Our Uniforms
A while back Gwen (Howell) Kelly and I were talking about our uniforms and I decided to do a page about all of them!!!
The first uniforms we had were the burgundy Kaydette uniforms. I was a pledge in 1967 when this yearbook picture was taken. Some of us had uniforms and some didn't yet.
That year before Christmas we sold Claxton fruitcakes as a fund raiser for new uniforms. It seems we sold them every year. In 1967 we were pictured in the campus newspaper.
I guess we still sell enough, because here we are the next year with the same uniforms! We decided to have the pledges wear membership cords for the yearbook picture that years, since they would be members long before the picture came out in the yearbook.
Any one else remember hating those ascots?? I finally learned the secret to getting a smooth ascot. Three safety pins.
By 1969, we still didn't have enough money to buy new uniforms. But we had enough to buy material and a pledge who was an expert seamstress, Gwen (Howell) Kelly. You can guess how she got her pledge points! That's why she remembers them so well. She even had to create the patterns. She did most of the work, but remembers us helping her. I probably did some hand work. You will notice that Gwen Howell, Iris Rodriguez and I have on the first 3 of the new double breasted uniforms on in this picture. They were Burgundy, too. The pledges were back to black and white.
That spring Iris was able to get us some Army tops to use with our burgundy skirts. I know you can't see them too well in the picture below. The only thing nice was that they were cooler and we had 2 different uniforms to wear on the 2 days of the National Convention!
The spring of 1970 was the only time that I got to compete in a drill meet I'm sure we wore the double breasted burgundy uniforms. Iris was not only National Commander, but she was our drill commander! James Hamilton taught us how to drill using sabers. We came in fourth in the coed division of the Seventh Regimental Drill Meet in Wichita, Kansas. We didn't get an award, but the Seventh Regimental Commander, Sandy Harrison, told me after the dinner how proud he was of us for getting fourth in our first competition, especially when most of us were also busy on National Staff. During the competition, all of us on National Staff has to take off our staff cords and only wore our membership ribbon so we were all identical.
In the fall of 1970, we decided that we wanted to attempt to start a local company, too. The local name was "Sabers and Lace", and again Gwen (Howell) Kelly got started sewing! This was the year the yearbook wanted casual pictures, so the only ones in uniforms were our national liaison (Carlos Droescher) and the local commander, Leslie Singer. She's right in front of Carlos in a royal blue jumper with a white blouse. I really liked this uniform version. We also still had two uniforms to wear....and this one was easier to clean.
Here is a much better picture of our local uniforms. Of course, we all had both of them! This picture was taken in the spring for the 1971 ROTC Yearbook as a replacement for the picture above that the OU Yearbook photographers wanted us to use. I never liked that picture. Recently Charles Brantley sent us this picture. Front Row: John O'Dell, our local liaison, Gwen Howell Kelly, Linda Grissette (Grayson), Paulette Kikugawa Lum. Back row: Jessie Elder, Kay Johnson, Sharon Fancey.
Feel free to send me color pictures of all of our uniforms!!!! These are all I have.
Linda
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The creator of this website, Linda Grissette (the 1970-71 CAPER National Commander) is not asking for any money to help support this project. Her reward will be finding people she remembers and learning about other former members memories. If you appreciate the effort, please use her for all of real estate needs. If you aren't in the St. Louis area where she works, she can find a great agent in your area and will receive a small referral fee. Contact Linda about real estate. See Linda's main real estate website.