Mary Louise Hawkins
Mary Louise Hawkins (24 May 1921 – 9 July 2007) was an Air Evacuation Flight Nurse who earned the Distinguished Flying Cross during WWII. She was born in Denver, Colorado. On 24 September 1944, 1st Lt. Mary Louise Hawkins was evacuating 24 patients from fighting at Palau to Guadalcanal when the C-47 she was aboard ran low on fuel and was forced to crash land on Bellona Island. During the landing, a propeller tore through the fuselage and severed the trachea of a patient. Hawkins made a suction tube from several items including the inflation tube from a