Collection finding aid (offsite)
Jaenn Coz Bailey (1924-2000), of Sacramento, California, decoded and filed top secret messages during her service with the United States Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) from October 1944 until May 1946. Jaenn Magdalene Coz Bailey was born in Fresno, California, and grew up in Sacramento, California. She graduated from C.K. McClatchy High School in 1943 and worked at the California State Library. Bailey joined the WAVES in the fall of 1944 and attended basic training at Hunter College in the Bronx, New York. In December 1944 she was sent to the Naval Communications Annex in Washington, D.C., where she typed and filed top-secret decoded messages, helped organize a library of classified materials, and delivered dispatches to the White House. She left the WAVES as a first class petty officer in May 1946 and married Chuck Bailey. They both attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the GI Bill from 1946 until 1950. They lived in California for several years before her husband was called back into the military for the Korean War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bailey remained involved in the Reserve Officer's Association League and passed away in November 2000.