’s Reserve Act, creating the WAVES in 1942. The women who stepped forward to free men for sea duty set the stage for women in the Navy for future decades. WAVES stands for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service.[xix]

According to Navy History, men and women with the same rank were paid the same pay. That drew a lot of women to step forward and volunteer. Following an application, an interview, a physical, a business skills test and an oath, women were WAVES. Because Navy protocol insisted yeomen be assigned to ships, the women were assigned to all manner of ships – those that were sunk, docked or unused.[xx]

With the Navy barracks full of men, the women were on their own for housing, transportation and food from a housing allowance they received. They were trained in navel procedures, policies, ship and plane identification, ranks, culture and customs plus marching and drills after work.[xxi]

Dressed in summer whites or dark navy winter blues, the women worked at everything from deciphering code to operating as look-outs, designing camouflage, being a pharmacist, a baker, an aircraft mechanic and many other job descriptions including all manner of office work.[xxii]

Henrietta went to Hunter College in New York City for her basic training.[xxiii] After that, Seaman Second Class Henrietta Mercer was told she’d be stationed in Memphis, Tennessee. [xxiv] Instead of Memphis, her assignment changed and she was transferred to Norman, Oklahoma where she attended aircraft technical school.[xxv] Henrietta was in good company working with aircraft as about 30 percent of all of the WAVES worked in aviation as pilots, controllers and parachute testers.[xxvi]

On September 30, 1943, tragedy struck the Mercer family. Her older brother, First Lieutenant Herbert E. Mercer, a pilot, was killed in a plane crash. Stationed in Long Beach, California, he was ferrying a P-51 plane from Midwest City, Oklahoma to Memphis, Tennessee.[xxvii]

Following his funeral in October of 1943, Henrietta was able to spend a month back home with her parents. Following her trip, Henrietta was transferred to Terminal Island.[xxviii] The Naval Reserve used Allen Field on the Island to create an aviation training center.[xxix] It is a largely artificial island between the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. She later went to El Toro, California.

HER LAST DAY

On October 14, 1945, Henrietta set out as part of a group of six female military. There were three women in the front seat and three in the back seat of their car. Near Santa Anna, California, as the group headed up the mountainous Highway 100, they were in an accident.[xxx] As the car proceeded down the road, the woman driving (name unknown) struck the rear of a car driven by Major W. R. Norton of El Toro. After striking him, the car crossed the center line and swerved head on into a huge freight line truck driven by Donald W. Greelan.[xxxi]

The three women. in the front of the car, were instantly killed.[xxxii] That included Henrietta as well as Naomi Ann Bennett and Thelma H. Schutte, both Marines. The three women were decapitated in what the coroner described as Orange County’s most gruesome accident at that time.[xxxiii] The three women in the back seat, names unknown, had only minor injuries.[xxxiv] Major Norton, driver of the other car was unhurt but Mr. Greelan, driving the truck suffered serious injuries when his truck and trailer overturned, and he was trapped.[xxxv]

Henrietta was 23.

HER GRAVE AND FUNERAL

Henrietta was buried on October 18, 1945 at Santa Paula Cemetery in Santa Paula, California.[xxxvi] She lies in Section E of the same cemetery where her parent's also buried her brother , First Lieutenant Herbert Mercer, two years earlier.

AFTER THE WAR

Of Herbert and Fern’s children, only Walter came home from WWII and lived a long life.

RESEARCH NOTES

On Henrietta’s California birth record, her mother’s maiden name is listed as Gwedeman. Elsewhere it is Goodman.

FIND MORE INFORMATION HERE

Read About Henrietta's Brother, 1st. Lt. Herbert Mercer's Death Two Years Before Her Own

The Waves of WWII/National Women’s History Museum

Read About Naomi Ann Bennett, a Marine Killed in the Same Accident

Read About Thelma H. Schutte, a Marine Killed in the Same Accident

ABOUT THIS STORY

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

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