Now in her early eighties and a resident of Elmcroft in Southern Pines, Bridge has been entertaining people most of her life. She first put on dancing shoes as a child in Longview, Texas, and wore them all the way to New Guinea, the Phillipines, and the Admiralty Islands as a dancer in a USO company of Olsen and Johnson’s “Hellzapoppin’.”
Just how she ended up with the USO is a story in itself. During summer vacations in high school and college, Jocelyn Jones and a friend, Billie Katherine Ferguson, ran a dancing school out of Mary Martin’s dance studio…after Martin had left to become a star…according to Bridge.
“We were just two young women showing off and happy to be out there giving it all we had,” she says.
Following high school, Jones attended Kilgore Junior College and was captain of the newly-formed Rangerettes, the oldest all-female drill team in the country. The Kilgore Rangerettes fast became the main attraction during half-time on the gridiron and continue to entertain today, scheduled for a Jan. 2 appearance at the Cotton Bowl.
After college, the dynamic duo of Jones and Ferguson headed for the Big Apple and their next adventure. Ferguson was looking for a career on Broadway, and Jones wanted to be a newspaper woman. Both were also interested in getting overseas to help with the war effort.
An earlier story on Jocelyn Jones Bridge quotes her as saying, “We couldn’t get into the Red Cross because we were under 25, and we didn’t want to join the WACS because we didn’t want to go around in khaki underwear typing things, so we decided to audition for the USO.”
The girls were hired as chorus-line dancers and parted ways as Ferguson was sent to Europe and Jones to the Pacific.
“I found I could do something to help with World War II…I could entertain the troops,” says Bridge smiling at the memory. “We just whooped it up a lot. In fact, I spent the first part of my life showing off just as hard as I could!”
So, at age 20, Jocelyn Jones set sail on the old Monterey, a cruise liner converted to a troop carrier, bound for the adventure of a lifetime. The first stop was Hollandia, on the northern coast of New Guinea. Other stops included the island of Biak, off the New Guinea coast, and Leyte, just 90 days after its D-Day.
Bridge even recalls a time when, on returning from a trip to a neighboring island, their outrigger canoe was fired on by Japanese soldiers on shore. A more typical day, however, was to spend mornings visiting hospitals and talking to wounded servicemen, perform an occasional matinee, and a show each evening.
After eight months of island hopping and chorus dancing in the sultry South Pacific, Jones headed back to New York, hoping to launch a newspaper career. She became a freelance writer and within a short time met and married Lt. John Frost Bridge, who had served in the Navy on a destroyer. John Bridge worked for the Wall Street Journal and later became managing editor of the National Observer in Washington, D.C.
After John Bridge’s retirement, the couple moved to North Carolina to be closer to their children, two of whom have followed in their mother’s footsteps and work in the performing arts. Daughter Susanna Turner lives in Pinehurst and has a costume business, working closely with the Taylor Dance Academy and Moore OnStage. She previously worked for “The Lost Colony” as a cutter/draper.
Son Donald and his wife have just retired from the leading roles of Old Tom and Queen Elizabeth in “The Lost Colony,” and granddaughter Jocelyn Turner also worked for the outdoor drama as a dancer. Daughter Nancy is a middle school teacher in Colorado.
“I was blessed indeed with a good husband and a good family,” says Bridge. “Mine has been a great life filled with many friends, and there is not a thing I would change.”
Windy Pratt is a local freelance writer.
