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thedrifter
12-04-08, 08:12 AM
Navy nurse saw the world, witnessed history
By Jennifer Grogan


Published on 12/4/2008

Ledyard - Barbara Ellen Miller had never thought about joining the Navy until she saw a recruiting poster advertising military service as a way to see the world.

”I thought, 'Hmm, I think that's for me,' so I went in, went up to the desk and I said, 'I want to join the Navy,'” said Miller, remembering that day in Baltimore in 1961.

”The sailor said, 'Do you type?' and I said, 'I don't type, I'm a nurse. Do you type?' He smiled and told me to go upstairs.”

Miller, who was about to graduate from the University of Maryland with a master's degree in nursing, spent the afternoon upstairs with a recruiter, filling out the paperwork to sign up.

She would spend 20 years as a Navy nurse, working at naval hospitals from Yokosuka, Japan, to Groton, taking care of everyone from presidents to Marines wounded in Vietnam to sailors held hostage in North Korea.

Often assigned to the extreme cases, like quadriplegics and amputees, Miller devoted herself to nursing. She worked nonstop, leaving little time for much else.

Now Miller, at 74, will become the first woman inducted into the Connecticut Veterans' Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford Tuesday.

”She really has had a very amazing life, of not only service to the nation but also to the community,” said Linda Schwartz, the state's veterans' affairs commissioner. “And I'm glad we finally have a woman. I hope she is just the beginning.”

Ten veterans have been inducted into the hall each year since 2005, when the governor created the program as a way to recognize veterans' achievements. More than 70 people were nominated this year.

After graduating from Officer Candidate School in Newport, Miller began her military career in the officers' quarters at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. This is where presidents, vice presidents, congressmen and Navy leaders go for annual physicals and medical care.

In late 1964, she transferred to the orthopedic wards at the naval hospital in Yokosuka. After a few months, she said, “Everything blew up in Vietnam.” The wounded Marines were taken to Yokosuka.

”It was difficult. I was looking at 17-, 18-year-old boys with bodies torn apart,” said Miller, who cared for Marines with spinal cord injuries from Vietnam at her subsequent assignment at the naval hospital in San Diego.

During her last month in San Diego, she was assigned as the evening nurse for the crew members of the USS Pueblo, who were captured on an intelligence-gathering mission off the coast of North Korea in January 1968. One sailor was killed.

North Korea held the crew of 82 for 11 months before releasing them two days before Christmas.

”We took care of those poor men, who were so debilitated from their time in prison,” said Miller, who treated them for malnourishment, skin diseases, broken bones, physical and emotional trauma. “That's a Christmas Eve I'll never forget, since we got to welcome them back to the United States.”

”It was my faith in God, I prayed a lot, and my sense of humor that got me through those many years,” she added.

In February 1969 Miller headed to the naval hospital in Philadelphia, where she cared for men who had lost limbs in Vietnam, and then back to Bethesda in 1972 to work in research, and later, to make instructional films for the orientation program for Navy nurses.

She was assigned to the Naval Submarine Base in Groton in 1976, where she worked at the medical center as the education officer, overseeing education programs for the staff and the corpsmen at sea, until her retirement as a commander in 1982.

”She didn't hesitate at all to remind a physician that maybe the patient didn't quite understand what was being told to them,” said David Engelman of Ledyard, a retired Navy captain and physician who was stationed at the base with Miller. “And, she was always right.”

Miller, who grew up in Beacon, N.Y., stayed at her home in Gales Ferry after her retirement and worked in the education department at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London for 18 years.

Miller never married, calling herself “a little too busy” and “a little too picky.”

She volunteers at several organizations, including veterans' groups, St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Mystic, the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution's Beacon chapter and the Navy Retired Activities Office at the Groton base.

It was a group of volunteers from the Retired Activities Office who nominated Miller for induction into the Connecticut Veterans' Hall of Fame.

”She has committed her life to helping others,” they wrote in Miller's nomination package.

”I did have a wonderful career,” Miller said, “and I'm honored to have served my country.”

J.GROGAN@THEDAY.COM

Ellie