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Native SPARS of the Sooner Squadron

Sepia picture of a smiling woman in a dark uniform and a Coast Guard cap
Yeoman First Class, Mildred Cleghorn Womack (Otoe) was one of six Native Americans from Oklahoma to enlist in SPARS.

Donna Vojvodich & USCG Historian's Office.

During World War II, a group of Native American women volunteered to serve in the US Coast Guard. Six Native American women from different tribes joined SPARS, the women’s auxiliary. They did service jobs on the home front, which freed men to go overseas. The women were part of the Oklahoma “Sooner Squadron." They went on to serve in Florida, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Hawaii. Their service is one of many examples of Native American contributions to World War II.

SPARS and Sooner Squadron: Putting out the Call

SPARS was the women’s branch of the US Coast Guard during World War II. An individual member was a "Spar." Congress authorized this women’s auxiliary, along with the women’s branch of the Navy, WAVES, in November 1942. It drew from women across the country, even those who did not have any maritime experience. In total, 13,000 women joined the Coast Guard in non-combat roles. As the Coast Guard filled the new SPARS program, it focused its resources by state, rather than undertaking a national recruitment effort.

In Oklahoma, Mabel Martin oversaw the recruitment of at least 100 new Spars. To do so, she appealed to prospective women's patriotism and the needs of the war effort. More enticingly, Martin promised that friends could stay together during basic training. They would all be part of an Oklahoma cohort known as the "Sooner Squadron." “This is a wonderful opportunity for groups of girls who want to join together,” Martin told The Chickasha Daily in May 1943. “They will be able to share these experiences with their friends and be proud of the part they are playing in another great Sooner organization.” Native women took advantage. Cousins Mildred Cleghorn Womack and Corrine Koshiway Goslin (Otoe) joined together. So did friends and fellow teachers Lula Mae O’Bannon and Lula Belle Everidge (Choctaw.)

Black and white photo of two women in dark clothes, one kneeling and pointing, the other looking over her shoulder
Friends and fellow teachers, Lula Mae O’Bannon and Lula Belle Everidge (Choctaw), served together for most of the war. Here, they show journalists around Philadelphia.

Courtesy of the family. US Coast Guard.

Native American Service in World War II

During World War II, an estimated 65,000 Native Americans participated in the US Armed Forces and military industries. The exact number is unknown because there was no racial category for “Native American/Indian” in military records. Though most women worked in factories, historians believe about 800 Native American women served in the US armed forces. The miliary integrated women from different tribal nations into white units [1]. While SPARS discriminated against African Americans until 1945, six Native women were able to enlist in the Sooner Squadron in 1943.

Young men and women were often recruited through Indian Boarding Schools. The Indian Leader, from Haskell College, Kansas, reported that Native women were “not to be outdone by male warriors.” Two of the young women who joined SPARS, Corrine Goslin (Otoe) and Nellie Locust (Cherokee), attended Haskell. “Haskell takes great pride in these patriotic young women,” the paper emphasized in 1943 [2]. Many Native American soldiers said they felt comfortable with military discipline after their time in US Boarding Schools. They noted it was often less harsh than their treatment at these institutions.

Grainy photo of three young women sitting at a table with an umbrella. They wear dark suits and caps. They are sitting casually.
From left to right, Lula Belle Everidge, Lula Mae O’Bannon and Corrine Goslin on the patio of the Biltmore Hotel, where Spars were sent to train in Palm Beach, Florida. This picture, with several others ran in The Tulsa World, described the women as “Indian girls.”

Tulsa, Oklahoma · Sunday, August 29, 1943.

Joining the Sooner Squadron

The Native American Spars enlisted for a lot of different and complex reasons. For some, it was the patriotism instilled at home or in school. For others, it was because of their family. Corrine Goslin enlisted in part because her 17-year-old brother was too ill to join the Army. June Townsend Gentry’s (Yuchi/Choctaw) husband was already stationed abroad when she joined SPARS in 1943. Nellie Locust’s brother served in the Army. Locust was also part of a longer history of Native military service. Her grandfather served in the Union Army regiment nicknamed the “Indian Home Guard Volunteers.”

Other women may have joined for financial and career incentives. All six Native women were college-educated, and most had secretarial or teaching experience. A mentor encouraged Lula Mae O’Bannon and Lula Belle Everidge, who attended and then taught at Goodland Indian School, to join SPARS. Goslin and Locust each felt that SPARS had better opportunities for women than other military branches.

Training and Service in the Coast Guard

Most of the Sooner Squadron, including the six Native women, started at the SPARS’ Biltmore Hotel training facility in Palm Beach, Florida. The Biltmore is in the National Register of Historic Places. Their experience was like other Spars during training. They were able to improve some skills and gain new ones. O’Bannon and Everidge told The Tulsa World that “the training we’re receiving here is invaluable and at the same time most enjoyable.”

After their training, the young Native women filled the same jobs as Spars across the country. Womack, Goslin, and Locust stayed in Florida. Mildred Cleghorn Womack helped locate missing coastguardsmen for their families. Her cousin, Corrine Koshiway Goslin, served Tampa’s Coast Guard Captain of the Port Office. Nellie Locust worked at a repair base in Fort Pierce. Then, she worked in the Miami Coast Guard ID office in the DuPont Building, now on the National Register of Historic Places. All three used their secretarial training to help other Coast Guard members and their families during the war.

