We Remember
On this page we remember U.S. Cadet Nurses who have passed on and where they received their training in nursing. If you are a daughter, son, niece, nephew, grandchild, other relative, or friend of a deceased U.S. Cadet Nurse and would like to include your loved one on this page, please contact us.
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Catherine Murphy November 25, 1927 - April 3, 1984 The Cambridge City Hospital School of Nursing, Campbridge, Massachusetts |
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Theo E. Jespersen April 7, 1926 - November 3, 2012 My mother, Theo E. Jespersen (at the time) completed the Cadet Corp nurses training program at LA County - USC Med. Center during WW2. I don't know the exact years. She passed away on Nov. 3, 2012. She was always very proud of her service in the Cadet Nurse Corps. She became an RN and worked in Santa Maria, CA, at Sister's Hospital, Marian Hospital, and later became a School Nurse at the local high schools. She married and had 2 sons (last name Openshaw). Neal Openshaw LA County - USC Med. Center, California |
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Neola Louise Noell Younker September 7, 1924 - July 7, 2001 Bishop Johnson College of Nursing, Los Angeles, California |
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Mildred Ethel Laird Passed away peacefully on September 3, 2012, at age 85. Mildred Ethel Laird lived a wonderful and honorable life. We are very proud of the part of her history and lifelong career that came from the U.S. Cadet Nursing Corp. Thank you for your service and for the blessing that the Corps gave her, my family and all of the people she helped over her 51 years of service. from Russell Riall, Mildred's son |
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Rose Arabelle Logue Carter Died March 19, 2011 at the age of 87. Rose Arabelle (nee Logue) Carter, was a graduate of the USCNC, serving in the burn ward at NTS Sampson (Hospital), Sampson NY, from April to October 1945. Rose was a student & (Nov ’45) graduate of St Michael’s Hospital School of Nursing, Newark NJ. She served as a visiting public health nurse in the Monmouth County Organization for Social Services (MCOSS) in New Jersey until 1967, when she moved to Florida. She served as a geriatric charge nurse in various hospitals and nursing homes in the Clearwater FL, area until she retired and moved to New Smyrna Beach FL in 1986 to be close to my younger sister and her new family. St Michael’s Hospital School of Nursing, Newark, New Jersey |
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Mary Gloria Kelleher December 18, 1927 - December 8, 2011 Mount Auburn School of Nursing, Cambridge, Massachusetts |
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Naomi M Whadcook Fitzpatrick February 9, 1920 - March 1, 2009 Westchester School of Nursing, Valhalla, New York |
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Agnes Jane Yettke November 22, 1923 - July 30, 1996 Iowa Methodist School of Nursing, Des Moines, Iowa |
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Doris Meharry Died January 13, 2012 at the age of 89. Traverse City State Hospital School of Nursing, Michigan |
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Charlotte Katona March 1, 1924 - February 13, 2010 Evangelical Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing, Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
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Betty Gerl October 4, 1926 - November 8, 2010 St. Joseph's School of Nursing, Joliet, Illinois |
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Joan Douglas March 23, 1923 - April 12, 2011 Stanford University School of Nursing, Palo Alto, California |
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Constance Besch February 7, 1925 - March 5, 2010 St. Vincent Charity School of Nursing, Cleveland, Ohio |
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Mary E. Gillespie Callahan Died February 5, 2010, at age 82. The shortage of nurses was so great, recalls Mary Callahan of her training days at Chelsea Memorial Hospital, "that the students were running the hospitals. The only Registered Nurses on the floor were supervisors. Everyone else was a student and we had 120 beds." The routine of classes and duty in the hospital was demanding, but she acknowledges she may never have been able to pursue a career in nursing without the incentives offered by the government. Following graduation she worked at the Contagious Disease Hospital in Brighton dealing with patients with polio, cholera and yellow fever "and we had one whole unit full of iron lungs" at the height of the polio crisis. Married in 1949, she and her husband Paul moved to Baltimore where she worked at the Sinai Hospital for three years before returning to Foxboro where they would raise their five children. Mary left nursing in 1969 to devote her full attention to caring for Paul, who passed away in 1973. She then went back into the work force full time as nurse manager when the Foxboro Area Health Center opened on Mechanic Street, working there until 1989. She looks back on a rewarding career and a fulfilled life, grateful for the program that helped make it possible and her opportunity to step forward when her nation called. -adapted from The Foxboro Reporter, Thursday, November 12, 2009, p. 3 & 5
Chelsea Memorial Hospital, Massachusetts |
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Barbara Louise Hofstra Almy February 22, 1925 - June 12, 2012 Barbara Lousie Hofstra Almy graduated from Nursing School in 1947 and continued in nursing until she retired from South Shore Hospital Nursing Administration in 1987. She often spoke of her service as a cadet nurse. Barbara would always joke about how she met her husband under a bed at the MGH.The truth is after the war her husband to be was a volunteer orderly at the hospital. He heard the sound of breaking glass coming from a patient's room and went in to investigate.The patient dropped a glass urinal on the floor so he knelt down next to the bed to clean up the glass not realizing Barbara was knelt down on the other side picking up pieces of glass. She said their eyes met and it was love at first sight.They married August 28,1948. As a prank they would tell people their oldest daughter was born August 21st to see how people would react. Shortly later the would tell the truth; their daughter was born August 21st 1949. Two more daughters and a son came later.Barbara retired as the Quality Care Director at South Shore Hospital in So.Weymouth, about 15 miles south of Boston. They bought their first home in Halifax, MA, near Plymouth in 1965. Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing, Boston, Massachusetts |
