NAVAL PIONEER WAS WAVE OF THE FUTURE.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

They sat a few seats away at a luncheon recently - a young African- American female naval officer and a 90-year-old Studio City woman who paved the way for her.

``She was sitting there in that beautiful uniform, and I felt proud, thinking 'We've sure come a long way,''' said Laura Borsten, one of the original WAVES - Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service - who enlisted in the Navy at the outbreak of World War II.

They've come a long way from the time when the military was considered strictly men's work, and the best thing women could do was stay home, raise the kids and write their G.I. husbands or boyfriends letters from back home.

A long way from the time that pioneers, like Borsten, had to fight to convince their superiors that it was wrong to segregate young female recruits by color - that they were all wearing the same uniform so could live and work together under the same roof.

``We talked a little after the luncheon, but I didn't tell her who I was or what I did,'' Borsten said.

Too bad because her story is an important, fascinating chapter in this country's military history - a chapter that has never had the full recognition it deserves because, in historical terms, it came and went in the blink of an eye - from 1942 to 1948.

And Laura Borsten, who turned 90 this year as the WAVES celebrates its 60th anniversary - was there from the very beginning.

``We used to kid that the men sure did take their sweet time letting us in,'' she said Wednesday from her Studio City home.

Covering her coffee table are dozens of newspapers and magazines from 1942, which ran front page stories and photos of Borsten - Laura Rapaport at the time - being sworn into military service with four other women. They were the first female enlistees not to be part of a women's service auxiliary, like the WACS.

``The truth is the military would have preferred robots, but they couldn't find any, so they were stuck with us,'' she said, laughing.

The words aren't bitter. They're just said matter of factly because that's the way it was back then, even though women would be serving in strictly noncombat, recruitment, clerical and teaching jobs.

``It was a men's club, and they didn't want to take any sass from women,'' she said. ``When they finally did take us in, they realized what a treasure they had.

``Most of the women already had boyfriends and husbands in the service and were feeling like we weren't doing our share.''

After President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with some heavy arm twisting from his wife, Eleanor, signed legislation allowing women to enlist in the armed forces, the military got its treasure - and some sass, too.

Born in North Dakota, the daughter of a homesteader, Borsten was living in New York City and working as program director for the National Council of Jewish Women when the war broke out.

``I got a call from a professor friend of mine who was at Barnard College telling me legislation was going through Congress to allow women to enlist, and would I be interested,'' Borsten said.

The Navy was looking for women with at least 10 years professional experience to get the WAVES off the ground - women who could organize and train the thousands of women who would come after them.

In 1942, Borsten was assigned to teach new recruits about ship and aircraft history, something she knew absolutely nothing about.

``I was about a quarter of a lesson plan ahead of the class,'' she said, laughing.

Later, she spent two years in charge of registering and assigning duty stations to 1,800 female recruits coming into the service every week. The last 16 months of her four-year enlistment was in Honolulu as transportation officer at Pearl Harbor.

It was here that now Lt. Cmdr. Borsten came face to face with racism and segregation, and got a little sassy.

``More African-American women were coming into the service, and the brass thought it was best to keep them segregated in their own units, but I argued against it because it was wrong,'' Borsten said.

Her successful fight to integrate the services was one of the stories she told at the WAVES national convention 10 years ago when she was keynote speaker at the 50th anniversary celebration.

It was a speech that touched many of the former Waves who were there - local women like Pauline Morrish of the 55-member San Fernando Valley Chapter of WAVES.

``She's a pioneer who led the way for a lot of women and helped make it possible for women in the service today to have these careers right alongside men,'' Morrish said.

After she was discharged in 1946, Borsten came to Los Angeles, met by chance an old boyfriend, Orin Borsten, and got married six months later.

Fifty-six years later, they're still married. Both of them turned 90 this year.

Laura's been retired since 1967, when she left her job running the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Association of the Visually Handicapped, but she has continued volunteer work with other charitable organizations for the partially sighted.

That's where she met a young African-American female naval officer at a luncheon not long ago and felt pretty proud of the job she started 60 years ago in a man's military world helping women come a long way.

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Photo:

(1 -- 2) Laura Borsten, left, holds a photo from 1946 when she served in the U.S. Navy as a Wave. Above, Borsten and members of her graduating class of Waves march into a new era of military service in the United States.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer