Sleepy is our grandmother and another legend.
For those readers who “want more Sleepy.” We get it. Due to page count, we had to leave out a lot of Sleepy and her time with her parents and sisters Jo and Dixie back in Washington, DC, while their Navy and Marine Corps husbands were deployed to the Pacific in WWII.
My sisters and I never met Sleepy (sadly, she died at age 44 of Leukemia when our father was 16).
We have had to rely on interviews of those who knew her, letters, newspaper articles, photos, and her sister Josephine Hill Carter’s (our beloved Aunt Jo) memoir.
In 1932, Jo was at Western High School in Washington, DC, and Sleepy, having graduated, embarked on a year-long business course at Temple Business School, on 14 and K Street, N.W., where she met her lifelong friend, Dorice Masters, who would later join Sleepy and Bill in Shanghai with her future Marine husband, James Masters, in 1937.
In the fall of 1933, Sleepy was introduced to Major William H. Rupertus. She met”Bill” at a summer party at the Chinese Embassy.
Major Bill Rupertus joined his good friends, Pete and Edythe Hill, for a festive cocktail party at the embassy with their China Marine friends, not expecting to spot his future bride.
Sleepy’s Uncle Joe, a naval officer, brought her to the party.
Joe had met Bill Rupertus in 1931 on the USS Henderson as he returned from his duty in Peking, China, where he had also lost his family to scarlet fever.
When he introduced her to Bill, she shook his hand, and blushed upon meeting this dashing Marine officer in his dress blues.
Joe left Bill and Sleepy alone to talk, and their conversation swept her across the world, and into his heart.
Their blue eyes locked upon each other that day, and they fell deeply in love.
As Jo shared,
“They had a wonderful courtship that fall and winter. At the same time, Mother had a party at Christmas time to arrange for me to meet some midshipmen. We all went to the Midshipmen Cadet Ball at the Mayflower Hotel (In Washington, DC). Sleepy and her beau, Major Rupertus, were chaperones for this great event.
Bill Rupertus was a widower whose wife, Rita, and two children had all succumbed within a month of each other to Scarlet Fever when they had been stationed in Peking in 1929. Later, when Bill returned home, my uncle Joe was an officer on board the USS Henderson and met him. The transport on which they also made their tragic return.”
Sleepy and Major Bill Rupertus were engaged to be married in less than three months.
The small and simple wedding service was in stark contrast to his first one, yet full of joy. According to the newspaper, the early morning ceremony took place at the home of Sleepy’s parents on R Street in Washington, DC, before an improvised altar with USN Chaplain Thomas J. Knox officiating.
The guests were members of the immediate family and intimate friends. The drawing room and entire home’s first floor were decorated in pure elegance, lit by many tall cathedral candles, beautifully arranged among palms, ferns, trailing smilax, and spring flowers.
Sleepy, as pictured above, wore a suit of light gray with a large collar of gray fox and a corsage of pink orchids. Sleepy’s sole wedding attendant and Maid of Honor was her sister Josephine Hill Carter who wore a pastel pink semi-sheer crepe dress with turban and matching pink satin slippers.
The bride’s mother, Dixie Hill wore a soft shade of hyacinth blue lace with a corsage of small lavender, pink rapture roses, and purple forget-me-nots.
Rupertus and his best man, longtime trusted friend Captain Richard “Dick” Livingston, looked svelte and stunning in their Marine Corps dress blues. Dick had been with Rupertus in Haiti and Peking. He was like a brother.
The groom’s mother, Augustina Rupertus, wore a sleek black velvet gown with a corsage of white gardenias.
Sleepy’s loving and jovial father, Commander Patrick Hill, gave her away in marriage.
After the ceremony, there was a decadent wedding breakfast, along with a cake, which Sleepy cut with Rupertus’s perfectly clean sword in a traditional Navy and Marine manner, his hand atop hers.
While they wanted to celebrate the day, Rupertus had immediate orders to leave his post in Washington, DC, and attach to Headquarters, Department of the Pacific on the West Coast as commanding officer of the spanking new Marine Barracks, Naval Air Station Sunnyvale, California, where he would also assess the U.S. Navy in preparation of the Naval operating plan.
The Marine Corps had been “selling” Sunnyvale as a stellar new station in “sunny” California for months, and they would be some of the first to check it out.
Jo described the wedding and days ahead in her memoir, “I was Maid of Honor, and Major Richard Livingston was best man. The wedding was on the inauguration day (March 4, 1933) of President Franklin D Roosevelt (the last President to be inaugurated on March 4. After that, presidents were always inaugurated on January 20).