The other Native women in the Sooner Squadron went further afield. O’Bannon and Everidge started in Philadelphia, doing secretarial work for the field office. Lula Mae O’Bannon impressed her superior officer, Captain Eugene A. Coffin. He recommended her for officer training. O’Bannon and Everidge were the first Native American women to attend the Coast Guard Academy. Coffin selected O'Bannon to come with him to Honolulu, Hawaii in 1945. She was stationed there when the war ended. O'Bannon remembered, “dancing in the streets, the whole town was celebrating. What a glorious day that was.” [3]

Grainy picture of a young woman with dark hair smiling at the camera. She has a bow in her hair and a uniform tie around her neck. She points to something behind her.
This photograph of Nellie Locust ran with a headline: “Cherokee Princess: Indian Girl Helps Nation in War Work” that included outdated stereotypes and language.

The Miami Herald Miami, Florida. Sun, May 28, 1944. Page 2.

Facing Stereotypes

All the Native Spars faced stereotypes about Native Americans, some of which are still common today. While the military did not record them as different on their enlistment forms, the press focused on their stories. Newspapers used offensive phrases like “Indian Girl,” “blanketed forebearers,” and “on the warpath" in articles about the Spars. “Cherokee princess” was an often repeated one about Nellie Locust. This included an article about a blind date with a Kiowa Navy Reservist, Johnny Cannon, who she had gone to boarding school with. The story was reprinted in over six Florida newspapers.

Native American Spars pushed back against these stereotypes in several ways. Some women brushed it aside. They emphasized that their backgrounds were just as American, and motives were just as patriotic as their colleagues. Nellie Locust went further. She used press coverage to remind her fellow Americans that her Cherokee ancestors had been here long before the Mayflower. She also pointed out that that most Cherokee lived in Oklahoma because ancestors like her Great-Grandfather were forced on “a trip [they called] the ‘trail of tears.'" Locust and other Native Spars also celebrated their tribal traditions, framing them in positive terms for newspaper readers.

The Native Spars did not always feel unity with each other. In one interview, Goslin distanced her cousin, Womack, and herself from the other women. We are “full-blooded Indian,” Goslin stressed, while the others were not. Blood quantum, the percentage of Native ancestry one has, is a method of tribal membership that is a controversial issue for many Native Americans today.

One article in The Tulsa World on the women's service sheds light on the relationship between the US government and Native tribes. Journalist Sarah G. Morris opened the article by claiming that:

“Four of the Oklahoma SPARS at the new United States Coast Guard training station here are perfectly willing for Oklahoma to be given back to the Indians. That is, to some of the Indians. Specifically to themselves…” [4]

The framing reminds the reader that the United States, particularly in places like Oklahoma, formed through land wars and treaties with Native American tribes. Later in the article, Morris clarified the joke, assuring readers “they’re [Native women] proud of their government and to prove they wish to preserve it and the freedoms for which it stands." The Native American women who served in the Sooner Squadron, despite their experiences with Boarding Schools and other assimilatory institutions, saw themselves as both Americans and members of their tribe. “My only regret is that there are not more Indians here,” Corrine Goslin told Morris later in the article. The service of the Native women was both a tribute to their patriotism and their pride in their Native heritage.

Sepia toned photo of a young woman smiling at the camera. She wears a dark uniform. Red trim is in color.
Lula Mae O’Bannon’s service photo. Like the other members of the Sooner Squadron, O’Bannon was discharged at the end of the war. She left Hawai’i and went back to Oklahoma to get a graduate degree in education.

Courtesy of her family. US Coast Guard.

Lives and Legacy after World War II

Settling back home, several Native women returned to school on the GI Bill. Mildred Cleghorn Womack went to Oklahoma State University -becoming a Sooner again- to earn a degree in sociology. Lula Mae O’Bannon and Lula Belle Everidge both earned master’s degrees in teaching.

The Spars also continued to serve their community. Corrine Goslin and her husband, also a Coast Guard veteran, worked for Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) educational institutions. Womack used her sociology degree to become a social worker for the Otoe tribe in Oklahoma.

Nellie Locust (Cherokee) died two years after her discharge from the Coast Guard in 1947. She is buried at the Swimmer Baptist Church Cemetery in Oklahoma with her service record on her gravestone. 

Womack and Goslin (Otoe) worked hard to honor the service of Native Americans in World War II. Goslin’s mother founded the Otoe War Mothers, which Goslin and Womack were also a part of. This was the first all-Native chapter of the American War Mothers group. The War Mothers are a group of women and men who support active-duty servicemen and veterans through care packages, meals, and bedside visits. Goslin’s father also memorialized her service in the Otoe language through a veteran’s flag song. Otoe-Missouria flag songs were revived during World War I, a way of both preserving the Otoe language and honoring tribal service.

The six Native American women in SPARS did so to serve their country and find better opportunities. Like many Native American women, and Native American men, military service for the US government was complex but important. The Coast Guard readmitted women in the 1970s. The first woman with Native ancestry to graduate from the Coast Guard Academy was Mara Huling in 1991. (Her father is part Cherokee and her mother is Japanese American. Huling was also the first female Asian American aviator in the Coast Guard) More recently, Native American women have become pilots and officers in the Coast Guard. The Native American women of the Sooner Squadron broke barriers and continued to serve their communities.

Learn More about the Native American SPARS

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    This article was written by Alison Russell, a consulting historian with the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education, funded by the National Council on Public History's cooperative agreement with the National Park Service.

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    Last updated: February 26, 2024