Ann bernatitus biography

Ann Agnes Bernatitus (21 January 1912 – 3 March 2003) was a United States Navy nurse who served under combat during World War II. She was the first American.
Ann Agnes Bernatitus was a United States Navy nurse who served under combat during World War II. She was the first American recipient of the Legion of Merit.
Ann Agnes Bernatitus was born in Exeter, Pennsylvania, on January 21, 1912, daughter of Alexander Bernatitus and Mrs. (Margaret Adamits).

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Oral Histories - U.S. Navy Nurse in the Pacific Theater during World War II

Recollections of CAPT Ann Bernatitus, NC, USN, (Ret.), recounting her, service in the Philippines including Bataan, evacuation from Corregidor on USS Spearfish (SS-190); and service on USS Relief (AH-1) during the Okinawa campaign and the return of American prisoners of war from Japanese-occupied China.

[Source: Oral history dated 25 Jan. 1994, provided courtesy of the Historian, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery]

Were you born in Pennsylvania?

I was born in this house. This is the old family homestead. Mother and Dad built it. I think it was built about 1905. Nobody has lived here but the Bernatitus family

When did you decide you wanted to be a nurse?

I always wanted to be a nurse. There was nothing else for girls to do in those days but be a school teacher or a nurse. My parents couldn't afford to send me to college. My school friend, whose mother was a widow, told my mother, who was also a widow, to let me go for training. My mother then de

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America250: Navy Veteran Ann Agnes Bernatitus

This week’s America250 salute is Navy Veteran Ann Agnes Bernatitus.

Ann Agnes Bernatitus was born in 1912 in Exeter, Pennsylvania. After graduating high school in 1928, she decided to become a nurse. Bernatitus entered nurse training in 1931 at the Wyoming Valley Homeopathic Hospital in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, completing training in four years. After failing to find employment, she decided to complete a postgraduate course in operating room technique at the University of Pennsylvania. She also worked there until she accepted a position at the New Rochelle Hospital in New York. However, realizing she needed New York registration to work at this position, Bernatitus eventually returned to Pennsylvania to work at Nanticoke State Hospital near her hometown. There, she decided to join the Navy Nurse Corps and was appointed ensign in 1936.

Afterward, Bernatitus went to the Naval Hospital in Chelsea, Massachusetts, where she worked as a staff nurse for two years. Later, she transferred to the Navy Hospital in Annapolis, Maryland, whe

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Ann A. Bernatitus

U.S. Navy decorated combat nurse (1912–2003)

Ann Agnes Bernatitus (21 January 1912 – 3 March 2003) was a United States Navynurse who served under combat during World War II. She was the first American recipient of the Legion of Merit.

Career

Ann Bernatitus was appointed as Ensign in the Navy Nurse Corps in 1936, after graduating from the Wyoming Valley Homeopathic Hospital Training School in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1934, and the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate Hospital post-graduate program in operating room nursing in 1935. Bernatitus's first assignments with the Navy were as a staff nurse at the Naval Hospitals in Chelsea, Massachusetts and Annapolis, Maryland.

In 1940, she was assigned duty on board the USS Chaumont (AP-5) before assignment to the US Naval Hospital at Canacao, Philippines Islands in July 1940. After the attack on Pearl Harbor and start of the Japanese war in the Pacific, Canacoa Hospital staff and patients were evacuated to Manila and Bataan under US Army supervision. As the lone Navy nurse on her tea