Of course, this inauguration was spectacular for me as I was just sixteen. The few of us who were together after the wedding decided to go and watch the Inaugural Parade.
We went down and stood on the sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue about a block from the White House. It was a wonderful thing to see.”
Meanwhile, Bill had orders to report to his new duty station, the U.S. Naval Air Station at Moffett Field, Sunnyvale, California, just south of San Francisco. So he and Sleepy packed up his sleek Marine green Auburn, with its canvas top and white wall tires, and began their drive to California in the late morning, right after the wedding festivities.
Jo described what happened next, “That evening when we returned home. A telephone call came from Bill and Sleepy. Their car developed motor trouble in Wytheville, Virginia, about a day’s drive from Washington. He called his best man, Major Richard Livingston, and then called to ask my parents if I could accompany Major Livingston to drive down in his car to help them out.” ( Dick had previously injured his arm in Nicaragua, and due to his injury, Bill wanted Dick to have company if he was driving in the dark).
“Dick’s car was an Essex which was not a very good car in those days. It looked like a small box with no style at all, and the Essex company soon after that went out of business -because of lack of design, I presume. I drove down with Dick, which was quite a lark. We got into Wytheville about midnight, where Bill and Sleepy had champagne and club sandwiches waiting for us. I spent the night with Sleepy, Bill, and Dick.”
A few days after they married, Rupertus could happily announce that he had married Sleepy, and claim her as a dependent to the Marine Corps. He was in good company and welcomed into her family.
He adored her parents and enjoyed getting to know her brother Hollis, and Sleepy’s older sister Dixie and her future Navy husband, Steve Brodie. Steve was a 1927 graduate of the Naval Academy.
Her sister Jo would soon meet and marry Beverly Ernest Carter, a handsome southerner, years older than she. Bev graduated from the United States Naval Academy in the summer of 1922.
In the 1990s, I interviewed (on tape) Edythe Hill, wife of Marine W. Pete Hill USMC (retired) and Sleepy’s lifelong friend, who told me:
“Sleepy was the youngest spouse among his military peers and friends. At first, his fellow officers’ wives were dismissive of her. Her stunning beauty, style, savviness, and conversation skills at a young age were remarkable as was Rupertus’s story of losing his family, then finding this beautiful, young spinster.
She gave the officers’ wives plenty to gossip about – you can’t control those women. How they act…they are all like that!” Grumbled her friend Edythe.
“Though he could not afford it,” she went on, “Rupertus also gave Sleepy an allowance. He spoiled her rotten! She had an incredible style. Everyone finally realized she was attractive, smart, and could entertain well. She did not need help. She learned the ropes. She was not a little green thing!”
Edythe Hill and Sleepy enjoyed a close friendship and getting dolled up to go out in Washington.
Edythe remembered them strolling together in their fashionably plaid sports clothes, matching plaid hats and shoes. Adding, “How girls dress these days, ugh!”
Sleepy’s family – The Hill’s Irish and Virginia Roots.
Sleepy was born December 4, 1911, in Norfolk, Virginia, and had grown up with her parents Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Hill, wife Dixie (Plummer), and her two sisters, Dixie, Josephine, and Hollis, their older brother.
Hollis, Dixie, Sleepy, and Josephine were born at the Sara Leigh Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia.
Her father, Patrick, his parents, and his two brothers arrived in America in the late 1880s, and all three Hill boys joined the United States Navy. Patrick served in the Spanish-American war. His brother Joe was on the USS Maine when it was attacked – yet he survived.
The Hills were from County Cavan, Ireland, and Patrick met and married Dixie Plummer in Portsmouth, Virginia, on December 3, 1903.
Dixie’s family had lived in the Tidewater areas of Lynn Haven, Virginia, where the Chesapeake River meets the Atlantic Ocean, since 1630.
Annapolis, Maryland
In 1922, Sleepy’s father Patrick was transferred to Annapolis, Maryland, and the family took up residence at No. 33 Franklin Street while he shipped out to the Mediterranean. Sleepy’s brother Hollis had finished high school before getting an appointment to the United States Naval Academy that summer.
Naval service was important to the family, as was schooling and music.
Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Hill.
Jo wrote in her memoir in 1996, “It was a very musical time. My mother, a conservatory graduate, played the piano beautifully, and (my sisters) Dixie and Sleepy were both studying music. Dixie was studying the violin and played very well. She had a very handsome instrument and a wonderful technique and touch.
My sister Alice, always known as ‘Sleepy,” studied piano. Later, they went to the Peabody Institute in Baltimore by train to take their lessons.
