DJ Lavoie (courtesy photo)
Ex-Navy nurse records memories
A Scripps Ranch woman who served as a Navy nurse during the Vietnam War is part of a nationwide project to record and document the experiences of war-time Navy nurses.
DJ Lavoie, 77, is the co-chair of the Navy Nurse Corps Association’s Oral History Project, which includes stories from Navy Nurse Corps officers from World War II to the present. Lavoie said the project began in 2013 when the association’s Southern California chapter made a commitment to capture as many Navy Nurse Corps officers’ oral histories as they could. She said it started with about eight videotaped interviews from Navy nurses from World War II and has evolved from there. To date, they have interviewed 126 Nurse Corps officers, with 99 of those interviews being sent to the Library of Congress, the research library that officially serves the United States Congress.
“The oral history project is a top priority for the Nurse Corps Association and it’s really focused to preserve and share the Nurse Corps traditions and legacy,” Lavoie said. “Everyone who served has a different story, so this tells us who we were at a given time and gives a picture of how the Nurse Corps has changed, what nurses did in 1945 versus what they are doing in 2019.”
Lavoie said when she started out in the then all-female Nurse Corps in the early 1960s, it was very disciplined and organized and they had to dress in white caps and uniforms consisting of skirts, nylons and heels. She said women couldn’t be married and they definitely couldn’t be pregnant, since the thinking of that time was that they wouldn’t be physically fit to serve.
“Because we were all single, we socialized together, we traveled together, we went to the club together, we did a lot together because that was our family,” she said. “That has changed. Many of the nurses now are married with families.”
Lavoie said she started her career at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. She spent some time working in the operating room, which she said was exciting because it involved open heart surgery and brain surgery. Then, in 1968 she was sent overseas to Guam and worked in the pediatric unit as a charge nurse. But at that time, she said, there was a lot of activity happening in Vietnam and they were getting air vacs from there all the time.
“The air vacs usually came in around dinner time, so after you finish your own day, we were all there doing what we needed to do for these very badly injured young men,” she said. “They were so courageous and so strong and in such pain, both emotional and physical. It was pretty hard.”
Lavoie said in addition to that, they were taking care of older men who had been mistreated by the Japanese during World War II.
“This was more than 25 years after that war and that was horrendous also. You know, even now I think about this and I think, ‘how can human beings do this to other human beings?’ It just doesn’t make sense, so I struggle with that all the time,” Lavoie explained.
Lavoie said it’s confronting these types of personal struggles that Navy nurses live with that make the oral history project so worthwhile.
“One thing that I’ve learned from doing these interviews is that people sort of forgot that nurses have trauma as well,” she said. “Some of them never talked about any of this ever until they did their interview for us, so that has served as a support system and has been cathartic for them. You cry with them and you laugh with them. It’s been a trip.”
Lavoie said any Navy nurse – both women and men – can take part in the oral history project, they don’t have to be a member of the association. Each nurse who participates will get a DVD copy of their interview.
“It’s been a fun project. It’s been an incredible learning experience. I’ve met some amazing Nurse Corps officers and heard some incredible stories,” she said.
Nurses who want to share their experiences can contact the Navy Nurse Corps Association by visiting nnca.org.