The iconic “I want you” poster was what inspired the late Marseilles native Marie Pometto Chase to become La Salle County’s first woman to enlist in the U.S. Navy during World War Two.

“Now, you’re not going to believe this,” her son Mike Chase said. “But she literally saw a picture somewhere where it said something like, ‘The military wants you,’ and that’s all it took. That’s what made her join.”

After she saw that recruitment poster calling on women to join the Navy, Chase enlisted as a WAVE - Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service.

From Chicago, she boarded a train to Hunter College in New York for basic training before being stationed in Washington, D.C., where she directed a women’s barracks until the end of the war.

Donna Turnbaugh, her daughter, added that her mother was proud of her time in the Navy and even visited the site of her former barracks many years later.

“She would tell me that she would have stayed in if she could have,” Turnbaugh said. “She was very proud of her time in the navy and proud to have served her country.”

“She was very proud of the fact that she was the first woman from La Salle County to enlist,” Mike Chase said. “And I believe she kept that pride her whole life.”

After returning home, Marie married, raised two children, and began teaching physical education at Marseilles High School in 1948.

A few years later, she saw a local need for early education. Marseilles didn’t yet have a public kindergarten program, so she went back to school to earn her elementary teaching certificate and launched the city’s first public kindergarten class in 1958.

“She always loved her students,” Turnbaugh said. “I remember she would spend weeks before the school year washing the toys, setting up the classroom and even hosting overnight events for the kids. She was completely devoted as a teacher.”

Outside the classroom, Chase was known for her lifelong love of dance. She took dance classes in Ottawa and, well into her 80s, performed with dance groups in Arizona.

“She might have pursued a career in dance if she could have done it all over again,” Turnbaugh said.

When asked what his mother passed down to him, Mike kept it very simple.

“Probably just her kindness, and there’s something about taking care of the next generation,” Chase said. “That’s what she was all about.”

In a 1977 interview with the Daily Times, Chase said she regretted resigning from teaching, but quoting from the Beatitudes that “to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under the sun.”

And what would she miss the most?

“The kisses, the hugs and the ‘I love you’ from my tiny guys and dolls,” Chase said.

“Today’s kindergarten child already knows much more about the world in which they live than did his own parents at the same age,” she said. “I don’t like bumper stickers, but I ordered one the other day. It says, ‘Have you hugged your kid today?’ although I prefer the word ‘child.’”

Her hopes for the future were “to see parents and teachers as partners in programs that challenge the student, not push. What happens in the child’s first school year is important to their entire future.”