Boise, Idaho ? More than 60 years ago, Kenny Peterson went to war and was killed.

On Friday, Betty Joe Fisher again shed tears for her friend and neighbor from Kansas who fought in World War II.

It was Kenny who had the nice car that the gang went out in. It was Kenny who played tennis with her on their homemade pasture court.

And it was Kenny’s death that spurred her to join the WAVES, the noncombat women’s reserve of the U.S. Navy created in 1942.

Fisher, 84, of Boise, and Lenore Johnston, 86, of Caldwell, Idaho, were among thousands of women who left everything they knew – homes, parents, jobs – to sign up for the Navy’s WAVES or “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service.”

By signing up, Fisher and Johnston took on clerical and secretarial work to make a young man available for combat. They both wanted to do their part to support the war.

What they probably didn’t know is that they were “gender pioneers,” said Todd Shallat, director of the Center for Idaho History and Politics at Boise State University. WAVES also took on wartime roles in intelligence, science and technology.

“World War II was a liberating time,” Shallat said. “Not just liberating Europe, but in some ways it liberated women, too.”

The U.S. government campaigned to involve women in the war effort. Women weren’t only interested, they were eager. Hemlines went up. Women joined both the Army and the Navy. One year after the WAVES were started by an act of Congress, 27,000 women wore the uniform. Thousands of others had joined the “Rosie the Riveter” campaign by going to work in factories.

For Fisher and Johnston, the war opened their world. Being in the WAVES was scary, exciting and sometimes lonely.

“It was a different time,” Johnston said.

“It felt like we had to do something for our country. Every time we read about the guys being shot down … it made us want to do something.”

Fisher grew up on the oil fields near Arkansas City, Kan. She lived with her family in company housing, and her world was small. Entertainment was the radio or playing the harmonica. Her brother had already joined the Navy.

Fisher’s parents didn’t want her to join the WAVES, so she respectfully waited until she was 21. At the time she got on the train to go to 12 weeks of “women’s boot camp” at Hunter College in Bronx, N.Y.

Johnston’s parents had wanted her to teach before joining the war effort. She took a job in Stockton, Calif., but “I wished I could do something.”

She took first-aid classes and volunteered at an air-watch station, where she was taught military code to watch for planes.

“I prayed to God every time I was on shift that no enemy plane would come by,” Johnston giggled. “It would have been scary, and I was worried I wouldn’t know the codes.”

But she had the bug. She joined the WAVES in 1944 and headed off to college.

There were 10,000 women at the Navy-rented facility when Fisher and Johnston were there, at different times, in 1944.

Both learned skills, made lifelong friends and said the experience was fun.

“We had a different perspective than the boys,” she said. “Most of them were drafted.”