Ignored No More: Female Korean War Nurses ‘Overappreciated' In D.C. Trip

By Chris Stone, Times of San Diego

April 30, 2023

Retired Lt. Col. Evelyn Wright believes the military’s glass ceiling has been cracked, but hopes those younger than she can shatter it completely.

Wright, nearly 94, along with fellow Korean War nurse Marian “Myrt” Wells, 94, toured the Military Women’s Memorial on Saturday in Washington, D.C., as part of the latest Honor Flight San Diego tour.

Both were impressed with the museum, and felt amply respected during their weekend visit.

“Overappreciated,” Wells said, laughing. “I’m tired of smiling.”

“Overwhelming,” Wright said after touring memorials in the nation’s capital including those dedicated to World War II, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the Navy and Marines. “The care that this organization has given us to provide this tremendous experience is once-in-a-lifetime for me.”

“It’s made up for all of the time that we were ignored,” she added.

Wright was very impressed with the women’s museum.

“They covered a lot of areas,” she said. “I wish that I had more time to go in depth and see what all they have collected. I’m glad that the men gave us that piece of property because I think we have done very well by it.”

Wright served more than 20 years in the military, and Wells encouraged generations after her to consider a Navy life, which she. called fulfilling.

They and their male counterparts will be greeted by hundreds Sunday at San Diego International’s Terminal 2 Baggage Claim, with organizers encouraging welcomers (with signs and wearing patriotic colors) to be there at noon in case their Alaska Airlines Flight 9677 arrives before a scheduled 1:15 p.m. landing.

Wright at Night

Not being a night owl led Evelyn Jean Wright to join the military.

Just graduated from Mercy College of Nursing, Wright was placed on the night shift in a hospital. After nine months, she said, “The night shift was killing me because I just was existing.”

So when the head nurse told her: “Miss Wright, you get out of this hospital, and you go down to the recruiting station, and you go into the military,” she signed up. “Well, I was so used to following orders — I did.”

By 1973, she was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

Wright began her nurses training in 1951 at Norton AFB in San Bernardino. She later completed a flight nurse course and in 1965 was assigned to an Air Force base in Weisbaden, Germany. There she worked on the officer’s ward, aiding those with medical issues.

Two years later, Wright took a hiatus from the military to attain more education.She used the GI Bill to defray tuition at California Western College, the University of San Diego and UC San Francisco Medical Center.

Calling herself a “healer, not a warrior,” Wright earned a master’s degree in maternal child nursing.“And then I decided, well, maybe the military wasn’t so bad after all,” she said, and re-entered the Air Force in 1961.

In October of that year, she was put on flying status even though she hadn’t been in a plane. “I assumed that they would use my master’s degree to send me to a maternity ward, but no, I’m on flying status.”

Working in a C-121 prop plane, she helped transfer soldiers to Wake Island, where they would be flown to Travis Air Force Base in Northern California.

“They were phasing those (C-121s) out,” she said. “And I felt like they were keeping them together with baling wire because they kept breaking down.”

Wright said they’d be fixed, and patients were reloaded.

“We’d fly and I thought, ‘God, you know, there’s a lot of water down there. And there’s no easy emergency room to stop.’”

She was scared to death but savored the work.

“When I got comfortable flying, I thought it was fascinating,” Wright said. “It was one of the most fascinating duties that I had.”

Those transports were made before the major fighting in Vietnam, Wright explained. So they weren’t carrying wounded soldiers. They were transferring military personnel “who had gone off the deep end and gotten psychiatric problems.”

She explained their island layover.

“While we stayed overnight at Wake Island,” Wright said, “and the nurses had nurses quarters, it had a corrugated fence around it and very lonely GIs would call it the iron girdle.”

Asked if service women faced sexual assault, Wright said: “You had to dance around. You got the enemy here, you got these horny guys there.”

Wright said: “Florence Nightingale started nursing in the Crimea War and the only women she could get — even though she was Highborn herself — were prostitutes. Nurses still are around some of the guys who think that we’re open to anything, and we’re not. We were officers.”

She continued: “And it’s unfortunate. I mean, some of these men seem to think that when a woman goes into the military, they’re asking for it. And not realizing that we’re trying to do a job or make a career.

“She resented such attitudes. But while she met a lot of very nice men, “there were a lot of stinkers, too.”

