ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — Much has changed in law enforcement in the 80 years since the fledgling agency that eventually grew into the Virginia State Police was established in 1932.
Since then, bootlegging, rampant license plate fraud and coal strike unrest have largely given way to drug interdiction, cyberthreats and counterterrorism.
But the trooper’s pledge chanted by police academy graduates today is the same one Evelyn Carr, 95, of Roanoke recited on Christmas Eve 1942, when she became one of the first women ever to join the ranks of state police.
“I shall aid those in danger or distress, and shall strive always to make my State and Country a safer place in which to live,” the graduates declare. “I shall wage unceasing war against crime in all its forms, and shall consider no sacrifice too great in the performance of my duty.”
And while their uniforms had skirts instead of pants, Carr and her classmates were sworn law officers of the commonwealth.
“We had full authority as far as police work was concerned,” Carr said.
Except in one way.
“Having a gun, that was the only thing,” Carr said. “They wouldn’t let us shoot.”
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The United States entered World War II in 1941, and a year later the need to replace workers lost to military service for a time swept away the social conventions that had kept women at home. Women were called on to fill not only civilian jobs in factories and offices, but military jobs, too.
According to the nonprofit Women in Military Service Memorial, nearly 400,000 women served in special branches of the military formed in WWII to fill noncombat roles that allowed more men to be sent to the front lines.
The same labor shortages affected policing across the country, and in Virginia, where more than 300,000 residents went to war, according to the Library of Virginia.
In 1942 the authorized strength of the state police was 248 men, but more than half had gone to war or left for better paying jobs. Just over 100 sworn officers remained for police duties, which in those days included patrol work and the testing and licensing of automobile drivers.
In October 1942, The Roanoke Times reported that then state police Superintendent Maj. C.W. Woodson was considering the “advisability of establishing a Women’s Auxiliary State Police service, members of which would serve as examiners for the operators’ license section, which handles examinations for drivers’ licenses.”
By Dec. 9, 25 women including Carr were in training in Chesterfield County. There they took classes in physical fitness, military courtesy and traffic codes, and were required to attend three hours of church every Sunday, according to the original training manual kept in Richmond.
The women graduated on Christmas Eve, and were given four days of leave before taking up their posts across the state, including in Roanoke and Christiansburg.
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Carr was posted back to her native Alexandria, and her dear friends and fellow police officers Doris Keller and Annie Mae VanLear were assigned to nearby Arlington. The three women lived together in Carr’s Alexandria house during their service, and became lifelong friends.
The women officers didn’t chase speeding motorists or break up fights like their male counterparts. For a monthly salary of $100 each, they did other white knuckle tasks, such as climbing into unfamiliar vehicles with new drivers eager to qualify for their first operator’s license.
Carr recalled one male examiner in the Alexandria office who, rather than ride with novices, leaned out an upstairs window and watched them drive around the block before giving them a license.
“But we had to climb in with them, and they went where we told them,” Carr said.
Automobiles of that period had no seat belts, no antilock brakes and no air bags. Carr said she spent two years in that job, tempting fate several times.
The female officers weren’t always treated fairly, either. Carr recalled having failed the son of a local police chief after the boy tested for a driver’s license.
“He just couldn’t drive,” Carr said.
But his father complained to Carr’s supervisor, and Carr said she was transferred from the Alexandria office to Arlington.
While some memories of her service have faded, decades later Carr said her last ride as a state police examiner remains vivid in her mind.
“The thing that really got me out of there was a woman who rode me into the field and down into a house. That was enough,” Carr said.
But equally vivid to Carr are the memories of the people who served alongside her, men and women.
From Sgt. Froggy Johnson, who talked Carr into joining up and Keller and VanLear, who both now are deceased, to the male troopers who worked the streets.
“We all got along,” Carr said. “The troopers, they were just so nice to us. They would have us into their homes with their families. We were really close-knit.”
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And that tradition persists, state police Sgt. Becky Curl said.
Curl, a 15-year veteran of the agency, met Carr recently in Roanoke, and the two talked about the job then, and now.
“In our agency, it’s a family,” Curl said. “You see the same people every day. You work with them every day. You know their kids. You know their parents sometimes. It’s still a good place to be.”
Other things remain the same. Most newly graduated troopers are still sent to Northern Virginia for their first year of service, and many live together to share costs, Curl said.
But chief among the things that never seem to change is the problem of inattentive drivers.
“I was taught to drive by a bus driver,” Carr said. “And I guess the way he made me drive helped me to judge others, that I wanted them to be safe. They didn’t pay attention to what they were doing.”
“Today it’s still the same,” Curl said. “It’s a battle you’re always fighting, to get people to pay attention.”
The women’s police auxiliary experiment came to an end in 1946, with the announcement that the state police would accept no more female applicants. Women were urged to leave the civilian, military and police jobs they had mastered and return home.
Carr didn’t leave the work force, though. She was recruited to the Arlington Police Department, where she worked in the office. She met her husband, Ray Carr, there, and the two married in 1947.
Carr, even at 95, has the posture and command presence of a trooper, as well as a cop’s tendency to give concise answers to every question. Asked why she left police work, she replied that while it wasn’t illegal for a husband and wife to work in the same department, “I thought we shouldn’t both be there.”
Carr said she went to work for the Arlington dairy, which was later bought by Shenandoah Pride, and was an office manager there for three decades.
When her late husband retired from the Arlington force 31 years ago, Carr said the couple moved to Roanoke to be near family.
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By 1948, all remaining women in the auxiliary program were transferred to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which in addition to licensing vehicles took over licensing of drivers.
Women weren’t seen in the state police ranks again until 1976, when Cheryl Nottingham of Charlottesville became the first female state trooper in the agency’s history.
The pioneering women from the 1940s didn’t so much open doors to other generations of women as leave a legacy and a promise still to be fulfilled. Of the 1,870 sworn officers who serve in today’s state police, 109 are women.
Even now, “a lot of times people have never seen a female state trooper. People want to look at you,” Trooper Beverly Haile said. “I don’t mind the questions. It’s part of my job as a recruiter.”
There are no quotas for recruitment of women and minorities to the state police, agency spokeswoman Corinne Geller said. But diversifying the ranks is a major priority for the recruitment division.
The job is not for everyone, no matter their gender. It can be dangerous. It requires sacrifice, from the months-long application process, to the 34 weeks of basic training. For the first year, troopers agree to go wherever in the state they’re needed.
And, although more men share family responsibilities than any time in history, that lack of flexibility makes it more challenging to recruit women.
“For somebody with a family, especially mothers, it can be difficult for them to pick up and leave their kids for nine months,” Haile said. “You have to work weekends and holidays. You may not be there for Christmas morning. It’s definitely a lifestyle more than anything. You’ve got to be willing to be dedicated to the career.”
But women are making progress in the state police.
Last year, Tracy Russillo, a Fredericksburg native, was promoted to the rank of major and named deputy director of the agency’s Bureau of Administrative and Support Services, making her the highest ranking woman in state police history.
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News researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.
