Last updated: September 28, 2020
Person
Dora E. Thompson
Army Nurse Corps Association
Quick Facts
Significance:
Army Nurse Corps, 1906 Earthquake, Letterman General Hospital
Place of Birth:
Cold Spring, New York
Date of Birth:
1876
Place of Death:
San Francisco, CA
Date of Death:
June 23, 1954
Place of Burial:
Arlington, Virginia
Cemetery Name:
Arlington National Cemetery
"Thompson once told an audience that the creation of the Nurse Corps had been a “rather up hill battle” and that they received much opposition, as many people thought women were not suited for work in Army hospitals [...] they believed female nurses would be more of a burden than a help." [1]
Dora E. Thompson began her career with the Army Nurse Corps at the Presidio’s Army General Hospital. As chief nurse, she and her staff tended to victims of the 1906 earthquake. In 1911, Thompson transferred to the Manila division hospital. In 1914, the Surgeon General named her Superintendent of the Nurse Corps. She guided the Army Nurse Corps through World War I, when the Corps grew from less than 400 to 21,480 nurses serving in the United States, Europe, and the Philippines.
As a result of her service during World War I, Thompson received the Distinguished Service Medal for "her accuracy, good judgment, . . . untiring devotion to duty" and her "splendid" management of the Army Nurse Corps during the emergency. The war took a toll on her health, and she took a leave of absence to returned in December 1919 to resign as Superintendent. Thompson was then appointed Assistant Superintendent with duties in the Philippines. Thompson later became chief nurse of the Letterman General Hospital. When Army nurses were given relative rank in 1920, Thompson became a captain.
When Thompson retired from the Army Nurse Corps in 1932, she continued to reside in San Francisco in a home overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Thompson remained in San Francisco until her death in June 1954. The women officers' quarters at Letterman General Hospital was named Thompson Hall in her honor in 1955. Thompson Hall was demolished in 1994 after new nurses’ quarters were completed nearby, but the Presidio Trust gave the name “Thompson’s Reach” to a portion of creek that was daylighted in 2005 at the location of the old nurses’ quarters.
Sources:
1. Lisa M. Budreau, Office of Medical History (U.S. Army) Office of the Surgeon General, Richard M. Prior, Answering The Call: The U.S. Army Nurse Corps, 1917-1919: A commemorative Tribute to Military Nursing in world War I. Government Printing Office, 2008.