28 D'MENSIONS MAGAZINE D'YOUVILLE UNIVERSITY 29 ELEANOR ALEXANDER (’61 BSN) “She was a goddess to us for volunteering for Army nursing. She was our Florence Nightingale.” Those words came from Patrick Vellucci, who served in the U.S. Army’s 10th Calvary, 4th Infantry in Vietnam for two years beginning in 1967. That first year, he met a young nurse, Eleanor Grace Alexander, who joined the Army Nurse Corps earlier that year after starting her career at hospitals in upstate New York and in New Jersey before volunteering to join the war effort. Alexander made it to Vietnam that June and was placed at the 85th Evacuation Hospital in Qui Nhon, where she cared for seriously wounded soldiers, both Americans and the Vietnamese. On Nov. 30, 1967, she boarded an Air Force C-7B transport plane with 26 others for a routine flight from the Cam Ranh Air Base back to Qui Nhon, about 165 miles away. As the plane approached their airfield, the pilot was advised the weather made landing unsafe and told the pilot to proceed to another nearby base. Enroute to that base, the plane hit a mountain at 1,850 feet, killing all 26 on board, including Alexander. She was one of only eight military servicewomen (all nurses) and 59 civilian women (Red Cross volunteers and others) to die in action during the war. Harold David Parks wrote a tribute for Alexander for the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial & Museum, and while he never formally met her, he remembered Alexander well: “She was the subject of admiring conversation by all of my enlisted buddies. She was always smiling and bright-eyed … when word came that we lost her, everyone was sad. We had lost other young from our unit, and we hardened ourselves against such losses and expected them. Capt. Alexander, however, was different. He loss was felt by everyone, and grief cast a cloud over the 85th. “After we lost her … we all realized that she had made our lives in Vietnam a bit more bearable.” As for cost, during the 1940s, tuition was roughly $250 for freshmen, $250 for sophomores, $30 for the 10-week summer session and $10 for a public health affiliation. The third and fourth years cost $50 and $25, respectively. Other fees were included for library access, laboratory equipment and textbooks. “We were very nervous during the war. There was a very, I want to say, ‘religious’ feeling. We were concerned for the people who were suffering or dying. It was rough, and we spent a lot of time in the chapel and a lot of time with the chaplain. It was a rough time for all of us, because we were young and [emotional]. Our young men were over there, and a lot were dying or coming home hurt. We were praying for them all the time.” Quote from The D’Youville Family Album Colleges and universities all over the country felt the impact of World War II in 1942. While D’Youville — being an all-women’s school — didn’t take on the enrollment hit like co-ed schools, life on campus changed dramatically. Blood drives became the new “social gathering,” and D’Youville women raised $75,000 in war bonds that year to pay for a pursuit aircraft that would be named for the school. Students took part-time jobs in local industries to help with the war effort, and even in their free time, students’ thoughts stayed overseas (one story had a young woman knitting an afghan to donate to troops as she listened to a lecture in English class). Adding nursing to the curriculum was another way D’Youville could help. The school was one of hundreds to benefit from the Bolton Nurse Training Act, adopted nationally to address the wartime shortage, and the federally funded U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps, which paid full tuition, room and board to students who pledged wartime service. Posters and magazine ads went out all over the country featuring images of stoic, patriotic uniformed women and promises of a fulfilling career and a “lifetime education.” By 1945, the Army’s nursing ranks grew to 57,000, with cadet nurses assigned to hospital ships and trains, flying ambulances, field hospitals and general hospitals on the homefront. GOING CO-ED D’Youville College became a co-ed school in 1971 when the school’s trustees voted to begin allowing men in its ranks. Frank Bennett (pictured) was one of 10 men who enrolled in the School of Nursing that year. Today, approximately one- fourth of D’Youville’s nursing students are men.
