Lee Rucker Keiser & Matthew Keiser outside of the Clements Library, September 2021
By Lee Rucker Keiser
With my typically frequent postcard dispatches curbed by the pandemic, when my husband and I traveled to Ann Arbor for homecoming weekend of 2021, a magnetic force drew me to the Wolverine postcard display outside of the William L. Clements Library. Although our daughter, an undergraduate, was studying overseas then, we reflexively waved to her towering high-rise across the street. Suddenly, we were framed – literally – by a Wolverine!
My Clements’ curiosity stimulated by the lure of their postcards, I later learned that among the Library’s foci were collections devoted to World War II, and women’s history. My late mother’s military service bridged both categories. Buttressed by her University of Michigan bona fides (’48, MA ’54, Ph.D. ’63) and her innate devotion to history, I felt no need for a séance to ask permission to gift her papers to the Clements Library! My daughter and I were delighted to personally deliver the bulk of the collection in late 2022. Such a fortuitous encounter with this new archive’s home would have been appreciated by my postcard-aficionado, accidental-trailblazer mother, Marion E. Grusky Rucker.
Small portion of Marion E. Grusky Rucker’s history book collection.
Marion E. Grusky, year unknown.
Born in New York shortly after World War I, in a bustling Hudson River town near the West Point Military Academy, Marion – the second of six children – recalled, “My sense of patriotism was always there: we lived on Liberty Street!” She helped raise her little sister and three younger brothers, especially after the first-born, Norman, left for college and pursued a distinguished Army career, reaching the rank of Colonel. Seeking solace from these family duties, Marion would steal away to the library until closing time, and then read outside on the steps until dark.
Marion was committed to serving her country, her family and her community. She was a dedicated Naval Reserves officer, communicator, life-long educator; and a harbinger of today’s career-and-life-coach professionals: attributes interwoven across her papers, now at the Clements Library. Yet full transparency may remain elusive. True to their Greatest Generation cohort – whose sense of duty, patriotism and military service were spoken of quietly, if at all – Marion and her eldest brother’s respective repositories of their service records were equally humble.
Marion’s brother, Norman, had predeceased her by several years, passing at the age of 97 in Washington, DC. However, this summer I rediscovered in my house a multi-page list, written in my aunt’s cursive handwriting, with family emergency contacts and instructions: “Norman’s military papers,” she’d written, would be found “in a cardboard box on the floor at the right end of his study desk.” Similarly, upon my mother’s death the day after her 96th birthday, I found in the back of her bedroom closet a cardboard box with her military papers, encompassing what she said was “the most defining period of my life.” The bulk of these papers inspired this Clements Library collection.
Marion with brother Norman, Bethesda MD, 1986.
As a nonagenarian, when Marion pondered her next chapter, she’d often quip, “Just bury me under the rose bush in the backyard!” Documentation of her eligibility to be interred at Arlington National Cemetery was quickly found in that bedroom-closet cardboard box, yet we set that paperwork aside. Instead, on what would have been her next birthday, my family honored my mother’s humility, military service, and wanderlust spirit by choosing seaside windswept dunes as the final resting place for her ashes.
And what of her life? As Marion reflected, “A male first name may have permitted me to be sent – to the amusement of my Commanding Officer – on some unusual assignments, including aboard a submarine on training maneuvers, with rarely another WAVE in the group.” (In July 1942, Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service, or “WAVES,” became operational.) Apparently, it was not only her first name that raised eyebrows: her birth certificate revealed a perhaps-Polish last name – not “Grusky.” It was legally changed later, a sensitive transaction overseen by her Uncle Henry (Yale, Class of 1917), who conveniently was the town’s Corporation Counsel. (As adults, two of Marion’s four brothers abandoned “Grusky,” taking different surnames).
Following her induction in 1943 at the U.S. Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School, established at Smith College the prior year, Marion was one of 9,000 women who would train there to become naval officers by early 1945. A woman of tomorrow who fired on all cylinders, many of Marion’s achievements were hard-fought, as documented in this collection. From ‘45-‘46, she was stationed in the Washington, DC Navy Yard, headquarters for the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), a position awarded in late 1945 to World War II Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. Marion’s duties consistently focused on communications, but my 2024 visit to D.C.’s National Museum of the U.S. Navy proved to be fruitless. With several of her documents (now in this collection) in hand to possibly initiate a research trail, I was met instead by a staffer’s raised eyebrow: “Your Mom served in ‘Communications’ under CNO Nimitz? Good luck with that!”
U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif., 1953 – Marion E. Grusky, Center Front
A decade after the Navy’s investment in Marion’s career with training and promotions, she was ordered to the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, Calif. – the lone female in her class – to continue honing specialized communication expertise. This unique opportunity came on the heels of President Truman’s Oct. 1952 memorandum to the Secretaries of State and Defense stating, “The communications intelligence (COMINT) activities of the United States are a national responsibility.” However, Marion’s original NPS duty tour was cut short after barely six months. Perhaps it was a decision made in retaliation against a seasoned, smart, female officer; this aggravating setback is documented in my mother’s collection.
Marion E. Grusky application for federal employment, 1954.
A Diary of Travels Abroad, kept by Marion and Don Rucker 8/8/58-8/13/58 during their Transatlantic Crossing on the S.S. Queen Mary.
Boomeranging back to Ann Arbor, this time to pursue her Master’s in Education, Marion’s 1954 federal employment application yields a chronological gold mine that leads to more questions. Post-WWII, she taught in Kumamoto, Japan, at the Army dependents’ school (Camp Wood, 21st Infantry Regiment); she also completed three years at the Naval Supply Depot, Mechanicsburg, Penn., serving as the division officer for all communications. Why did she check this application’s box to accept employment only “outside the U.S.?” Eventually, that wish came true, but not through the Navy.
In 1956, Marion was promoted to Lt. Commander, USNR. In 1957, after a three-week courtship with a Ford Motor Company economist whom she met at a Detroit party, she accepted his marriage proposal. In 1958, she was awarded a Fulbright to teach in England, and her husband quit his Ford job to accompany her overseas. Upon their return to the U.S., she later welcomed motherhood, giving birth at age 40-plus; and completed her doctorate.
Marion E. Grusky Rucker and (Nancy) Lee Rucker, 1963.
This accidental trailblazer – who late in life cited her innate puzzle-solving and math skills to deflect a Veterans Oral History interviewer about her Navy code-breaking duties – remained a dutiful patriot and cherished role model. And as my daughter and I can attest, postcard-writing is an inherited gene!
References
Library of Congress, Veterans History Project, Marion E. Rucker Collection, Interview/Recording: https://www.loc.gov/resource/afc2001001.82839.mv0001001/
Alex Asal, “Learning to ‘Be Navy,’” Smith College, https://www.smith.edu/news-events/news/learning-be-navy June 11, 2019
U.S. Naval Postgraduate School 1953 Fact Sheet (5 pps.), Monterey, CA. https://calhoun.nps.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/ad6d4d19-60d4-4996-97ed-a6e468258ab6/content