Alene Duerk
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Alene Bertha Duerk became the first female admiral in the U.S. Navy in 1972. She was also the director of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps from 1970 to 1975. She is a 1974 recipient of a Distinguished Alumni
Duerk, c. 1972
The United States Navy Nurse Corps was officially established by Congress in 1908; however, unofficially, women had been working as nurses aboard Navy ships and in Navy hospitals for nearly 100 years.
Alene Duerk
…Alene Bertha Duerk (March 29, 1920 – July 21, 2018) became the first female admiral in the U.S. Navy in 1972. She was also the director of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps from 1970 to 1975. She is a 1974 recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Award of Case Western Reserve University's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing…
Group photograph of the first twenty Navy nurses, appointed in 1908
USS Red Rover by F. Muller
Lenah H. Sutcliffe Higbee
Nurse Hazel Herringshaw and two Marine Corps patients, 1918