The Key West Citizen

LIEUT. (jg) RAFTUS

WOMEN'S RESERVE REPRESENTATIVE

From the farthest northeast Naval Station base at Bar Harbor, Maine, to the farthest south key outpost came Lieutenant (jg) Mary Virginia Raft, USNR, to take charge of WAVES at the Naval Station here as Women's Reserve Representative. She relieved the acting representative, Lieutenant (jg) Mary Carol P. Fath, (W), USNR, who returned to her regular duties as Assistant Welfare and Recreation Officer. Lt. Raftus, an attractive addition to the service from Boston, Mass., was graduated from Emmanuel College, Boston, in 1939, majoring in biology. For several years thereafter she might have been observed flitting about the corridors of Boston City Hospital as white-robed laboratory technician. That uniform she exchanged in March 1943 for that of a WAVE and on June 1 was commissioned an ensign. July 4th found her at Bar Harbor, her first billet. "I was one of the first WAVES in Bar Harbor," she said, "and the natives lifted their eyebrows at the sight of women in Navy uniform." Bar Harbor had other moments of a more official nature. German subs frequently poked periscopes up in the neighborhood of small radio-equipped fishing smacks, which flashed warnings to the Naval Station. As communicator, Lt. Raftus was on the inside of all this. From Bar Harbor she reported Sept. 12, 1944, to the District Operations Officer of the Third Naval District in New York and was an Operations Officer there until detached August 8, 1945. After the fairly exacting duties of the New York Operations billet, the task of being responsible for 120 WAVES at Key West holds no particular terrors for her. She lives in officers' quarters at the Naval Station. Come eventual discharge from the Navy, she plans to hurry back to her first avocation, job in the Boston Hospital.