SPQ2 US NAVY, Cecelia B. Birdshead Junker

Cecelia Birdshead (Junker) joined the United States Navy in 1943 as a WAVE (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). She trained at Hunter College in New York City and did her yeoman’s training in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Following her training, she was stationed in Washington, D.C. ¹ Birdshead Junker was given top-secret clearance to work for a department tracking German submarines in the Atlantic. According to her biographer, Pamela Burnett, “She found out later that she had been thoroughly investigated to make sure she was a good security risk. They had stations positioned in the Azores, Guantanamo Bay, the Virgin Islands, Iceland, Newfoundland, England, and all up and down the East Coast where Navy radiomen would listen for the German submarines as they came up each night to charge their batteries and send messages.” ² Birdshead Junker decoded the Morse Code messages and tracked the German submarines on a map. Air bases were then alerted when the German submarines were in the vicinity.

Birdshead Junker was born September 1, 1923, to Martha Leland Hughes and Oscar Birdshead in the Arapaho Settlement of Colony, Oklahoma. Her father was Arapaho, and her mother was white. Her father was an itinerant carpenter and at the age of six her parents placed her in Seeger Indian School, a boarding school. ² In her biography of Birdshead Junker, Burnett reports that she tried to run away from the boarding school. Birdshead told Burnett, “I don’t know why I thought I could find them, but I got caught and taken back. I was humiliated in front of the whole school.”  ²

Her mother suffered from tuberculosis and to improve her health the two went to Arizona while her father remained in Oklahoma. She attended the St. John’s Mission in Kamaki, Arizona. While other children left for the summer and holidays, Birdshead Junker remained at the school on a year-round basis. Her mother came for her in the fifth grade, having recuperated from tuberculosis. Birdshead Junker attended St. Mary’s Catholic Elementary school in Phoenix and then Haskell High School in Lawrence, Kansas.

After being honorably discharged as an SPII from the Navy in 1945, Birdshead Junker returned to Arizona to work in Window Rock. While living in Window Rock, she met and married Edward Junker in 1946. Together, the two operated the Trading Post at Mexican Springs, New Mexico. In 1953, they started a Bulk Dealership in Gallup, New Mexico with Humble Oil.

While raising seven children, Birdshead Junker returned to school at the University of New Mexico and attained a degree in University Studies with a major in History. In 1970, Birdshead Junker restarted her career as an administrative assistant at the PHS Indian Health Hospital in Gallup.

Birdshead Junker was widowed again in 1979 with the passing of Edward who, at the time, was Mayor of Gallup, New Mexico. Shortly thereafter, she moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to be closer to family. There, she worked for Heights Psychiatric Hospital until its closing. Birdshead Junker married Sammy Blatchford in 1998 and moved to Lander, Wyoming. After his death, she returned to Albuquerque and lived there until 2013, when she retired to Phoenix, Arizona.