Nursing

What's in the box? - In the first of many, our National VA History Center is on the search to discover unique collection items one box at a time. On a dark and stormy night (not really), deep in the confines of the quiet halls of the warehouse (actually in a well lit office), our curator staff opened a box to find a mysterious and lonely head, with no body. It was the Curse of the Mannequin Head!

After the Civil War, thousands of Volunteer Soldiers needed care. Two women, Delphine Baker and Emma Miller were critically important to the creation and operation of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, the governments answer to providing healthcare to the Union volunteers during the Civil War.

After World War II, the Veterans Administration faced a dire shortage of nurses. During the war, thousands of nurses and doctors left their positions in VA hospitals to join the armed forces. In early 1944 VA Administrator General Frank T. Hines reported a shortfall of roughly 1,000 nurses in 88 of the VA’s 94 hospitals.

Former VA nurse and Army National Guard Colonel (Ret.) Margarethe Cammermeyer believes that people should, “live their truth.” But her own efforts to abide by that credo led to her dismissal from the military in 1992 for disclosing her sexual orientation as a lesbian. Her legal battle for reinstatement inspired the 1995 television movie Serving in Silence, starring Glenn Close and produced by Barbra Streisand.

Between April 6, 1917 and November 18, 1918, over 21,000 American women enlisted in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. This digital exhibit explores and commemorates the lives of California’s Army nurses buried in national cemeteries: Alta Ireland Heron, Vera Marston Rush, Etta Parker, Guilda N. Jones Vicini, and Mayme E. Williamson.

In 1980 Vernice Ferguson was named head of VA’s Nursing Service, the nation’s largest nursing system with 60,000 professionals. She was African American. Only sixty years earlier, the first Black nurses were hired to care for Veteran patients. Ferguson was a teacher, leader, and advocate for racial parity at VA.

Florence Standish was a nurse who worked on the historic Asheville VA Medical Center campus in the early 20th Century when the Army maintained the hospital. A photo found by a local VA employee began a journey that helped identify this pioneering nurse.