Category Archives: People

National Nurses Day! – 1943 and 2020

I can’t pass up National Nurses Day without mentioning the wonderful 95th Evacuation Hospital nurses.

The whole 95th medical staff

I continue to search out 95th staff for my TV limited series about the 95th nurses. Just recently I was put in contact with a 95th nurse who is 99 years young! Burnice/Billie/Hut Sut Walden Thibodeau.

I’ve also been honored to talk with Marcy “Schlem” Schlemma Korda, still living in Minnesota at 98.

I was able to talk with Lillian “Smitty” Smith Scheppler before she passed last year.

I’ve been able to connect with Adeline “Si” Simonson’s children, Helen Tallboy’s son, and family of Othelia “Oats” Rosten.

Wonderful women and nurses, all!

Honoring Our Vets

My dad, a staff sergeant of the 3rd Armored.

This day means a lot to me, as it does to so many.

For me it underscores my desire to honor some of these vets, specifically the nurses of the 95th.

I have a pilot for a TV mini-series about the 95th Evacuation Hospital nurses. Think Band of Brothers but with the nurses about the 95th. The woman on the right is Marcy “Schlem” Schlemma Korda, who is still with us, living in a small town in Minnesota where she and her husband (a 95th surgeon) moved to after the war. The woman on the left is Lillian “Smitty” Smith Scheppler. Both these women helped me when I was writing my historical fiction novel in 2010-11 (A Burnished Rose – Book I, Book II)

Lillian left us this spring but both woman gave me information I could never have found in the books that I used.

These women couldn’t have come into contact with my dad, but they helped so many young men and they did so under very difficult circumstances: the hot, cold, and sands of the North African desert, were bombed on a British hospital ship, bombed on the beach at Anzio in Italy where some of the 95th staff lost their lives, in France and the bitter cold of Germany during the winter, living and working in canvas tents.

I have recently connected with the children of another 95th nurse, Adeline “Si” Simonson. Both Marvin and Carolyn have a keen interest what their mother and the women of the 95th did in WWII, so I’d have even more help in telling the 95th’s story.

These women’s story needs to be told and I’d be honored to help tell their story.

The 95th Officers (MDs) and Nurses with CO (center) Paul Sauer.

If anyone knows any of the members of the 95th, I’d appreciate if you contacted me. Thanks!

Stopping By Wood… Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.   
His house is in the village though;   
He will not see me stopping here   
To watch his woods fill up with snow. 
  
My little horse must think it queer   
To stop without a farmhouse near   
Between the woods and frozen lake   
The darkest evening of the year.  
  
He gives his harness bells a shake   
To ask if there is some mistake.   
The only other sound’s the sweep   
Of easy wind and downy flake.
 
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,   
And miles to go before I sleep.

On this day in 1923 Robert Frost poem was published, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

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