A Rear Admiral's rear
Joan described another incident with a different shouting admiral.
“One evening I took the elevator up to the 5th floor of the Bachelor Officers Quarters and started toward my room. Just as I turned the corner into the passageway, I quickly became aware there was a man coming toward me completely naked; he did not even have a towel in hand. He turned and almost ran back to his room.
"The next morning, dressed in my Ensign uniform and heading back to work, I turned the corner to the elevators and there stood the same man – dressed in a Rear Admiral’s uniform. He said good morning and then asked if I lived there. I said I did. Never in my life was the elevator ride down so long. Not a word was spoken. When we got to the 1st floor, as the door opened, he began shouting and kept shouting all the way to the main desk. The only thing I heard as I walked out the door was the admiral shouting that there should be a big sign telling everyone that there were women living there. I found out later that he was a reserve admiral in the area for his two week training duty.”
Joan described how in the early days, the male commanders made it clear that they did not like having women officers in the Navy. “But we always knew what they thought. Through the years the problem became much more insidious and we did not know what the men thought which made it virtually impossible to know where we stood. Not knowing has seemingly continued to this day because being anti-woman is as not openly acceptable as it was back then.”