Dorothy Baker Collection

Only a part of this collection has been digitized.

21 February 2007 oral history transcript; Women in the Military Memorial booklet,1997; photocopy of article "Merchant Vessels Beome Mercy Ships" not dated; various photographs of Jean during service and later in life printed from the UNCG website.

Dorothy Ahlswede Baker (1923-2015), of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, participated in the Cadet Nurse Corps program then served in the United States Army Nurse Corps from 1945 to 1947. Dorothy Ahlswede Baker was born in 1923 and grew up in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. She attended Bellin College of Nursing in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and joined the Cadet Nurse Corps while there. After graduation, she worked at the Sturgeon Bay Hospital for several months. Baker joined in the Army Nurse Corps and reported to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, for basic training in February 1945. She was assigned briefly to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, before transferring to Charleston, South Carolina, to serve on the United States Army hospital ship Wisteria, which transported German prisoners of war to Europe and returned sick and wounded American soldiers to the United States. In 1946 Baker spent several months chaperoning war brides on troop trains from Camp Kilmore, New Jersey. She was also assigned to Fort Lewis, Washington, and then Fort Lawton, Washington, where she served aboard a hospital ship transporting soldiers from the Pacific Theatre. She was discharged from the U.S. Army in the summer 1947 upon marriage to Horace Baker, a doctor serving aboard the same ship. The Bakers resided in North Carolina, eventually settling in Southern Pines. Baker died in 2015.

Women's History
Military

Army -- Army Nurse Corps

World War II era (1940-1946)

World War, 1939-1945
United States. Army--Women

Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries