Military Nursing

Small Collections - Military Nursing consists of varied small manuscript donations to the Bjoring Center, each one too limited in quantity to warrant cataloguing individually.

The Bacon Papers represent various phases of her personal and professional life as a nurse between 1942 and 1985. The material is most notable for its World War II correspondence, and for an interview of Bacon discussing her war experiences on cassette tape.

The papers consist of materials principally related to Bugel's Eighth Evacuation Hospital service, including a citation and service award; period newspaper clippings; and an extensive collection of photographs taken at the hospital and on travels nearby.  Also included are various documents and photographs relative to Eighth Evac alumni reunions.

The Myra Clark collection chronicles three segments of her experience as a Navy nurse during World War II, beginning with her experiences at the Great Lakes Navy Training Station, continuing as a nurse serving at a hospital in the Pearl Harbor area during the 1940s and finally, as a naval nurse stationed at the National Navy Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. Her personal and professional experiences are well documented by photographs and other material originally included in four scrapbooks created by Clark. This collection also contains original photographs owned by Clark of American nurses returning from Japanese internment camps in February 1945.

The collection is a detailed chronicle of Dora Fechtmann’s life as a nurse from student days through her years serving with the Navy Nurse Corps in the South Seas during World War II. The collection includes four scrapbooks containing photographs, postcards, and correspondence, beginning with her training and concluding with her military nursing service in Base Hospital No. 2 in New Hebrides, New Zealand. The collection also includes a diary, c. 1935-1937, that contains the specific details of her training as a nurse at Rockingham County Memorial Hospital Nurses School in Virginia. Included with the collection is a detailed autobiographical narrative, My Scrapbook: An Album of Memories. Documents of interest include correspondence between herself and the mother of a slain soldier under Fechtmann’s care.

The Dianne M. Gagliano Collection contains materials assembled by Gagliano over the course of her military career. These include certificates, commendations, and diplomas, in addition to limited correspondence, publications by Gagliano, and newspaper and journal articles concerning Gagliano and other topics. Supplementary items relate to the Vietnam Women's Memorial Project – campaign materials, correspondence, and news articles – and the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation. A large collection of photographs includes images from the Vietnam era. Office artifacts – plaques and a desk name plate – complete the collection.

This collections contains many black and white photographs, some color photographs, many newspaper clippings with some annotation and a few artifacts. The bulk of the photography relates to the 8th Evacuation Hospital and Gloor’s experiences in Europe during and after World War II.

The Janet Vivian Graham Papers highlight the professional and personal career of U.S. military nurse Janet V. Graham, Ph.D., R.N. The collection contains materials from Dr. Graham's educational activities as well as her professional activities in the U.S. military health system, particularly concerning health planning and nursing administration as applied to the development of computerized data collection, management programs, and system design.

The bulk of the Rosemary T. McCarthy Papers concern Dr. McCarthy's interests and activities after her retirement from the Army Nurse Corps in 1983. Chief among these is her participation in the Korean War Veterans' Memorial Advisory Committee, documented in correspondence, publications, photographs, and related materials. The collection also includes general correspondence concerning professional and academic matters.

This collection documents the experiences of Edythe Goldstein Pallin in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, from 1943 to 1945. The original setting for most collection materials was a scrapbook assembled by Pallin. It includes U.S. Army documents, various publications, correspondence, ephemera related to activities of daily life. The bulk of the collection, however, is photographic prints, many of which include context in the form of written notes either on the back or beside the original placement in the scrapbook. Most of the oldest photos are from 1943, although there are a few from Pallin’s earlier nursing school years. The latest photos are from Pallin’s last days on Ie Shima in September of 1945.

The Smith Papers offer a glimpse into the life of an Army nurse through keepsakes and photograph albums, and highlight as well Smith's later career in public health nursing. Included are Army publications and pamphlets relative to World War One, and a rare complete set of hospital magazines produced for the patients and staff of the Camp Grant Base Hospital, Illinois, in 1919. Among other items Smith saved is a spectacular collection of panoramic photographs, with views of Fort Sheridan, Illinois; the 1921 Army School of Nursing graduation ceremony in a forest at the Presidio, San Francisco, California; and of the nearby facilities at Letterman General Hospital.

The Camilla Louise Wills Collection documents Wills' experiences as a Red Cross nurse serving overseas during World War I and her subsequent career in public health and health education in the southwestern United States. The bulk of the collection concerns Wills' experiences in the nineteens-teens and twenties, particularly during the World War One years.