FROM VERMONT TO GERMANY

The life of nurse Carolyne Reed, age 101.

When she was born in 1899 in Jericho Center, Vermont, on St. Patrick's Day, AJN was still in the planning stages. It must have been a good year-like AJN, Carolyne Reed, RN, has enjoyed a long and memorable career. And at 101 years of age, she looks back fondly on her years of practice.

She was in her forties when she enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps at the beginning of World War II. Assigned to the 97th General Hospital outside Oxford, England, Reed fondly remembers the hospitality of the British families who opened their homes to the American nurses. The nurses, grateful for such warmth during difficult times, shared their candy and alcohol rations with the families and brought gifts from the canteen.

Reed was a hospital night-supervisor on D-Day. "I remember the looks on those boys' faces," she recalls. "They looked as though they'd been through hell, and I'm sure they had."

When the war ended, she relocated to Frankfurt, Germany, with the 97th General Hospital. Returning to the United States in 1946, Reed cared for surgical outpatients in VA hospitals in Florida until her retirement 23 years later. Currently residing in Port St. Lucie, Florida, Reed is an active member of her women's club and her church and says her goal is "to be of some good to my country as long as I live."-Mattie Bialer