HISTORY OF THE SCUTTLEBUTT SPECIAL
Excerpted from the WMA National publication of the 50 years of WMA
Following their discharge, 28 WR’s, mostly from Miramar, kept their Round Robin letter alive for several years, then found themselves corresponding only at Christmas. Trying to get all the news crammed into one Christmas card proved to be a chore, most especially when the job was multiplied by 27. Meg Young Dawes came up with a solution. She asked the other 27 to send her their news before Christmas. She could them combine and mimeograph everyone’s news and enclose copies in her Christmas cards to them.
The word spread and ultimately Meg found herself swamped with requests for copies of the ―Scuttlebutt‖ newsletter. Lists of names and addresses of buddies were sent in by hundreds of former Marines. The files grew to almost 15,000 names.
At the Scuttlebutt Reunion in 1959 at the Marines Memorial Club in San Francisco, California it was voted to share the work of publishing Scuttlebutt. The mailing list was divided according to station. These lists were then assigned to volunteer editors. Each editor contacted her list of names requested their news, edited and combined the news then cut stencils to be mailed to Meg. She mimeographed the news, complied and mailed the completed Scuttlebutt to all who ordered a copy.
The Scuttlebutt mailing list was one of WMA’s first contacts for attendance at Denver for the first reunion of Women Marines. It again was borrowed for contacts for membership in the newly formed Women Marines Association.
In St, Louis, MO in 1964 Scuttlebutt became a partner with WMA. It became known as the WMA Scuttlebutt Special, the informal newsletter.
Because of the continuing increasing costs of materials and postage, the last edition of the WMA Scuttlebutt Special was published in 1975.
More of Our History “Nouncements
In 1975, The Scuttlebutt Special, the first news source for women Marines stopped publishing. The beginnings of this newsletter started immediately following WWII when 28 USMCWR’S decided to stay in “touch“. The first National Scuttlebutt reunion in 1959 agreed to help with the work and financial load of what had become a huge project. The Scuttlebutt list became one of the resources used to make contact for the 1960 convention that led to WMA.
Taking over in the 1969 was ―Nouncements” that came out in an all new magazine format. It was black and white, on non-gloss paper with touches of color and was a WMA mainstay for about 20 years. Then in the1990’s WMA member, Sondra Metzger took over as editor and the quarterly took off to become an excellent newsletter. Wanda Antoine is carrying on the proud tradition of ‘Nouncements” since 2010.
Presently Sondra Metzger is once again our editor and doing great things in keeping the association supplied with current news of Our Marines. She assumed the role in 2015.