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Marilyn Roberts (Bobbi) Earp Collection

 Collection
Identifier: WV 0174

Content Description

The collection includes a 2000 June oral history transcript; Newspaper article photocopy from Whiteville, NC, 1989; portrait photograph of Marilyn in her Navy WAVES uniform; photographs of Marilyn and her husband during their service, 1945.

Dates

  • circa 1944-1949

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright is retained by the creators of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information. Please see our Sensitive Materials Statement.

Biographical / Historical

Marilyn Roberts "Bobbi" Earp (1922-2006), of Galien, Michigan, was an air traffic controller with the United States Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services) from 1944 to 1949, followed by a long career as a teacher in Tabor City, North Carolina.

Marilyn "Bobbi" Roberts Earp was born and raised in rural Galien, Michigan. She graduated from high school in 1940 and entered the Western Michigan Teacher's College in Kalamazoo, where she lived with sisters who were pilots. After three years of college, she dropped out to take flying lessons and later joined the Civil Air Patrol, while also working in a parachute flare packing factory. Before Earp could get enough solo hours to qualify for the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots), the service ceased taking new recruits."

Instead, Earp joined the WAVES in July 1944 and attended basic training at Hunter College in New York. After completing air traffic control training in Atlanta, Earp was stationed at the naval air base in Glenview, Illinois. She worked as an air traffic controller there until her discharge in 1946, and married fellow air traffic controller Roger Earp in September 1945. Earp returned to service in operations at Glenview about a year later, but was permanently discharged from the United States Navy in 1949 when she became pregnant.

Earp went back to school in the early 1960s, finishing her degree in education at Pembroke. When Roger Earp passed away in 1964, she began a career in teaching in Tabor City, North Carolina.

Extent

0.21 Linear Feet (3 folders )

Language of Materials

English

Metadata Rights Declarations

  • License: This record is made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Creative Commons license.

Condition Description

The condition is good.

Offensive Language Statement

The UNC Greensboro University Libraries collects, preserves, and makes accessible unique and historical materials for learning and research. The nature of historical materials is such that some material may represent positions, norms, and values that are offensive and objectionable. These materials represent the opinions and actions of their creators. By providing access to these records in our reading room and through our digital collections, we recognize that archives and rare books can play a vital role in holding those creators accountable and in helping us learn from the past.

Our finding aids and other collection descriptions may occasionally re-use language provided by creators or former holders of the materials, but we strive to place outdated or offensive terminology in context. That said, we recognize that we may not always make the right decision and welcome feedback from all sources so we can learn and adjust our practices. Please contact us at scua@uncg.edu if you encounter problematic language in our finding aids or other collection description. We will review the language and, as appropriate, update it in a way that balances preservation of the original context with our ongoing commitment to describing materials with respectful and inclusive language.

Processing Information

Processed by Matthew McCarthy.

Title
Marilyn Roberts "Bobbi" Earp Collection
Status
In Progress
Author
Matthew McCarthy
Date
2022 June
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
eng

Repository Details

Part of the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives Repository

Contact:
P.O. Box 26170
320 College Ave.
Greensboro NC 27402-6170 US
336-334-5246