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By Root 3457 0

When he celebrated his eighteenth birthday, he was immersed in Greek, Latin, third-year English, History, and Geometry. On April 13, 1918, a hundred thousand spectators lined the curbs as a three-hour parade in support of the third Liberty Loan marched down the center of America’s most German city. The next day, the Whitehouse Theatre on Third Street began a week-long engagement of The Kaiser—The Beast of Berlin (“The Photoplay That Made New York Cheer Like Mad”), kicking off a naval recruitment competition with Chicago that was, by early May, delivering seventy-five recruits a day. The campaign reached its zenith on Mother’s Day weekend, when Lieutenant John Philip Sousa arrived in town with his 250-member “Jackie” band from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. The city seemed to be crawling with sailors, and a half-page ad in the Sunday paper bore the headline: THE NAVY NEEDS YOU! YOU NEED THE NAVY! As Bill O’Brien put it, “The bands played, the drill parades started, the Liberty Bond drives were on, and Spence and myself and some others left school one afternoon and went downtown to the enlistment headquarters of the Navy.”

They didn’t join that day, but they came plenty close. In the O’Brien household on Fourteenth Street, cooler heads prevailed and Bill was persuaded to finish the school year before enlisting. Spence, however, had no wish to continue at Marquette, and the prospect of losing an entire semester’s credits didn’t seem to bother him in the least. That night, as Carroll remembered it, he marched into the kitchen, wearing “that crooked one-sided grin” that had become something of a trademark, and said to his mother, “I’ve enlisted in the Navy.” Carrie instantly burst into tears, but John Tracy “was sort of proud of the kid.” As for Carroll: “I was out of the house and down the street before anyone could stop me. I enlisted too, not so much for patriotic motives, mind you, but because of my desire to be near Spence and to keep an eye on him.” It was Monday, May 13, and naval records show that Carroll Edward Tracy, in one of the few impulsive acts of his life, did indeed sign up for service that day. What he didn’t know was that his brother was merely floating the idea, eager to gauge their parents’ reaction, and that he hadn’t yet done what he said he had done. Once Carroll made his move, though, Spence’s bluff had been called, and he quietly and somewhat sheepishly joined the navy the following day, Tuesday, May 14, 1918.

Navy seaman, age eighteen. (SUSIE TRACY)

Enrolled as a “Landsman for Electrician (Radio),” he went straight to school and bypassed boot camp. After vaccinations for cowpox and typhoid, he was sent to the Naval Training Station in North Chicago, where he gallantly spent the rest of the war in a classroom. “The training, the discipline, and the healthy life not only did me good physically,” he said, “but mentally as well. I realized for the first time that a man must make his own way in life, that he must assume certain responsibilities, and that a man can’t receive too much education, because the Navy demands alert minds.”

On the rare weekend when he could get away on leave, Tracy headed home to Woodlawn Court, where, on at least one occasion, he was accompanied by “six of the toughest-looking sailors” Carrie had ever seen. “They were decidedly not what you would call polite specimens of manhood. They apparently were so stunned by our mode of living that they asked Spencer if Mr. Tracy was a bootlegger, and each of them ended up the weekend visit by borrowing $25 from Mr. Tracy. In fact, John used to say it cost him $100 a month, as well as the government its share, to keep Spencer in the service.” After the Armistice, he was sent to Hampton Roads, where Carroll, who spent most of his stretch in Detroit, thought he had some sort of an ordnance job. “I didn’t sleep very well at night because of worrying about him, until I heard through a mutual friend that Spence was doing okay; he was acting as an aide or some such cushy job for an officer.” Bill O’Brien, who waited until August to