IN THE 1940s AS A RECENT HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE
A Platte County woman’s stories about her wartime job may sound like the plot of a classic suspense movie.
But to Audra Belle Smith (now Audra Kincheloe), her experiences working for one of the country’s most well-known G-men—J. Edgar Hoover—in a government agency that many historians consider one of the most influential of the 20th century—the FBI, are merely a brief detour on the road to the rest of her life.
Now 97 years old, she was age 17 in 1944 and a recent high school graduate. Kincheloe had heard about the availability of government jobs during World War II and joined hundreds of other women who answered a call and filled a large auditorium in Washington, D.C. Kincheloe said she had never before been employed and was staying in Washington, D.C. with an aunt who lived in nearby Fairfax, Va.
When asked how many women attended the “government job fair,” she said a “gazillion.” All she and the other women who applied were told was there were hundreds of open positions since, at the time, those who normally would have occupied such jobs were at war.
“Everybody who had any sense at all had already been drafted,” she said.
The new high school graduates were divided into groups and Kincheloe soon learned that the group she drew was a division called the bureau of investigation.
They received no formal training for the position, Kincheloe said, only having the job’s tasks explained to them during an event like an “orientation.”
Kincheloe has since speculated that those in charge of government departments, such as Hoover, must have been “very frustrated” trying to run important government affairs using a labor pool of recent high school graduates with no experience.
“I didn’t know anything…” she said.
Her officemates gave her the nickname “Smoky,” due to her southern accent, which she acquired as a child while living in the Appalachian Mountains as a child. She was the only person in the office with a southern accent. The nickname stuck and today people continue to call her “Smoky.”
Hoover’s ascent to power began in 1917, when he held his first government job as a clerk for the Department of Justice. Hoover’s occupancy in the position served an important purpose—it exempted him from the World War I era draft. The country’s attorney general at the time chose Hoover, who had demonstrated his prowess while working for the Department of Justice. The country’s attorney general selected Hoover to conduct raids to lead attacks on radicalism, a position in which Hoover shined.
In fact, under Hoover’s direction, officials managed to arrest and deport hundreds of men thought to be “radicals” whom government officials feared were communists seeking to infiltrate the country with their extreme views.
Hoover’s work was so impressive that in 1924 President Calvin Coolidge named him to lead the country’s Bureau of Investigation (today’s FBI).
Kincheloe isn’t sure how she was chosen for the job working with Hoover but was not intimidated by working for a well-known man in a high-status job.
The job had Kincheloe and about 15 fellow office mates, doing administrative work for Hoover. The position included routine matters, such as retrieving files from “rows and rows” of file cabinets and taking them to Hoover at his desk. The job also entailed transcribing reports from the bureau’s agents out in the field. The agents made notes on index cards and Kincheloe and her colleagues transcribed them and filed information in the cabinets. Many such field notes involved following the movements of suspected spies, she said.
Although most matters seemed routine and clerical, she remembers chatting with office mates about a sensational case in which agents were hunting for a particular suspect. Agents tracked the movements of a German from an early position in Canada as he moved south to Georgia, where agents finally captured and arrested him for spying. She said agents suspected “anyone who deviated” from normal patterns of behavior and could be viewed as working against the allies in the war.
“It was there (the constant threat) all the time,” she said.
Agents tracked the movements of a German boat attempting to enter the country, she said. The position also led Kincheloe and other bureau employees to be privy how many new recruits were being sent overseas to fight.
Kincheloe knew Hoover as “very personable and he talked to all of us,” and also was very kind, a trait proven by a day when Kincheloe became very ill while at work. Hoover arranged for her to be taken home (her aunt’s house) in his limousine, which came with a chauffeur. As was the protocol when transporting Hoover, a second car followed close behind, which Kincheloe suspected was to provide security. As the car winded through busy D.C. streets, the teen noticed the vehicle pulled up next to a truckload of enlisted soldiers, who leered at her through the car’s back window, flirted and whistled. She speculated they must have suspected the limo was transporting a very important person.
Kincheloe remembered she earned $1,440 (having been compensated by receiving a raise or two) during her stint with the FBI. She planned to use the money to attend college but gave most to her aunt for rent and to pay for her food. In August 1945, her mother became ill and required surgery. Sensing it was serious, the family sent for Kincheloe to return home and that ended her stint working for Hoover.
In parting, Hoover promised his young employee that if she ever wanted a job, she could have one in his department. “I cherished that,” she said.
As she packed to move out, her aunt returned all the money she had been paid for rent and food so Kincheloe could pursue her dream of attending college and becoming a teacher. Eventually she taught kindergarten, first grade and science and biology in high school.
“I didn’t particularly want to be an office person,” she said, adding that she always wanted to teach, a dream she fulfilled after she obtained a degree from Virginia Tech. Kincheloe said she’d lived (in addition to the Smoky mountains) in the DC area as a child, so “having a government job wasn’t anything unusual or impressive.”
Her mother had instilled in Kincheloe and her other children that “if you’re going to breathe, you’re going to school (college).” She met and married a fellow college classmate, Duncan E. Kincheloe Jr. (nationwide, colleges were filled with men attending school on the GI bill) and the two had three children—two sons and a daughter.
Today, Kincheloe enjoys spending time with her family, which now includes several grandchildren.
She never questioned her choice to leave the government and instead pursue a teaching career.
“I’ve loved my life,” she said. “I’ve had a good life.”
