Bringing It All Back Home by Philip F. Napoli Read Free Book Online Page B

therefore more influence over their futures. Like any other institution, the American military began responding to these changing realities. Recent writing on the history of American nurses during the Vietnam era argues that “the war both advanced the position of women and nurses in the army and preserved their subordinate status at the same time.” 2 Female nurses gained new experiences and achieved dramatic gains in professional status while still occupying a second tier within the military bureaucracy.
    Because women were not subject to the draft, all women who served in the U.S. Army volunteered. For O’Neill—née Kramer—military service was not a civic duty but rather a matter of expedience. She felt a strong financial obligation to her family, who had strained to put her through years of private Catholic schooling.
    O’Neill became a New Yorker later in life than many of the other men and women I interviewed, having moved to the city to be close to her children in the past decade. She was born in 1947 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom, and her father worked in a factory; they were devout Catholics. While she had an older brother, O’Neill quickly became the “responsible” child, obligated to take care of her three younger siblings. Her parents were not well-off, but nevertheless wanted their children to acquire skills that would help them earn a good living. Unable to pay for college, they committed to making trade school educations available for all five children.
    Her nursing career actually began early in life. The O’Neill children were divided between two bedrooms, with the girls sharing one room and the boys another. One of her younger sisters was often sick during the night, vomiting on the others in the bottom bunk. O’Neill would dutifully march into her parents’ bedroom to announce that her youngest sister had been sick again. Often her mother would tell her to simply clean it up. A middling student, O’Neill did not work very hard at her academics during high school. However, given her parents’ commitment to practical professions, along with a strong desire to leave Fort Wayne, she decided upon nursing school. She had no intention of becoming a secretary, and technology did not interest her. When she graduated from high school in 1965, she thought, “Well, I can clean up after my sister, I can be a nurse.” So she chose nursing school.
    O’Neill enrolled in a three-year program at Holy Cross School of Nursing in South Bend, Indiana, which at the time was known as a service school. Students worked in hospitals in exchange for their education. While they still paid a tuition, it was much lower than it would have been otherwise, and it provided specialty training that sent students to institutions in other cities. Consequently, she spent time in both Louisville, Kentucky, at the Our Lady of Peace mental hospital, and Indianapolis, at the Riley Memorial Children’s Hospital, where she trained in pediatrics.
    One of Sue’s good friends at school, Judy Kuchar, came from a conservative military family. Her father had been in active service, and her brother was enrolled in a military academy. Kuchar planned on following the family tradition and would eventually volunteer for the Army after completing nursing school. Despite this connection, serving in the military was, Sue says, the furthest thing from her mind. She was spending her time singing in South Bend, Indiana, coffeehouses, doing community theater, and working on the 1968 presidential campaign to elect Eugene McCarthy, an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War.
    When Kuchar decided to enlist, she made plans to travel to Chicago to sign up for the Army Nurse Corps. Tempted by the idea of a visit to a big city, O’Neill decided to go along for the ride but had no plans to enlist. She soon found herself in a room full of enthusiastic recruiters.