Meanwhile, for the year and a half that we lived in the house on Franklin Street, many midshipmen came out on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons to see the beautiful Hill girls and no doubt to listen to my sisters’ early musical performances.
Those were happy days on Franklin Street.
I had lots of playmates, especially the family of the late Admiral Ernest J. King. They lived on the next block from our house and had six children, so there was one for every one of us! My friendship with the King girls, Elizabeth, Eleanor, MarthaClaire, Florie, Mildred, and their single brother, Joe Jr, lasted until they died.
In 1925, we moved to King Charles Court, which was closer to town although only four blocks away from Franklin Street.”
Their brother Hollis was a the Naval Academy, and their father Patrick had been aboard a ship in the eastern Mediterranean. They were thrilled when Patrick returned from his deployment at sea, but dismayed he was immediately ordered to shore duty at the Washington Navy Yard at the foot of 8th Street S.E.
Rather than move the family again, he traveled to Washington every day on the old WB&A train from Annapolis.
As Jo later said about their father during this time:
“However, he was very patient, and quite often, he would bring home a box of Velatis Caramels, which were famous then. It was always a treat, and we looked forward to his return each day. He was naturally pleased that my brother was in the Naval Academy, and I guess that made up for the long journey.”
Soon after, Patrick received orders to the Naval Yard Cavite, Philippines.
“In any case, poor Daddy went out alone aboard a Navy transport to Manila across the Pacific, where he had duty for two years while we remained in Annapolis. Graduating from the Naval Academy was an opportunity my father had never had, and he was so proud that his only son (Hollis) could achieve this great accomplishment. Still, he could not get back in time for my brother’s graduation on June 1, 1926.
From King Charles Court, we moved to a lovely apartment at 5 Maryland Avenue. This was very close to Main Gate 3 of the Naval Academy in an old residence formerly owned by Admiral Mason’s family, which had been made into attractive apartments.
We had the apartment on the first floor with a lovely bay window. The ceilings were about fourteen feet high, and the marble mantle was Victorian and most attractive.
Again, mother’s beautiful baby grand piano stood in the living room. Dixie played her violin, Sleepy played the piano, and a number of midshipmen would come out and play their musical instruments.”
They also danced and played Victrola records (78’s).
“There was always a lovely afternoon tea on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, and it was like home for numerous midshipmen who enjoyed the female company.”
Washington, DC
By 1927, they were living on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, DC. Hollis was married to Rebecca Burgess, and Dixie married Steve Brodie, who by 1928 was shipping out on the USS Denver to the Caribbean.
While he was away, Sleepy’s mother Dixie and sister Dixie took a trip to the Panama Canal on a Navy transport, stopping in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where Patrick’s brother, “Uncle Owen” was Captain of the Port.
Meanwhile, Sleepy and Jo stayed back with their father to attend school while he was at the Navy Yard. Sleepy went to Western High School, and Jo was at Gordon Junior High.
When Dixie returned, they moved again as Patrick was given quarters at a red brick Victorian house in Bellevue on the Potomac River across from Alexandria.
Mother Dixie was unhappy with this location as she had to drive the girls in her old Franklin up to 35th and R Street, N.W.
When Patrick shipped off to sea again aboard the USS Nitro, Dixie, Sleepy, and Jo moved to an apartment on Q Street, closer to the girls’ schools, so they could walk!
Soon afterward, they moved to the brand new Westchester Apartments.
The trip to and from Coronado, California
Never one to rest on his laurels, by 1931, her father, Patrick Hill, retired from the Navy and decided to pursue his lifelong dream of living in California. So, when Sleepy finished school, they moved to Coronado Beach.
As the story goes told by Jo in her memoir, “Daddy was very keen on going to Coronado, California, to settle down, which was an adventure for us.
We sailed from Norfolk in the fall of 1931 on the USS Henderson down through the Caribbean to Panama, stopping on the Atlantic side of the canal, which I think was called Colon, and going ashore.
I have a picture of Sleepy and me as we embarked on the ship, and although only 13, I looked very grown-up. We were both wearing silk suits Mother had made for us, and I was wearing the amber necklace Daddy had brought years ago from Turkey when his ship was in the Eastern Mediterranean after World War I.
He often spoke of the Turks slaughtering the Armenians and the Romanian water red with blood!”
Back to the East Coast. New York to Washington, DC.
Jo went on, “Those silk suits remind me of the dresses Sleepy and I took on an earlier trip to New York with our parents. We stayed at the Waldorf Astoria, and it is one of the highlights of my life. I remember us having breakfast in bed the next morning on trays with a rose.”
This brings us back to 1932.
