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WWII-Era Nurses Take the Pulse of History
The Record
May 22, 2008
Hackensack. The year was 1943, and the nation was facing a massive nursing shortage because of World War II, which drew many nurses into the armed forces.
In an effort to replenish the ranks, Congress created the Cadet Nurse Corps, a federal program that offered scholarships and stipends to applicants for nursing school.
The final class was admitted in late 1945, and graduated in 1948. A handful of women who received their degrees from Hackensack Hospital in 1948 gathered Sunday at the Crow’s Nest restaurant for their 60th reunion to reminisce about the days when earning a nursing degree was an act of patriotism.
“I always wanted to be a nurse, and when the war came, I had a chance to get a free education,” said Doris Hiscox, who now lives in Florida. “You wanted to be patriotic, because all the boys were in the service.”
Hiscox had planned on joining the Navy upon graduating, but by then the war had ended. She worked at a veterans psychiatric hospital for several years instead.
Esther Ross said her father never would have been able to afford the tuition for nursing school without the government’s aid. Like Hiscox, Ross said becoming a nurse had been a lifelong dream for her.
“This was a very close class,” she said, looking around at the other alumnae.
Sixty years after those women joined 124,000 other nurses that had graduated from the Cadet Nurse Corps, another nursing shortage is facing the country, this time because of a falloff in applicants and faculty and an increasing elderly population.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing, for example, cites a report that suggests the United States could be short 1 million nurses by 2020.
“Nurses are always in demand,” said Marion Zavatsky, one of the instructors for the Class of 1948 and herself a 1938 graduate.
Janis Ramoth, another 1948 graduate and the reunion organizer, said she would like to see the government take a more active role in recruiting and paying for nurses, just as it did in the 1940s particularly given the increased complexity of health care these days.
“We’re in a critical nursing shortage now,” she said. “You need someone who’s trained to observe and report things back to the doctor.”
(c) YellowBrix 2008 
