Bernice Sains Freid called her time in WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during WWII “the happiest days of my life.” Freid joined WAVES on her twenty-first birthday, which marked when she no longer needed her parents’ permission, and trained at A&M College in Oklahoma. During the war, she worked as a yeoman in San Francisco, and was officially discharged in 1946. After a hitchhiking trip with friends that extended into Canada and down into Chicago, Freid went to NYU and Columbia University, becoming a dietician and teaching nutrition and home economics in public and private schools. Missing her connection to the military, she joined the Naval Reserves in college and served from 1947–1958, mainly doing secretarial work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She also wrote poems about her experiences in WAVES.