First Black Woman In Army Nurse Corps Dies At 104

The primary Black girl to hitch the U.S. Military Nurse Corps after the navy was desegregated within the Nineteen Forties has died. She was 104.

Nancy Leftenant-Colon, who retired as a significant and died earlier this month at a New York nursing house, was remembered by family members and pals for quietly breaking down racial obstacles throughout her lengthy navy profession.

Often called “Lefty,” she was considered one of six siblings who served within the navy, together with a brother who was a famed Tuskegee Airmen pilot. He was killed in a mid-air collision over Austria in 1945, in keeping with a biography of Leftenant-Colon on the Tuskegee Airmen Inc. web site. His stays have by no means been discovered.

“She was simply an superior particular person,” her nephew Chris Leftenant informed The Related Press. “She by no means created waves when she was doing all this primary this, first that. She by no means made a giant factor of it. It was simply occurring.”

After the navy was desegregated in 1948, Leftenant-Colon initially joined the all-Black 332nd Fighter Group, as a nurse. She then joined the U.S. Air Drive after the 332nd Fighter Group was disbanded, supporting the Korean and Vietnam wars.

She arrange hospital wards in Japan, helped evacuate French Legionnaires from Vietnam and was on the the primary medical evacuation flight into Dien Bien Phu, the place greater than 70 years in the past the French colonial military was defeated by Vietnamese troops. She retired as a chief nurse in 1965, in keeping with the Tuskegee Airmen Inc. web site.

From there, she served as a college nurse at Amityville Memorial Excessive College in New York from 1971 to 1984, identified, in accordance to a faculty district launch, for her line “The sky is the restrict.” The library media middle has been named in her honor.

She additionally was the primary girl elected to the presidency of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc., serving from 1989 to 1991. In 2007, President George W. Bush introduced the Congressional Gold Medal, the best civilian award given by Congress, to the Tuskegee Airmen as a gaggle.

“She led the way in which, and she or he stored all of the doorways open doorways behind,” Chris Lefenant mentioned. “She was simply the primary one. However then she made it every time and wherever attainable for another person to comply with behind.”

Suffolk County Legislator Jason Richberg, who introduced Leftenant-Colon with a proclamation in 2022, recalled her as a “firecracker.”

“It was a really an honor to take a seat together with her,” he mentioned. “She was unapologetically her, which was superior. She was genuine. She was humble. She was direct in her needs and desires. She all the time informed nice tales of her time her household.”

Like Chris Lefenant, Richberg mentioned he remembered that she wasn’t one to focus on her important accomplishments. “She was humble about her historical past. She mentioned ‘I used to be doing my half.’ As a lot a hero she is to her household, she wished everybody to know you are able to do extra,” he mentioned.

Leftenant-Colon was born in Goose Creek, South Carolina, in 1920. One in every of 12 youngsters, she was the granddaughter of a freed slave. Her household left the South for Amityville, New York, in 1923 — and that’s the place she died Jan. 8.