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Elainne Etter Emerson October 1926 - June 2010 Elainne took training at the Alexandria Hospital School of Nursing in Alexandria, Virginia. She traveled from her hometown of Waynesboro, Pa. in 1944 and graduated in 1946. She stayed in Alexandria where she worked in the hospital ER and married, of all people, a fireman. She started a family of 3 in 1949 and remained in nursing for 35 years. Elaine also volunteered in the Alexandria Fire Dept. Ladies Auxiliary which was made up of many different talents. The nurses' focus at that time was to provide emergency care "on scene", triage, support for hospital staff called to the incident and rehab for the firemen. They provided training to the firefighters at a time when basic first aid was the only thing available. Many of the ladies who graduated after the war, weren't afforded the opportunity to serve in forward theaters, continued with a purpose, their chosen vocation. Alexandria, Virginia, Hospital School of Nursing |
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Eileen Elizabeth Wattman LaRivee September 24, 1925 - April 13, 2011 Born September 24, 1925 in Lynn, MA to Thomas M. Wattman and Elizabeth (Beary) Wattman. Educated in the Lynn Public Schools and graduated from Lynn English High School in 1943. She served with the U.S. Public Health Service Cadet Nurse Corps, which was the largest group of uniformed women to serve in World War II, and did her training and work out of Lynn Hospital until 1945. Lynn Hospital School of Nursing, Lynn, Massachusetts |
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Sarah Ann Morazzini Richards August 4, 1925 - February 20, 2010 Sarah graduated from high school in 1944, and was accepted into the Registered Nursing program of the Cadet Corps, graduating in 1947. Upon graduation from nursing school, Sarah's nursing career was centered in public hospitals. According to her daughter, Nancy Richards-Stower, the cadet program was her mom's way to her nursing career. Leominster Hospital School of Nursing, Leominster, Massachusetts |
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Helen Kleinschmidt Olson September 26, 1922 - February 25, 2013 Helen Kleinschmidt Olson was a member of the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps during World War II. She entered in 1943 at the Indianapolis City Hospital and graduated in 1946. She served in the tuberculosis ward at the hospital after the war. Unfortunately, Helen was diagnosed with Alzheimer's ten years ago and hasn't been able to communicate for years. Her daughter, Lisa, is doing all she can as a child of a Cadet Nurse to get the recognition they deserve and is very proud of her mom, what she had to go through and her service to our great country. Lisa hopes that these great women are recognized before all of them are gone. . Indianapolis City Hospital, Indiana |
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Mary E Prendergast McNamara 1924 - 2004 Mary E. Prendergast was a 1945 graduate of St. Margaret’s Hospital School of Nursing in Boston MA. After graduation she and 16 of her classmates entered the Cadet Nursing Corps to help meet the Army's and Navy's nursing needs. Mary went on to serve at Lovell General Hospital at Ft. Devens Massachusetts until the end of the war. Following WWII, she married Army SSGT Jim McNamara and raised 11 children in Quincy Massachusetts where among other jobs, she was the neighborhood nurse for tens of kids in the area. St. Margaret’s Hospital School of Nursing, Boston MA |
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Geraldine Wagner Geraldine Wagner died in 1990. Grant Hospital School of Nursing, Columbus, Ohio |
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Jean Butler Booher March 24, 1927 - April 14, 2011 Clarkson School of Nursing, Omaha, Nebraska |
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Nancy R. Kasfeldt Blasco April 7, 1924 - June 2, 2011 The Danbury Hospital School of Nursing, Danbury, CT |
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Elsie F. Ulrich Szecsy September 28, 1925 - June 19, 2005 Elsie Ulrich learned of the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps while a student at Pleasantville High School in Westchester County, New York. She and her sister lived with an aunt, who took care of them after their previous caregiver left employment by their father. Her mother died in childbirth when she was 8, and in those days a man was ill-equipped to care for two daughters. Elsie's childhood was difficult, and she received little encouragement to pursue her dreams. Elsie saw the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps as both a way to serve her country as was a means to improve her prospects as an emancipated adult at a time when achieving this status was difficult for women. She started Nursing School in 1943 and graduated in 1946. Her favorite specialties were surgical and psychiatric nursing. She continued working in the hospital where she trained until she married. When she and her husband moved to Queens, NY, for her husband's work as an industrial nurse with an airline, she continued her work in nursing at Queens General Hospital. When they moved to suburban Long Island and started a family, Elsie resigned her hospital nursing position to pursue a career as homemaker, caregiver, and encourager to her two children in reaching for a better life for themselves. Through her experience with the USCNC, Elsie had the knowledge to equip her children to work hard and do well in school so that they would be prepared for college. Westchester School of Nursing, Valhalla, NY |