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The first group of 71 female Marine officer candidates arrive at the US Midshipmen School in South Hadley, Massachusetts. The Navy's willingness to share training facilities enable the Marine Corps to begin training Women's Reserve officers just one month after the creation of the unit is announced. It was authorized by Congress and signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on 30 July 1942. Its purpose is to release male Marine officers and enlisted for combat, and to replace them with women in US shore stations for the duration of the war plus six months. Ruth Cheney Streeter, born in Brookline, Massachusetts and 1918 graduate of Bryn Mawr College, is appointed the first director. At the age of 47, Streeter earns her commercial pilot's license, with the intention of joining either the WAVES or the Women Airforce Service Pilots as a ferry pilot in the war effort. After being rejected five times by the WASPS on account of her age, however, she chooses to give up flying altogether, and instead joins the Marine Corps Women's Reserve. On 29 January 1943, she is commissioned as a major (the first female Marine to obtain this rank) and appointed director of the Women's Reserve. Streeter holds office on the official creation date of 13 February 1943. She is promoted to lieutenant colonel later that year, and breveted to full colonel in 1944. She resigns her commission on 6 December 1945. During Streeter's tenure, the Women's Reserve grew to a size of 831 officers and 17,714 enlisted. The Women's Reserve did not have an official nickname as did the other women's military services. Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Thomas Holcomb, stated "there's hardly any work at our Marine stations that women can't do as well as men. They do some work far better than men. ... What is more, they're real Marines. They don't have a nickname, and they don't need one." Holcomb rejected all acronyms or monikers for the Reserve; he did not believe they were compulsory. Despite Holcomb’s dislike for nicknames, several of them surfaced for the Reserve, including: Femarines, WAMS, BAMS, Dainty Devil-Dogs, Glamarines, Women's Leatherneck-Aides, MARS, and Sub-Marines. By the summer of 1943, attempts to pressure the Reserve into a nickname had diminished. "WR" was as far as Holcomb would move in that direction.