Artifacts of the Month: Captain Ruth Moeller, MSC, USN

By Joseph Judge
Hampton Roads Naval Museum Curator

In honor of women’s history month the artifacts of the month are personal items from Captain Ruth Moeller, USN.  Capt. Moeller was an educator and administrator who served the Navy for three decades as “an officer and a lady.”

Items on display this month include uniform items that once belonged to Capt. Moeller such as the Navy Tiara (upper left) as well as commemorative coins and personal decorations.  (Photograph by Marta Nelson-Joiner)

Capt. Moeller's personal decorations included the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the National Defense Service Medal (two awards).(Photograph by Marta Nelson-Joiner)

USS Solace (AH-5) in 1943. Solace, the second Navy hospital ship to carry that name, was built in 1927 as the passenger ship SS Iroquois by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co., Newport News, Va. The liner was converted into a hospital ship at the Atlantic Basin Iron Works, Brooklyn, N.Y. In March 1942, Solace was ordered to the South Pacific and in the ensuing months shuttled between New Zealand, Australia, New Caledonia, Espiritu Santo, the New Hebrides, and the Fiji Islands, caring for fleet casualties and servicemen wounded in the island campaigns. (Official U.S. Navy Photo)

Capt. Moeller was born in 1916 in Nebraska.  In 1939 she was appointed a reserve officer in the Navy Nurse Corps and was called to active duty in March 31, 1942.  The young nurse shipped to the South Pacific aboard the hospital ship USS Solace (AH-5).  During World War II, she also was stationed at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, VA. 

The seal of the Navy Nurse Corps from Capt. Moeller's collection. (Photograph by Marta Nelson-Joiner)

In 1947, after further studies at the Medical College of Virginia and other places, she transferred from the Nurse Corps to the Medical Service Corps.  Congress established the Medical Service Corps as a staff Corps of the Navy engaged in medical support work.  Part of the Corps was the Women’s Specialist Section.


In 1957, she was assigned to the Naval Medical School, Bethesda, as officer in charge of the Physical Therapy Technicians School.  She also assumed additional duty as Assistant to the Director, Medical Service Corps for Women Specialist Officers.

It was under the leadership of Captain Moeller, who had become the Assistant for the Women’s Specialist Section in 1962, that the Navy eliminated the word “Women’s’’ from the section’s title thereby making it the “Medical Specialist Section.” In 1965, men actually joined the section.


President Lyndon B. Johnson signs Public Law 90-130. Captain Ruth Moeller is standing third from the left.  The Nov. 8, 1967, event opened promotions for women to general and flag ranks, lifted ceilings on other ranks and removed the two-percent ceiling on the number of women allowed on active duty. (Courtesy Women's Memorial)

In 1967, Capt. Moeller was one of the women standing beside President Lyndon Johnson when he signed the law opening general and flag ranks to women. The law also removed the 2% ceiling on the number of women in each service branch.

Capt. Moeller retired on September 1, 1969 as an admired clinician and mentor to junior officers and enlisted corpsmen alike. She passed away in 2014 at 98 years of age, and in accordance with her wishes was buried at sea.

Captain William De Valin and the Party of the Year, 1925

In October 1925, the commanding officer of the Norfolk Navy Yard decided to have a Halloween party at the officers' club. He invited all of the region's senior Naval and Marine officers to attend and told them it was going to be a costume party. To make the party truly a party, he needed alcohol. Being that this was the era of Prohibition, legally obtaining such beverages was hard to do.

Fortunately for party goers, one officer in Hampton Roads oversaw the largest supply of legal alcohol in the area, Captain William De Valin, commanding officer of the Portsmouth Naval Hospital. The Volstead Act, the Federal law that officially made the transportation, production, and possession of alcohol a crime, provided for two exceptions: religious use (i.e. wine for Holy Communion) and medicinal purposes. Although the American Medical Association denounced the use of alcohol as a valid treatment option, the medical community had long used whiskey and other hard liquors as antiseptics and analgesics. During Prohibition, patients seeking hard liquor for such purposes had to get a special prescription. Much of Dr. De Valin's supply came from seized contraband found on Navy ships that had attempted to bootleg whiskey and champagne into NOB Norfolk from the West Indies. Once the trial of the accused bootleggers was over, Naval authorities often transferred the booze over to the Hospital.

Since this was a costume party, the commanding officer of the Navy Yard's Marines, Colonel Henry Davis, came dressed as Sunbonnet Sue, a popular quilting pattern and children's book character. De Valin came dressed as a Scottish bagpiper and, more importantly, brought with him several pints of whiskey and champagne.

