Letters Home: Memoirs of one Army Nurse in the Southwest Pacific in World War II
The author, now an octogenarian, looks at her long life as full, varied, and exciting. A graduate of Smith College, 1941, and Yale University School of Nursing, 1944, she joined the Army Nurse Corps immediately following graduation and spent the next two years in military service in New Guinea and the Philippines. She worked as head nurse in the Newington Veterans Hospital in Connecticut until she married in 1948. The next years were spent raising three children, with community activities, teaching nursing, providing visiting nurse services, gardening, traveling, and rehabilitating an old Vermont farm. Now a widow, the author lives in the same 250 year old house the family moved to 44 years ago. She loves mowing her lawn and raising and selling raspberries. She tends her flowers, enjoys the piano and listening to tapes of the oldies from the 30's and 40's. She still drives to see family in Vermont and Pennsylvania and flies to Texas to see her eldest. She serves on the library board and in her church. She proof reads and writes for the local monthly newspaper. Her newest challenge is e-mail, to keep in touch with many friends and children and grandchildren. She is actively engaged in environmental causes and political activities. Each day continues to be too short.