Anna McKeown and the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps

 

 

Yesterday was Veterans Day, a day in which we honor and thank all those who have served in the U.S. military. My sister, Karen, began the day by circulating the photo above of our mother, Anna Marie McKeown, who served in the United States Nurse Corps from 1944 to 1947. Strangely, that's about all we know about her service. I don't recall her ever talking about it. So I decided to do a little digging.

Some Background

Even before entering World War II in 1941, the U.S. was facing an extreme shortage of skilled nurses.  Various methods to mobilize interest in the nursing profession succeeded to a degree, but many more nurses were still needed. In March of 1943, Senator Frances Payne Bolton of Ohio introduced the Bolton Nurse Training Act, which Congress approved a few months later. It appropriated $160 million in federal funds to 1,125 nursing schools all over the country. And it also created the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps, a program open to all healthy women between the ages of 17 and 35 who were high school graduates. Any state nursing school could participate in the program, assuming it was accredited in their state and connected with a hospital.

Once accepted into the program, the Cadet received a scholarship that covered tuition and fees and a $30 monthly stipend. Cadets were expected to complete their training in 30 months and provide  nursing services for the duration of the war, either in the military or civilian life. 

To attract candidates, the U.S. government made a promotional video advertising the Cadet Nurse Corps. It was called "Reward Unlimited" and starred Dorothy McGuire, a fairly popular and well-known actress at the time. Click here to see it. It's 11 minutes long, but it's fairly well done and pretty convincing.

Perfect Timing

On November 5, 1943, Anna Marie McKeown turned 17. A few months later, she graduated from West Catholic High School in Philadelphia. Without financial assistance, that would probably have been the end of her formal education. Money was very tight back then. Her father had abandoned the family a few years after she was born. She and her sister, Rita, were living with their Mom in their grandparents house on Baltimore Avenue. The approval of the Bolton Act, though, provided Anna Marie with a fantastic opportunity, one she wisely jumped at. Her age, health and education made her eligible for the Cadet Nurse Corps. By a stroke of good fortune, a nearby institution -- St. Joseph's School of Nursing -- was eligible to offer the program.  She applied to the school on August 30, 1944 and was admitted to the Corps on September 1, 1944. Her membership card is shown below.

The training that my Mom received in the Cadet Nurse Corps program was mandated by the U.S. Public Heath Service. Below is an excerpt of their requirements:

• The school had to maintain an educational staff adequate to provide satisfactory instruction and supervision.
• Its curriculum had to include all those units of instruction necessary to conform with accepted practices in basic nursing education. It had to be arranged so that the required program of combined study and practice would be completed in 24 to 30 months.
• The school had to provide adequate clinical experience in the four basic services — medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics — for the number of students which it proposed to enroll.
• The school had to provide well-balanced weekly schedules of organized instruction, experience and study.
• The school had to provide adequate and well-equipped classrooms, laboratories, library, and other necessary facilities for carrying out the educational program, as well as satisfactory living facilities and adequate student health services which had to be continued throughout the period of training.
• In evaluating the adequacy of school facilities to meet the various requirements specified, the standards of the National League of Nursing Education were to be used as a guide.
  

Per her membership card, Mom became a Senior Cadet on March 1, 1947. For the next six months, she was required to work in either a federal or a civilian hospital, and was expected to provide nursing services equivalent to those of a graduate nurse.  I have no idea where Mom spent those 6 months, but it's likely she was stationed at St. Joseph's Hospital as it was affiliated with the School of Nursing. 

On September 1, 1947, Mom successfully navigated the demands of the Cadet Nurse Corps and graduated from St. Joseph's School of Nursing as a Registered Nurse. By then, though, the war was over, so Mom's promise to the government to "provide nursing services for the duration of the war" was null and void. 

On December 31, 1948, the Cadet Nurse Corps program was shut down. By then, over 120,000 nurses had graduated from the program. I don't know if Mom ever worked as a nurse in Philadelphia, but it's unlikely. By the time she graduated, she had met my father, Thomas Mullen. They married on July 3, 1948 and immediately began to raise a family, having the first of nine children on April 17, 1949.  But the nursing degree that Mom earned as a member of the Cadet Nurse Corps would be put to great use later on in life. When my father's health problems prevented him from holding a job, Mom became the sole breadwinner for a family of ten, thanks to a successful career as a registered nurse at St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie. 

A Final Point

This post began with my sister proudly honoring our Mom on Veterans Day for her service in the Cadet Nurse Corps.  However, per this website, those who served in the Cadet Nurse Corps are the only uniformed service members from World War II who are not recognized as veterans. How strange is that?  How can members of a professional service group created specifically by the federal government to aid in the war effort not be considered veterans of that war?

In April of 2021,  Senator Elizabeth Warren sponsored a bill to rectify this injustice. 24 fellow Senators from both sides of the aisle signed on as co-sponsors. You can read the full text of the bill by clicking here. Basically, it simply requests that members of the United States Cadet Nurse Corps be honored as veterans. Note that it's not asking for them to receive financial benefits of any kind, only the dignity of being recognized by history as veterans of World War II. Amazingly, that bill died in committee.

Last year, Senator Elizabeth Warren and others re-introduced the bill.  Though it's essentially the same bill, additional wording provides greater reassurances regarding the benefits not provided to the Cadet Nurses. Click here to read it.  Based on its current status and lack of movement, though, its prospects look bleak. The last action taken by the Senate on May 17, 2023 reads as follows: 

"Read twice and referred to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs." 

 And there it languishes.