All of the guests partook of the liquor and, by all accounts, the party was a huge success. After a few drinks, Davis and De Valin entertained the guests with their best rendition of Scottish highland dances. One person, however, thought De Valin was having too much fun. Commander Robert Heiner, De Valin's executive officer, believed his boss to be out of control. After the party was over, he filed charges against De Valin.

One of the costumes depicted Sunbonnet
Sue, a popular children's book and quilting
pattern. 

Heiner accused De Valin not only of being drunk, but of using the Hospital's supply of liquor improperly and groping women at the party. He also charged that De Valin was so drunk that he attempted to put pajamas on a horse. When the accusation reached the desk of Secretary of the Navy Curtis Wilbur, this former chief justice of the California Supreme Court was not pleased. While denying that he was on a crusade to completely rid the Navy of all liquor, Wilbur nonetheless was not happy with constant reports of bootlegging and misuse of liquor by the Navy's Medical Corps. He personally ordered an investigation into the party and De Valin's actions. Enough evidence was discovered and the Secretary ordered a formal court-martial for May 1926.

Ironically, though it was well-known that every officer at the party drank, none of them were charged with violating the Volstead Act. Indeed, the Navy only accused De Valin of misuse of the Hospital liquor supply and actions unbecoming an officer. The charge of dressing up the horse was never brought up (De Valin later claimed to a newspaper reporter, however, that he was simply fixing the bandages on the horse's legs).

The trial brought up all the embarrassing events of that fateful night: the booze, the wild costumes, the dancing, and the alleged groping. Heiner testified that this party was not the first time his commanding officer raided the Hospital's liquor cabinet. He claimed that De Valin would also take some during hunting trips in the Virginia countryside. Colonel Davis and Commander Charles Blakely, commanding officer of the battleship USS Texas (BB-35), came to De Valin's defense. They both claimed that De Valin was not drunk and, while he danced with several women, he never touched them improperly. Of course, upon cross examination, Commander Blakely did admit that he personally advised De Valin that his actions were questionable and that he should leave the party.

The panel cleared De Valin of the more serious charges of conduct unbecoming an officer, but it did find him guilty of misusing the Hospital's liquor supply. For that, the court punished him by demoting him down several ranks on the promotion list. Sensing also that Heiner and De Valin had serious personal issues with each other, Wilbur transferred De Valin to the Naval hospital in Philadelphia.

1862 "Views of Norfolk and Portsmouth" Engraving

This is an engraving entitled, "Views of Norfolk and Portsmouth from the U.S. Naval Hospital."  It is currently on display in the museum's Civil War gallery.  At first glance, the print appears to be an illustration of the two cities and the Portsmouth Naval Hospital (at right) as they appeared before the war.  After all, everything looks calm and peaceful with U.S. Naval warships at anchor and people going about their daily routine. Upon closer inspection, however, the printmaker issued the work in 1862, the year Union forces occupied the region and when Confederate forces put the Gosport Navy Yard to the torch. One would expect to see a bit more evidence of the war in the print.

When one compares this print with the one below, we get an answer to why the print's looks are deceiving.  The printmaker took an older print (the one below), redrew the same city scenes, scratched out the civilian ships, and replaced them with U.S. Navy ships. 

The print-making firm of Edwars Sachse and Company of Baltimore drew, colored-in, and published both prints.  Sachse and his artists specialized in accurate urban landscapes and building scenes in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., like this one of Norfolk and Portsmouth.  The firm published prints of various parts of Washington, D.C., Fort Monroe, the Virginia Military Institute, the University of Virginia, and the U.S. Capitol, among many others.  Many of their drawings are "bird's eye" or "aerial views" that gave the viewer a spectacular three-dimensional view.  The firm's print of Baltimore is considered to be its finest.  According to one art historian, Sachse's artists spent three years drawing nothing but buildings in Baltimore to construct the print.  Like many 19th-century lithographers and other forms of mass-produced art, Sachse was originally from Prussia, the birthplace of lithography.  He emigrated to the United States in the 1840s. 

The tag line, "Published,  C. Bohn, 681 Penn. Ave, D.C. and Old Point Comfort," also appears on the print.  Bohn appears to have been Sachse's marketing agent and writer.  It does not appear that he was an artist.  His most notable work is an 1856 tourist's guide to Washington, D.C. called Bohn's Hand-book of Washington, D.C.