HomeMy WebLinkAboutHazel Von Roeder, Brazos Valley Heroes x ,
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'h e in a series of tributes to me" • rs 0 • he re. s ,
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There are a lot of people who claim to be patriot- love with our patients. That was the rule for me until tt
ic, but none could be more patriotic than Hazel Von Hubert Forney, a handsome paratrooper from
,, Roeder of Bryan. "I wear something patriotic everyday, Oklahoma, arrived from Germany. I dropped that rule
even if it is just a bracelet," she says. real quick. We got married on June 19, 1946. I was 3 t
Hazel was born in 1921 as Hazel Royder in then discharged from the Army and we moved to
. Wellborn, Texas, where she attended elementary Perry, Oklahoma. But Hubert, my handsome para-
; school. She graduated from A &M Consolidated in trooper, contracted polio in 1949 and died within a :PI
1940. week of becoming sick."
"As a young child, I saw a woman dressed in Hazel moved to Baytown, Texas and got back into
nurse's whites, which she wore with such dignity and nursing. 4hen the Korean War broke out, Hazel went
,: pride that I decided right then and there I wanted to be back on active duty in the Air Force as a flight nurse.
a nurse. In September 1941 I enrolled in the Jeff Davis "I liked being in the military so I went back in as
School of Nursing in Houston. When Pearl Harbor was a first lieutenant. As a fight 'nurse, I was involved in
bombed, I thought of my friends and brothers that transporting wounded soldiers to the hospitals closer
: would be called into service. My goal then became to their homes. 1953, I had made captain. iffii
-1' much larger. I wanted to be a military nurse. "It seems that I can't resist men in uniforms, LV
"You saw a little bit of everything at Jeff Davis because I met, fell in love with and married a pilot in
and I thought I would be prepared for what I was to see our transport group named Marion Von Roeder. When
; later in the military, but I wasn't. I enrolled in the Army we were married, I wanted to have our pictures taken
Nurse Cadet Corps my senior year, and when I gradu- together and he said o.k. - if he could wear my cap - ig g
ated in December 1944, I was commissioned as a sec- tain's bars and me wear his first lieutenant bar. I had
. and lieutenant. told him heck no. I earned my railroad tracks and I was
Pc. "I went on active duty on March 15, 1945, at going to wear them!"
i Ft. Sam Houston, Texas and then was sent to Ft. Bliss Hazel had a child in 1954 and was discharged, as
Station Hospital in El Paso, Texas, to attend the wound- women weren't allowed to remain on active duty with lel
;: ed soldiers being sent back from overseas. The first children at that time in the military. Mr. Von Roeder
i thing that struck me about the soldiers was they didn't then attended UT on the G.I. bill and after graduation
care how bad they were wounded, they were more went to work for Delta in the company's crop - dusting
worried about their buddies. One group of patients I service. They eventually moved back to Bryan, where
cared for that I had such respect for were the nurses Hazel worked as a nurse for local doctors and eventu
who had been captured at Corregidor and survived the ally with the Texas Department of Welfare, later the
i'; prison camps of Bataan. They had suffered so much. I Department of Human Services, in their nursing home
f'' don't know how they survived, but they did...1 knew department until her retirement.
E they would be scarred for life. "A couple of years ago my daughters surprised
:. "There will alway be some patients you never me with having my name engraved on the Brazos
i; forget. One was a guy from Bronx, New York, named Valley Veterans Memorial. I was so honored that 1 Ai
t Samuel Carpenter. He was a paraplegic that I thought cried. I always wore my uniform with pride and digni-
wouldn't be there when I returned to work the next day, ty, but I am not a hero, I'm a healer. The heroes are the
but there he was. He would be at death's door one day ones who were in combat, were prisoners of war or Al
. and then bright -eyed and bushy - tailed the next. His never came home. I am very proud to be part of the F .
doctor said Carpenter wouldn't die: the Lord didn't greatest generation. God Bless America."
_: want him and the devil wasn't ready for him. Carpenter Hazel Von Roeder's name can be found on the
survived and swore he would walk again. The week Brazos Valley Veterans Memorial. If you want to make
' before I was discharged, he went to Juarez on a pass, a contribution or know of a World War II veteran whose
�; walking with the aid of a cane. He asked me to go with story needs to be told, contact the Brazos Valley
7 . h but I knew better. He came back drunk as a skunk. Veterans Memorial at www.verterans- memorial.org or I l i
: "We were told, as nurses, we were never to fall in Bill Youngkin at 260 -7030.
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