The verified story
A life carried forward in the record.
Charlotte Louise Berry Winters was born in Washington, D.C., on November 10, 1897. A graduate of Washington Business High School, she belonged to the first generation of American women permitted to enlist in the Navy. As a Yeoman (F), she served as a clerk at the Naval Gun Factory in the Washington Navy Yard, holding military status and receiving rank-based pay.
By the time DeJonge reached Winters, age had narrowed what she could recount directly, so her niece helped preserve the larger family record. Winters still remembered women in uniform marching along the National Mall before crowds during the war. Family testimony also placed Charlotte and her sister Sophie in an early conversation with Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels about women’s usefulness to the service. The meeting belongs in the story as family recollection, not as proof that they caused the Navy’s policy change.
Winters’s contribution continued after demobilization. In 1919 she helped organize the Betsy Ross Post No. 1 for former Yeomen (F); the group later became associated with the American Legion as USS Jacob Jones Post No. 2. She remained an American Legion member for decades and served as a leader in the national Yeoman (F) veterans organization. She also continued working for the Navy as a civilian until 1953.
DeJonge’s portrait gives public form to a service history that was often treated as administrative and therefore overlooked: a woman in uniform at the moment the Navy first opened enlisted ranks to women.
