‘Join Now!’: Jane Delano, Early 20th Century Red Cross Nurse Pioneer

Jane Delano Jane Delano

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

In 1909, Jane Delano was chair of the national committee of the Red Cross nursing services, superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps, and president of the young American Nurses Association. The Red Cross was to serve as the reserve for nurses for relief services and for the army and navy nursing services. Flickr/ via James Vaughan Flickr/ via James Vaughan

At the outbreak of World War I, Delano mounted an aggressive national campaign to recruit thousands of nurses to attend to the troops in Europe and to provide services here at home during disasters and the 1918 influenza epidemic. AJN published a short biography of this remarkable woman in August 1930.

Delano also wrote a monthly column for the fledgling American Journal of Nursing. Her first column, a summary of the national meeting of the Red Cross in New York City, appeared in May 1909. Delano also founded the Red Cross Town and Country Nursing Service, which provided visiting nurses in rural areas. She died in France in 1919 while on Red Cross business.

Editor’s note: this is the second short post in a series we are publishing during Women’s History Month to draw attention to important figures or trends in the history of women and nursing. The first was “Parallel Developments: Women’s History and the Professional […]

2016-11-21T13:01:23-05:00March 18th, 2016|nursing history|0 Comments
Read More

Parallel Developments: Women’s Rights and the Professional Identity of Nurses

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

When women marched in the street to gain the right to vote, nurses marched with them. It’s no coincidence that nursing’s push for a professional identity occurred parallel to the women’s rights movement in the 19th and 20th centuries. As women were expanding their interests beyond the home and seeking a voice in the greater society, so too were nurses looking to establish their own professional identity and practice.

AJN‘s archives are replete with articles and letters from nurses who were on both sides of the suffrage question and other related issues affecting women and the nursing profession. During Women’s History Month, we will post several articles from our 115 years of archives. We hope you enjoy them and realize the many contributions of those nurses who came before us.

Below is an excerpt from one heartfelt letter drawing a connection between the women’s suffrage movement and nursing’s work in the public health sphere. It was published in the January 1909 edition of AJN (to read the entire letter, click here, and then click the link to the PDF version in the upper-right corner of the page):

The_Suffrage_Excerpt

…the sentence and the letter go on from there. It’s eloquent and to the point, even if some of the morality-tinged language will seem out of date. You can’t understand what’s happening today without looking to the past. Give it a read.—Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

 

 

 

2016-11-21T13:01:24-05:00March 7th, 2016|Nursing, nursing history|0 Comments
Read More

Remembering Nurses Who Served the Wounded and Dying and Those Who Died Themselves

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Normandy American Cemetery, France. Photo by Karen Roush Normandy American Cemetery, France. Photo by Karen Roush

So many of us look forward to Memorial Day weekend as a welcome long weekend and official start of summer. But there are many for whom Memorial Day (the last Monday in May) is a reminder of loved ones who died in military service—and that includes a significant number of military nurses who cared for the wounded in various wars.

We’d like to take this occasion to remind us all of the real meaning of this day and to honor the sacrifices of our colleagues. While it’s hard to find specific numbers of nurses who died in wars, one can extrapolate from what’s known about women who died, since most women who served in combat areas from the start of the 20th century through the Vietnam War were nurses.* […]

2016-11-21T13:02:30-05:00May 22nd, 2015|nursing history|8 Comments
Read More

As Another June Is Forgotten, Some Notes on Nurses and Normandy

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

A pause before the 4th of July: Nurses were at D-Day too.

NormandyNursesLanding Nurses coming ashore at Normandy/AJN archive

Last month, there were a number of D-Day remembrances in the media—June 6 was the 70th anniversary of the 1944 Allied forces landing along the beaches of Normandy and what many believe to have been the single largest tactical maneuver ever launched.

I was especially interested in the D-Day events—I’ll be visiting the Normandy beaches in October. My father was a World War II army veteran and landed at Normandy, though not in the first wave. He arrived days later with Patton’s 9th Armored Division after the beaches had been secured. (His unit would go on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge and finally into Germany after securing the Bridge at Remagen, the only bridge across the Rhine River into Germany not destroyed during the German retreat.) ItalyNursesLanding AJN archive

One thing I was surprised to learn is that nurses landed at Normandy and other invasion beaches within only a few days of the first wave. The photos here are from the AJN archives—the above photo shows nurses landing at Normandy. And the one to the […]

2016-11-21T13:04:20-05:00July 3rd, 2014|career, nursing history|4 Comments
Read More

Memorial Day Weekend: Thanks to the Nurses Who Lost Their Lives While Serving

Vietnam Women’s Memorial, courtesy of Kay Schwebke

AJN wishes all of our U.S. readers (and everyone else too) a safe, restful Memorial Day weekend, whether you are driving to the shore or the hills, staying put and having a barbeque, finishing a dissertation, running a 10K, working all weekend in the emergency department, gardening, or binge-watching episodes of a TV show on Netflix (you know who you are).

But let’s not forget the meaning of this pause to express gratitude to all soldiers and nurses who lost their lives in service to this country, and to their families. I still remember the Memorial Day parade that started downtown in our small New England town and passed our house almost a mile later, the rolling sound of the drums getting nearer for a long time, the old guys in various uniforms passing by, a few nurses in uniform among them.

We’d join the kids circling behind on bicycles as the parade went along the final stretch to the cemetery across from my grandparents’ house, turned slowly in, and marched on until it came to a stop near the center. A hush would fall then in the cemetery with its tall trees. There were no cell phone cameras then. There was nothing to break the quiet. No one was sending or getting texts. No one had earbuds in.

Even as kids we knew it meant something, that silence, and we knew enough to respect it, no matter what we […]

2023-05-26T09:56:27-04:00May 23rd, 2014|career, nursing history|0 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
Go to Top