Ya mudda wears combat boots!

(Originally published 3/7/2005 -- my remembrance to share with you this Mother's Day. And it's appropos that May 8-14 is National Nurses Week. Love a Nurse, P.R.N.)


That used to be a cutdown among 8-year-olds when I was growing up: "Ya mudda wears combat boots!"

In my case, it was a little closer to home than most of the other kids realized. Actually, my "mudda" wore U. S. Air Force sensible pumps.

There was a shortage of qualified nurses during World War II and, to alleviate it, the federal government started a program to pay for the education of women who completed training as registered nurses, the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps. If the women accepted the scholarship they had to commit to serve in the armed forces for a period of time following graduation. This obviously was the precursor to allowing women, in later years, into R.O.T.C. and then the service academies.

Back then the only jobs truly open to women were teacher, nurse, secretary and waitress, as well as the occupation requiring the skill-sets of all the preceding ones: mother/housewife. That was just the way it was back then. So mom, a poor but studious child from a depression-era family who could never have afforded education beyond high school, took the scholarship and got her RN. Eventually mom became a lieutenant in the U. S. Air Force.

As providence would have it, shortly after she started her training, World War II was over so she didn't need to serve ... stateside, overseas or in a war zone. She was in the Class of 1948, the last U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps class to graduate from St. Mary's Hospital School of Nursing. And because the war was over, the service obligation was waived.

Had they received orders to a war zone, I'm sure they would've accepted those orders as they were patriotic citizens who believed in their country. But mom served nonetheless, joining the Air Force after a short stint working in a tuberculosis sanitarium. She completed tours at bases in Texas and California, along the way falling in love with a musician, before resigning her commission and giving birth to my brother a few months later.

Mom's first job in nursing after leaving the service was in a veterans hospital back in her hometown of Syracuse, N.Y. I was three then and my parents only recently had been divorced. It was a divorce for survival in mom's eyes. There were no funds -- child support or alimony -- coming from my chronically unemployed and deadbeat dad, and mom had to burn the candle at both ends to make ends meet.

She worked the veterans hospital nursing job while attending Syracuse University full time to earn her bachelor's degree. The check from her work at the veterans hospital went to raise my brother and myself and the G.I. Bill paid most of her educational expenses. My grandmother and Aunt Loretta watched over us while mom was working or in school. It had to be a manic schedule for mom. The nicotine from the three packs of Pall Mall reds non-filtered cigarettes she smoked daily kept her motor running on a few hours sleep a day in the early years. But the tars from a lifelong addiction left her with emphysema and respiratory failure at the end while she fought a losing battle with breast cancer. It was the trade-off women like her paid to have children and be able to support them in a man's world.

It was the Veterans Administration secured home loan that helped mom buy our first home in the suburbs on a half-acre of land. I'll never forget it because it meant I could finally have a dog. I was 10 years old then and I wanted a dog to play with so badly it hurt. I'm sure that was a significant factor in mom's decision to buy a home so far away from the hospital she worked at that it effectively tripled her commute time.

The military gave my mother independence when society, in general, would have brushed her aside with a push to become a housewife and re-marry the closest man with a suit, a corporate job and a paycheck. That was not the vision my mom had for herself. And, as I wrote previously, she was old school Catholic raised by an even older school Catholic, my grandmother. Divorce for survival was one thing; re-marriage after divorce was quite another entirely.

Mom was no athlete or Olympian. I always thought she was a beautiful person but many would have just viewed her as pretty. She had a good heart, a strong character, a great sense of humor, a gambler's nerve and a mind that could never be sated. She wasn't a saint but she was no sinner either. She was just one of the thousands of young women who joined the military because their country needed their service as much as it needed infantry soldiers and male clerks. (My mother's only mistake was in going Air Force and not Navy. I explained to her the error of her ways and she promised she would correct the error the next time around.)

So I'm glad the folk in Charleston, W.Va., recently rejected a statue to honor women veterans that reflected the artist's conception of a woman veteran as butch and muscular. My mom wasn't Xena Warrior Princess, Wonder Woman or even Supergirl. West Virginia's hometown female veteran hero and former P.O.W., Pvt. Jessica Lynch, wasn't athletically muscular either. In fact, very few of the women I knew in the service were butch superhuman athletes. Their strength was in their character, their heart, their fortitude and their courage to believe in themselves and be willing to put up with the hardships of military life, and the attitude of society and military men, so people they didn't even know -- or would ever know -- could have a better life.

God bless you veterans. Thank you. Welcome home. Ya mudda wears combat boots!

Love your wife, mother, girlfriend or daughter? Give them the gift of life this Mother's Day. Learn CPR.