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Podcast: Veterans Chronicles
Episode: Lois Bouton, U.S. Coast Guard, WWII
Description: After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Lois Bouton asked to join the U.S. Coast Guard but was told it did not accept women. The very next year, the policy changed and the Coast Guard Women's Reserve was born. Bouton joined in 1943, became a boot camp instructor and later served as a radioman along the Atlantic Coast.Almost 30 years later, in her role as a schoolteacher, Bouton began visiting recovering servicemembers at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, where she brought cookies and encouraging letters from her students.Soon she was visiting every week, and...