October 25, 1972: The first female FBI Agents are hired. Longtime Director J. Edgar Hoover has been dead for almost 6 months. I wonder if there's a connection. They certainly look better in women's clothes than he did.
The first two hired were Susan Roley, who had served in the U.S. Marines, and JoAnne Pierce, who served in a job nearly as tough: She had been a nun.
Then as now, the Marines' headquarters and the FBI's Training Academy were about 8 miles apart, the former in Quantico, Virginia, the latter in Stafford but referred to by Agents as "Quantico," about 40 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. Roley's father had served there, and she had basically grown up there. She had seen James Stewart star in the 1959 film The FBI Story, but the Bureau was closed to female agents. So she went to college, joined the Marine Corps Reserve, and was commissioned as an officer upon graduation.
When longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972, 2nd Lieutenant Susan Roley, USMC, attended his funeral. Within days, in a move Hoover never would have made, Acting Director L. Patrick Fray III changed policy so that women were admitted for the 1st time. Roley was admitted to the Academy, and discharged from the Corps so she could accept.
JoAnne Pierce was from Niagara Falls, New York, and joined the Sisters of Mercy, serving 10 years with them, and also attending college, earning a master's degree in history, becoming a teacher at Mount Mercy Academy, a Catholic school in South Buffalo. An FBI recruiter visited the school, and Pierce had already been considering leaving her order, because she had wanted to get married and have children.
In 1970, she moved to Washington, and was hired by the FBI as s a researcher, one of few jobs in the organization open to women at the time. When Gray changed the Special Agent policy, she applied to the Academy, and she and Roley were assigned together as roommates, completing the 14-wee training program on October 25, 1972.
"Of course, everybody wanted to see who we were," Roley later said. "Sometimes, I felt like I was an exhibit in a museum, because everybody would say, 'Which one are you? Are you the Marine or the nun?'"
Roley was assigned to the FBI office in Omaha, Nebraska. She became the 1st female Agent to make an arrest, of an Army deserter. She married another Marine, and took his surname, becoming Susan Malone. She left in 1979 to rejoin the Marines and work for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. She later worked in the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, and retired with the rank of a full Colonel.
Pierce's first posting as an agent was in St. Louis, where she was assigned to white-collar crime. In the late 1970s, she Pierce became "one of the first female supervisors at FBI Headquarters. She later worked in Pittsburgh, where she met fellow agent Michael Misko, whom she married in 1981. She retired from the FBI in 1994, she worked as an audit investigator in a bank.
Special Agent JoAnne Misko
Special Agent Robin Ahrens was the 1st female FBI employee to die in the line of duty, in a shootout in 1985. A total of 11 female Special Agents are listed as having died in the line of duty: 3 from gunfire, and 8 from illnesses connected with having been at the FBI's office at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
As of October 25, 2022, the FBI has about 38,000 employees. That includes 13,000 special agents and 25,000 support professionals, such as intelligence analysts, language specialists, scientists, information technology specialists, and other professionals. As of that date, Susan Malone and JoAnne Misko are both still alive. (UPDATE: Misko died in 2024.)
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October 25, 1972 was a Wednesday. Actress Persia White, best known for playing Lynn Searcy on Girlfriends, was born.
Baseball season had ended 3 days earlier, with the Oakland Athletics beating the Cincinnati Reds in Game 7 of the World Series. Football was in midweek. There were 5 games in the NBA:
* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 113-108 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. Both teams were winless coming into the game. Austin Carr scored 35 points for the Cavs, who advanced to 1-7. Fred "Mad Dog" Carter scored 39 for the Sixers, who fell to 0-7, en route to the worst season in NBA history: 9-73.
* The Baltimore Bullets beat the Detroit Pistons, 115-105 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit.
* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Buffalo Braves, 109-92 at the Milwaukee Exposition & Convention Center Arena, a.k.a. The MECCA. (It's now named the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena.)
* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Houston Rockets, 112-107 at the Hofheinz Pavilion (now the Fertitta Center) in Houston. Jerry West scored 33 points.
* And the Atlanta Hawks beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 118-115 at the Seattle Center Coliseum.
There were 2 games in the American Basketball Association. The Kentucky Colonels beat the Dallas Chaparrals, 116-108 at Freedom Hall in Louisville. And the Carolina Cougars beat the Denver Rockets, 118-112 at the Denver Auditorium Arena.
There were 4 games in the NHL:
* The New York Rangers beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 6-1 at Madison Square Garden.
* The Boston Bruins and the Buffalo Sabres played to a tie, 2-2 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.
* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Minnesota North Stars, 4-3 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
* And the Atlanta Flames beat the California Golden Seals, 4-3 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.
And in its 1st month of play, the World Hockey Association had 2 games. The Cleveland Crusaders beat the Philadelphia Blazers, 8-2 at the Philadelphia Arena. And the Ottawa Nationals beat the Los Angeles Sharks, 8-5 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.
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