The Hill family decided Coronado, California, was too far from family and friends, and too sketchy for their girls.
They moved back to Washington, DC. Jo was at Western High School, and Sleepy honed her business skills with Dorice Masters.
Within a year, she would meet and marry her future husband and the love of her life.
Between 1934 and 1941, Sleepy and Bill were stationed in Sunnyvale, CA, Shanghai, China, Marine Corps Barracks Washington DC, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and San Diego, CA.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 Bill Rupertus, Sleepy, and our father Pat were stationed at the Marine Corps base in San Diego, where he became the commanding officer.
Sleepy immediately helped organize the local Red Cross unit at the base while Bill managed the base.
In March 1942, when My Rifle the Creed of a US Marine Bill wrote was published, they left MCB San Diego, and Sleepy, Bill and Pat drove back to Washington, DC to get them settled while Bill (now Brigadier General Rupertus) left them to join his friend General Vandegrift in New River, NC, for the formation and training of the First Marine Division in New River, NC.
By summer 1942, with their husbands in the Pacific, Sleepy began volunteering for the Red Cross in Washington and moved into a house on Van Ness Street in Washington, DC, with her sister Jo for companionship and saving of resources.
While they kept calm and carried on, everyone was constantly scanning the newspaper and newsreels for information on their loved ones serving in the Pacific.
As Sleepy and Jo would often say, they were “Here for the duration.”
Their children, Beverly and our father Pat, loved playing together. Here are some photos from the Washington DC newspaper’s “Service Set” section.
Jo reading a Christmas story to her daughter Beverly and our dad Pat.
Sleepy Rupertus circa 1942
As serious as she looks here. There were fun times, despite the war. Sleepy and her friend, Dorice, would often meet up at Martins Tavern in Washington, DC for cocktails and “girls night” with Dorice’s son Champ and our dad Pat playing with cards and mini toy soldiers under their table.
Jo and her daughter Beverly with our dad Pat walking in Washington, DC.
Finally, in November, 1944, her husband General Rupertus came home from war. He became Commandant of the Marine Corps Schools at Quantico.
So once again, Sleepy packed up and thy moved into officer’s quarters on base.
Sleepy, Pat and General “Bill” Rupertus loved being together again, and videos show our dad Pat playing in planes, tanks and on ponies at Quantico under his father’s watchful eye.
They enjoyed being In Quantico with the Vandegrift’s and many longtime Marine friends. Sleepy liked to entertain and being so close to Washington, Sleepy’s family also visited.
When Gen. Bill Rupertus received the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, there was a grand military ceremony, and many close family and Navy and Marine friends joined them for the parade and celebration that cold winter day.
Since he had come back from the Pacific, he was Commandant of the Marine Corps Schools and on the public relations train.
Bill had to occasionally leave Sleepy and Pat to do some business travel for the USMC for interviews and speaking events.
On March 24, 1945 Sleepy, Bill and Pat Rupertus drove up from Quantico to Washington DC, to spend the Easter week in Washington, DC with family and friends.
On Sunday, March 25, they planned to attend a party at the Marine Barracks at 8th and I with veterans of the 1st Marine Division, at the house of his friend, and former chief of staff on Tulagi, Col. Robert C. Killmartin.
March 25, 1945, a week before Easter Sunday, Bill and Sleepy were at the party having an absolute ball. It was a rollicking good time.
Bill told a friend he felt hot, took a glass of water, and went outside for some air, twice.
On the second time, he sat down on the steps and suffered a massive heart attack.
The party stopped. Sleepy was called outside by Col. Kilmartin. Seeing Bill, she burst into tears, and knelt beside her husband, wrapping her arms around him to hold him close as shock set in.
Bill was raced to sick bay, but did not survive.
Their longtime friends, the Hills were at the party and took care of Sleepy and our dad Pat.
On March 26, 1945, Major General William Henry Rupertus was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
Devastated, Sleepy had to drive back to Quantico and pack up again, knowing she would never see her husband again.
With the help of the Hills, she and Pat (then age 6) moved from Quantico back to Washington to figure out their life, without Bill.
It was tough time for both she and Pat, I imagine. But they had been alone together when Bill was at war. They would get through this devastating loss, together.
Thankfully, family was nearby, as was Navy and Marine Corps friends of Bill and Sleepy Rupertus, who looked after our dad Pat for years and through his time at the United States Naval Academy and Marine Corps.
And, he had the love and support of Sleepy’s sisters Jo and Dixie. My sisters and I are forever thankful, and cherish the memories of being with Jo, Dixie and their families, who were still in touch with today, in 2022.
