Tue Feb 09 2010
By JACK PALMER
On a spring day in 1972, U.S. Navy Capt. Alene Duerk was driving to Holgate to see her mother, Emma Duerk Zachrich.
"I was driving on the Ohio Turnpike," recalled Duerk, who at the time was commander of the Navy Nurse Corps. "That's when I heard the news on the radio. I was shocked. My first thought was that I had better slow down."
Duerk, a Defiance native and 1938 graduate of Holgate High School, had been appointed as the first female rear admiral in the nearly 200-year history of the Navy.
"I knew such a appointment was going to be made," she stated. "I even thought about the names of 25 women whom I believed were most likely to receive the appointment. Never did I think I would be considered."
Duerk shared her thoughts in an exclusive interview last week during a visit to Defiance College with her niece, DC alum Lois Duerk, of Rochester, Mich., who is married to former Defiance resident Fred Duerk.
By the time she arrived in Holgate the day her appointment was announced, television crews had camped out around her mother's home.
"It was so unreal," she said. "There were reporters everywhere and the telephone never stopped ringing."
Five weeks later, Duerk received her rear admiral's stars and stripes from Navy Secretary John Warner (who later served as U.S. Senator from Virginia).
"There is no men's Navy and no women's Navy, but one Navy," Duerk said that day. "Young women can now see that the sky's the limit."
Even then, Duerk figured her notoriety would fade in six weeks. Instead, she became a national celebrity.
"But that never happened," she said. "I was asked to speak all over the country at college graduations and other events. I was traveling all the time. Whenever I went, television stations interviewed me."
Duerk also traveled abroad to Navy hospitals in Europe, Africa and Iceland.
"I always made it a point to talk to the nurses," she said.
Duerk was born in Defiance in 1920, the daughter of Albert and Emma Duerk. The family lived in a house at the corner of Douglas and East Second Street, which no longer stands.
"It was right across from the Fourth Ward School (later known as Brickell Elementary)," said Duerk. "We lived there until my father died. I was only 4."
Her father had been ailing since returning from World War I.
"I remember those nurses who came to the house with supplies," she said. "I thought they were wonderful. That was my first introduction to nursing."
In 1924, Duerk moved with her mother and younger sister, Evelyn, to her grandparents farm near Holgate.
"We moved again into town when I was 15," said Duerk. "I knew I didn't want live on a farm. I thought about nursing school and my mother was very encouraging. I think privately she would have liked to become a nurse herself."
After graduating from high school, Duerk enrolled at Toledo Hospital School of Nursing and earned her diploma in 1941. She worked for a year before entering the Navy Nurse Corps.
"I began as a ward nurse at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Va.," she said. "Then I was transferred to the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Md."
During the spring of 1945, she joined the USS Benevolence. That vessel received the sick and wounded from Third Fleet operations against Japan and later joined the Third Fleet for its last strikes against the enemy.
"When the war ended, there was jubilation on the ship," she said. "We stayed in Japanese waters for about four months to assist in the processing of Allied POWs."
In 1946, Duerk was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Hospital in Illinois. She was released from naval service later that year and entered Case Western Reserve University.
"The GI bill was one of the best things ever happened," she said. "My tuition and books were paid, plus I received $68 per month."
Duerk earned a degree in ward management and teaching, medical and surgical nursing. She was hired as a supervisor and medical nursing instructor at Highland Park (Mich.) General Hospital. She also joined a ready reserve unit in Detroit.
"When the Korean War started, I was ordered to active duty," she said. "By the time the war was over, I was encouraged to make the Navy a career. They seemed to be grooming me for nursing administration."
She quickly rose through the ranks and in 1963 was named Senior Nurse Corps Officer at the Naval Station Dispensary in Long Beach, Calif. Over the next few years she attained the rank of captain and became commander of the Navy Nurse Corps.
Duerk's life of service has continued since her retirement from the Navy in 1975.
"I taught English to non-English speaking people. It was easy to teach the children, but the adults were much harder."
She also delivered meals on wheels and was involved with church work, something she continues today. She was inducted into the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame in 1999 and remains active in the Visiting Nurses Association and Foundation of Central Florida, where she currently resides.
Duerk's career is chronicled Registered Nurse to Rear Admiral, A First for Navy Women (Estelle McDoniel, 2003), available in the Defiance College development office.
"I strongly encourage women and men to enter the nursing profession as long as they are passionate about it," she said "It takes a special person and it's hard work."
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