AVIS MURRAY • VIETNAM / COLD WAR
Avis Murray, 88
Gloucester, MA
Born: 9/20/37
Born/Raised: Gloucester
Service: US Women’s Army Corps
Rank: E-5 Sergeant 1st Class
Unit: Various
Dates of Service: 1956-1965
“I was the tomboy of the neighborhood. Pick-up football games at Newell, baseball, Annie Gosbey and I were the first to play baseball.” Avis Murray grew up with her sister Estella and their mother, Ruth Johnson Murray, on Exchange Street. Her mother had left her father and worked at the W. T. Grant Co. department store to support the family. Avis attended Hovey School, Central Grammar and Gloucester High School where the Sawyer Medal honoree finished first in her class in 1955. “I got a year’s subscription to Reader’s Digest.”
The future tennis pro would sow the seeds of her career down at the courts in Stage Fort Park, playing all day long after walking her grandmother to her job at The Cupboard. She bought her first racquet for $5. “I remember the bombing at Pearl Harbor. I always wanted to serve my country.” She enlisted in the Women’s Army Corp in 1956 for a two-year hitch while she hoped to get into Salem State College. At the end of her first enlistment, she re-upped for a year only to receive a call shortly thereafter letting her know she’d gotten accepted at the college. She stayed with the Army.
She would extend again for three more for a total of six, working transportation, personnel, the JAG’s office and as a company clerk. She became an aide to General Charles Tank and along with it, top-secret clearance.
By 1960 she was transferred to Bremerhaven, Germany where she worked in public relations publishing a newspaper for the Air Force, Navy and Army. In 1962 she returned home to Gloucester, got a job at a savings bank in town and 89 days later decided to re-enlist. “I was lost.” She re-upped for three more years and a posting at Fort Devens. “I worked for the greatest guy, Col. Morris Montgomery.”
When she had two years left, she volunteered to go to a developing conflict area called Vietnam. Unfortunately for her, they wanted a five-year commitment and she wasn’t prepared to sign for quite that long. In 1965 she left the WACs and again returned to Gloucester. She would get a job as a secretary for a while, but “my love was tennis. I wanted to teach tennis ten hours per day for $10.” She started working at Bass Rocks as the tennis pro in 1971 and has been there ever since.