Veterans Voices: JC women share why they joined Cadet Nurse Corps
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — May 6-12 marks National Nurses Week. While nurses everywhere are being celebrated, a few remaining women of the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps still wonder why they never received veteran status for answering the government’s call to join the health field during World War II.
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Two Johnson City women shared their stories of why they joined with News Channel 11.
As the deadliest war was happening in Europe, America was facing another crisis at home that could become deadly too.
“It was created because of the acute nursing shortage,” Agnes Lowe, an East Tennessee native and member of the Cadet Nurse Corps, said. “All the older nurses had gone into service. My older sister had gone into the Navy.”
“We were in the country and didn’t have a telephone so when I was a senior in high school, I wrote letters to everywhere asking about nurses training,” said Margaret Washington, another member of the Cadet Nurse Corps.
Lawmakers created the Cadet Nurse Corps, enticing 17 to 35-year-old women with good grades to join.
“Why wouldn’t you? $15 a month that you could spend and more later,” Washington said. “I had no money so why not? And they had snappy uniforms.”
Those “snappy uniforms” made a statement in Nashville where the Bowling Green, Kentucky native worked at Saint Thomas Hospital.
“By the time the first of July came by, all of the nursing schools in Nashville, Tennessee- Vanderbilt, St. Thomas, Baptist, all of them – [were] recruited and they closed the main street of Nashville, Tennessee,” Washington said. “We wore white and for blocks and blocks and blocks, all you saw was white uniforms and white caps. All of the schools marched together. I’ve never seen such a big barge.”
Along with the uniforms, cadets were given scholarships, room and board and a monthly stipend.
“We were credited with saving the healthcare system and the surgeon general at that time said we were as important to the healthcare system as the Marines were to D-Day because a lot of the hospitals would have had to close down,” Lowe said.
Time in the Cadet Nurse Corps gave Washington and Lowe a lifelong nursing career.
“That’s all I ever wanted to do,” Washington said.
Washington worked in obstetrics back home in Bowling Green. Lowe started at Fort Sanders but spent the last six months of her contract at the Mountain Home VA Medical Center. Lowe retired there after 22 years.
“About 80% of the nursing was done on the homefront, which was all in the United States,” Lowe said.
Washington and Lowe, 98 and 99 respectively, were part of the more than 120,000 women who answered their country’s call to join the Cadet Nurse Corps; the members aren’t recognized as veterans.
“We were an important phase of the help in World War II, and it’s a shame that they’ve never given us veteran status because we did what we were asked to do,” Lowe said.
A bill to grant honorary veteran status to Cadet Nurse Corps members died in the Senate in 2022.
“The merchant mariners who were civilians hired to clean up the beaches got veteran status in 2017 with benefits,” Lowe said. “And why can’t we do it, just because we’re women?”
This week, Lowe and Washington’s home, Christian Assisted Living, honored them as the recognition for their service may be late, if it ever comes at all.
“We all just gave up because we tried so hard to get it even though those nurses that had already passed on,” Lowe said. “If we were ever made veterans, it would be an honor to their families.”
In May 2023, The United States Cadet Nurse Service Recognition Act was introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate but hasn’t moved forward. If approved, members would have received honors at their burials and memorials but not veteran benefits.
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