Ruth King Garrett Collection

Details

Who's responsible?: Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries (Repository)
How much has been digitized?: Only a part of this collection has been digitized.
What's in the full collection?: 10 April 2007 oral history transcript,scans of photograph and 1945 letter.
Full biography: Ruth King Garrett (1923-2015) of Greensboro, North Carolina, served in the Army Nurse Corps from 1945 to 1946, followed by a long civilian career in nursing. Ruth King Garrett was born on 31 May, 1923, in Greensboro, North Carolina. After graduating from Rankin High School, she briefly attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Inspired by a health course at the university, she began nurses' training at Saint Leo's Hospital in the city and graduated from the program in 1944. She then worked at a polio hospital in Hickory, North Carolina. Garrett joined the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) on January 31, 1945 and was sent to Fort Rucker, Alabama, for basic training. She was then sent to Battey General Hospital in Rome, Georgia, where she stayed for five months. In summer of 1945 she was assigned to overseas duty and traveled to California to meet the United StatesS Comfort, which arrived in Manila, Philippines in August 1945. While in Manila, Garrett treated recently released United States prisoners of war and other wounded soldiers in temporary hospital units. She returned to the United States on February 1, 1946 and was discharged from the ANC on March 15, 1946. Garrett returned to Greensboro and worked at LeBauers Healthcare for a few months before moving to Fayetteville, North Carolina, to work at the Veterans Affairs [VA] Medical Center. A year later she returned to Greensboro and married Clifford Garrett, an army veteran, on 27 July 1947. They had three children together, one of whom became a nurse. Garrett retired from nursing in the mid-1980s. Garrett died on 5 January, 2015.
Topics: Women's History
Military
Schools and Colleges
Branch of service: Army -- Army Nurse Corps
Conflict: World War II era (1940-1946)
Subject headings: World War, 1939-1945
United States. Army--Women
Contributing Institution: Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries

: Oral history interview with Ruth King Garrett; Primarily documents Ruth King Garrett's service in the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) from 1945 to 1946. Garrett briefly discusses her education, including working on her high school's newspaper and her year at UNCG (then Woman's College). She mentions her reasons for becoming a nurse, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and her reasons for enlisting in the ANC. Garrett briefly discuses basic training, include learning to salute and meeting girls from other parts of the country, and describes her work on the colostomy and psychiatric wards at Battey General Hospital, including a visit from Helen Keller. Garrett discusses traveling overseas on the USS Comfort to the Philippines. Topics from her time in Manila include: treating released U.S. prisoners of war; entertaining patients; working in MASH units; dating and social life; editing the post newspaper; visiting Corregidor; getting cigarettes and Cokes; bathing out of her helmet; seeing the wreckage in Pearl Harbor; and coastal blackouts. Other War-related topics include her favorite movies; returning to the U.S. on the USS West Point; the mood of the country; her desire to stay in army and her disappointment at being discharged. Other topics include Garrett's work in the Fayetteville Veterans Administration Medical Center in 1946-1947; meeting her husband; the legacy of women who served in WWII; her children; and her retirement from nursing .