Later, the medical staff was upgraded to a C-135 jet that could go from Japan straight to Travis Air Force Base.

In 1963, Wright was assigned to Eglin AFB in the western Florida panhandle, where she was the charge nurse of obstetrics — and where she could put her master’s degree to use.

Wright worked in hospitals in Florida, Texas, Taiwan, Philippines, Riverside and the USAF Medical Clinic in San Bernardino before being honorably discharged Jan. 1, 1977.

Later, Wright was sent to Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, the largest Air Force medical center in the country. And she was tapped to develop a specialized course in obstetric nursing. She also taught the course.

She volunteered with San Diego Hospice, San Diego Senior Police Patrol and established a nurse position for the San Diego Methodist Church in her post-military life. She also was an accomplished glider pilot.

Asked Saturday if she thought female veterans are respected, she said: “I’m a nurse, and I think the men have a better feeling about nurses because they know we are here to heal them or help them heal or be with them when they are not able to be healed.”

‘Myrt’ Wells’ Journey

For Marian “Myrt” Wells, preparation for Honor Flight San Diego was a journey of discovery.Her daughter, Patti Ireland, who is accompanying her, got a kick out of seeing photos of her mother’s military nursing years.

The 1948 General Hospital School of Nursing, Class of 1948, describes Wells’ “dancing eyes and dark hair.” There’s also a mention of her “mischievous” antics.

“You don’t think of your mom being like that. … Kind of fun to read things like that,” Ireland said.

At her Coronado home, Wells smiled widely on the other side of the room.

Ireland also discovered that her mother was on a softball team. And that her mother’s uniform looks very similar to current military clothing.

Wells, whose maiden name was Ulrich, entered Cadet Nurse Corps in 1945 and worked in hospitals in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and New Jersey.

In 1950, she was commissioned as an ensign in the Navy Nurse Corps. She was assigned to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1953, she was transferred to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan. She spent two years there.

Wells describes her Japan service as aiding wounded soldiers flown in from the Korean War. After-hours were spent traveling and touring Japan and spending time in the officers club.

“I enjoyed getting to go to different parts of the country and world,” Wells said.

While Wells’ father was happy that she joined the Navy, he wasn’t pleased about her transfer to Japan because of that country’s alliances in the war.

Wells was a nurse at Naval Hospital San Diego, where she met her husband, Frank Wells, when he was a patient.

They married and when she became pregnant with her first child, she was required to leave the Navy in 1956. Wells has two sons and two daughters, nine grandchildren and a great-grandchild on the way.

(Women weren’t allow to remain in the military once they had children until rules were changed in 1975.)

The tradition of Go Navy blossomed from Wells and her husband’s military service.

Ireland recalls how the family sent tape recordings to her father who was serving in Vietnam. In her tapes, she talked about being a Brownie and taking piano lessons. On the tapes her father sent back, gunfire could be heard in the background.

Her father also served in World War II and the Korean War. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, an early stop of Honor Flight’s Saturday schedule.

Ireland served as a physical therapist in the Navy; her husband also completed full service in the Navy. Ireland’s daughter, a supply officer, is also married to an active service member. Ireland’s son and his wife also serve in the Navy.

“We say it’s a family business,” Ireland said, noting that as she and her husband are proud of their children’s service, the grandchildren are proud of their grandmother’s military work.

Wells has been a good role model, which convinced her to go into the military after college. And her daughter, Heather, joined without encouragement from her.Ireland said her enlistment surprised her parents, and likewise her daughter’s choice was a surprise to her and her husband.

She spoke proudly of the litany of family service:

“Mom started her journey in the Navy in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1951. I went 32 years later and I went through Newport for my journey. And then 30 years later, Heather did, and a few years after that, Natalie (Ireland’s daughter-in-law).”

Ireland said a misconception exists that children of military parents are themselves forced into the service. But she and her daughter made their own choices.

“You know, nonmilitary people don’t understand,” she said. “I mean, I think it’s an honor and a privilege to serve, and there’s some sense of adventure, too.”

“And I do think for nonmilitary people, they think it’s like: Why would you send your kids off to get shot?” Ireland said. “You know, hopefully that doesn’t happen, but you know, there’s always risks, right?

“I’m proud of Mom and my dad for what they did, and I’m proud of my own service and the service of my kids. I mean, I think we’re part of a pretty neat little club of people who are willing to do something for our country.”

Third in a series

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