It’s 1962. You are a senior at Teaneck High School. Your family does not have the resources to send you to college even if you are in the top 10% of your class. You are shy; you barely squeaked through the required “Oral Expression” course; you took typing but did not feel very successful at it.
What do you do?
If you are Pat Korczak, the answer is: JOIN THE MARINES!
Why the Marines? The military had come to Teaneck High to introduce students to the idea of the military as a next career step. Pat thought the military might be a good next step for her. So, she headed to the wooden recruitment cabin in Hackensack. There was only one recruiter there that day – a Marine. So, Pat signed on to the Marines.
After taking the Marine oath and getting two armloads of shots, Pat and her new friend, Rosemary climbed aboard a train and headed to Parris Island, South Carolina for Boot Camp.
That train ride gave her the first life lesson of her new experience. Her fellow-recruit, Rosemary, was Black. As the train crossed the Mason-Dixon Line and headed into Virginia, Rosemary handed Pat the travel papers. “They won’t accept them from a Black person,” she said. “That life lesson never entered my head, living here in Teaneck” Pat says now.
Boot Camp for women Marines in 1962 was less rigorous than for men. But it brought structure, a sense of equality, and a sense of identity to Pat’s life. Though women recruits were not screamed at as we’ve seen in movies about the Marines. They had physical requirements (like sit-ups and pull-ups); they had Close-Order Drill, the traditional marching in formation. They learned about weapons, but women Marines were not allowed to handle rifles.
Pat loved to work on cars and hoped to be assigned to the Motor Pool. Unfortunately, women were not allowed to work there. So – the Marines made her a typist. Despite her trouble with typing in high school, the Marines made her a proficient typist. Pat became an Aviations Operation Clerk. It was her job to know where every plane and every pilot stationed at her base was at any time and make sure what was needed was where it should be at any moment.
As she says, “I had a full education in organizational skills,” which served her well throughout her professional life.
Despite the somewhat different training and some different treatment received by women and men, Pat says the Marines gave her the identity she needed. She was not Ethel’s daughter or Jim’s sister. She was Recruit, then Private, then Private-First Class Patricia O’Brien. For the first time in her life, she felt treated as an equal. “When you’re treated with confidence, you get your confidence.”
In 1965, with her honorable discharge, Pat moved back to Teaneck. Moving back to Teaneck meant moving back to the house her grandfather bought when it was just a hole in the ground in 1923. Pat’s mother graduated from Teaneck High school in 1934 – and Pat is the proud owner not only of her mother’s Hi-Way Yearbook, but also the yearbooks from three years earlier which includes the very first Hi-Way from 1931.
Moving back to Teaneck brought Pat many opportunities to use the extraordinary organizational skills she developed in the Marines. When her son and daughter were small, she organized the family home (something she has kept up to the present) so it is essentially a museum of Teaneck from the 1920’s forward.
Now, at Christmastime, her first floor is transformed into a true Christmas wonderland with miniature villages. It is truly a work of art, though Pat would probably tell you it is a work of organization.
Pat worked for many years in advertising in the city and a marketing firm on Cedar Lane. But her great loves that make her sparkling eyes shine even brighter are her membership in the Gooney Birds (Marine Corps League Detachment 434) and the last job she held before retirement.
The Gooney Birds, named after the giant cargo planes (which looked like the giant albatrosses) that brought the Military Engineers to tiny atolls in the South Pacific to build landing strips for army air force planes to land and refuel, are local clubs for Marines. As a Gooney Bird, Pat also serves as a member of Teaneck's Patriotic Observance Advisory Board.
As for that last job before retirement: Pat Korczak, working on many projects, appeared frequently before the Board of Adjustment, chaired by Anne Senter. When Pat saw an advertisement for clerical help at KOF-K Kosher Supervision, the family firm of Rabbi Harvey and Mrs. Anne Senter, she delivered her resume to their office. Two minutes later, Anne Senter appeared welcoming, “I knew it was you. When can you start?”
Pat says, “I took a crash course in Hebrew and koshering – and organized their files. I love them – but you can’t file everything under P for Paper!”
She continues, “It was the best time I ever had working; it was the most acceptance of being a woman I ever found in a workplace.” She continues, “I learned my organizational skills through the Marine Corps, and really put them to use working for Rabbi Harvey and Mrs. Anne Senter. It was absolutely wonderful!”
