This Day in History: Myrtle Hazard, First Coast Guardswoman

On this day in 1951, the first “Engineeress” in the Coast Guard passes away.  Myrtle Hazard was the first woman to serve in the Coast Guard—and the only woman to serve during World War I.

It was perhaps an unexpected path for the young mother to take?

When the United States entered World War I, Myrtle was living in Baltimore with her husband, parents, and three-year-old son. She saw an ad for the Y.M.C.A.’s Wireless and Commercial Telegraphy School.  The ads promised “Good Salaries” and noted that such radio operators would be in “Great Demand.”

That was enough for Myrtle. She took the classes at night, learning radio techniques and Morse code. Three short months later, she had a professional license and a marketable skill set.

It still had not occurred to her to use those skills with the Coast Guard, though. Instead, she set out to apply for a different job one snowy, windswept day in January 1918.  She got turned around in the snow, though, and accidentally walked into Coast Guard Headquarters.

She was just a “thin wisp of a girl” as she walked in, the Coast Guard Bulletin later explained, “tipping the scales at slightly over a hundred pounds and still fighting the ravages of polio after an attack in childhood.”

Her presence must have been a bit of a surprise?

At first, she was told that only men could enlist in the Coast Guard. But then-Lt. Russell Waesche saw something in her—and they did need her skill set. “When I told him of my qualifications as a telegrapher,” Myrtle later remembered, “he advised me to go over and take a physical. Before I knew it, I was sworn into the Coast Guard as an electrician’s mate, third class.”

No one really knew what to do with her at first.

For one thing, operators outside of headquarters did not believe that they were sending messages to a female. “[S]he did confess it took a long time to convince male operators elsewhere that she was not a male,” the Coast Guard Bulletin reports. “Strictly unofficial salty comments and stories she could not escape made the coding and recoding of messages somewhat of a chore . . . .”

Fortunately, people eventually figured out they were messaging a woman. “The situation settled down after that,” Myrtle smiled.

No one knew what to do about her uniform, either. “I was a headache all right,” Myrtle joked. “They didn’t have any idea about what sort of a uniform I should wear, and actually didn’t seem to want to get tangled up in selecting one.” In the end, she selected her own: a middy blouse and blue pleated skirt.

Many were skeptical about her abilities. Was this reflected in news reports, too, as when a journalist reported on “pretty Mrs. Hazard” and her “finely modeled hand point[ing] to a telegraphic apparatus”? Or when another wrote of the “charming Baltimore woman” working for the Coast Guard?

Yet Myrtle worked hard, and she performed admirably. “I had to work some long night watches before I became a real member of the family,” she concluded. She was honorably discharged after the war, having earned a promotion to Electrician’s Mate First Class and the respect of the men around her.

When she passed away in 1951, her obituary did not mention her Coast Guard service, yet Myrtle had left her mark. Her son went on to join the Navy during World War II. Later, a Fast Response Cutter was named for her. USCGC Myrtle Hazard was commissioned in 2021.

She’d been “proud to feel that I am helping Uncle Sam,” she once said. But she also hoped her work would inspire other women to do the same.

“I like to think,” she concluded, “I helped prove that women can contribute more to national defense than just waiting for the war to end.”

Constitution4Kids.com

Primary Sources:

• Bollinger Delivers Fast Response Cutter to Coast Guard (Daily Review; May 29, 2020) (p. 3)

• Donna Vojvodich, The Long Blue Line: Myrtle Hazard—first woman in the United States Coast Guard (United States Coast Guard; March 31, 2023)

• Donna Vojvodich, The Long Blue Line: The Baker Twins—Re-searching the First Female Coasties—Or Were They? (United States Coast Guard; March 24, 2023)

• Electrician First Class Myrtle Rae Holthaus Hazard, USCG (Foundation for Women Warriors)

• Jennifer Crowley Fyke, Three Fast Response Cutters Commissioned in Guam (Coast Guard Foundation; August 1, 2021)

• Mrs. Myrtle R. Hazard (Marion Leader-Tribune; Mar. 8, 1918) (p. 1)

• Original SPAR Declares Women Have Important Place in a War Effort (Coast Guard Bulletin; September 1950) (p. 26)

• She is the Only “Engineeress” in Coast Guard (San Francisco Chronicle; Jan. 25, 1918) (p. 13)

• Ted Randolph, “Men Only” Tradition of Coast Guard Broken 27 Years Ago (Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch; Aug. 2, 1945) (p. 5)