AVIATION AND I GET TOGETHER
AFTER graduation from High School (where I had become greatly interested in chemistry and physics) I waited around a year and then entered Ogontz School, near Philadelphia. During Christmas vacation of my senior year I went to Toronto where my sister was entered at St. Margaret’s College. There for the first time I realized what the World War meant. Instead of new uniforms and brass bands, I saw only the results of a four years’ desperate struggle; men without arms and legs, men who were paralyzed and men who were blind.
One day I saw four one-legged men at once, walking as best they could down the street together.
“Mother, I’d like to stay here and help in the hospitals”, I said when I returned home. “I can’t bear the thought of going back to school and being so useless.”
“That means giving up graduating,” said Mother.
I didn’t care. I gave up all thought of returning to school and took steps to become a nurse’s aide. Though I endeavored to connect with the American Red Cross, somehow the papers were never completed and I spent months in Toronto working in a hospital until the Armistice.
Nurse’s aides did everything from scrubbing floors to playing tennis with convalescing patients.
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