1978: Dr. Doris H. Merritt was the first woman to chair the Board of Regents for the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, where she was instrumental in establishing the library’s electronic information system.
Working in the field of nuclear physics, Toms put everything into career and the work that she did had value, most especially for the women who followed her.
In December 1990, she became the first woman to take command of a U.S. Navy ship, aptly named the Opportune.
One of the first women to serve onboard Navy ships, activist and politician
Lula Mae O’Bannon (Choctaw) used the opportunities in joining the US Coast Guard SPARS during World War II to expand her horizons and serve the United States’s war effort.
Lula Belle Everidge served in World War II as one of the few Native American SPARS.
Dr. Frederica “Freddy” de Laguna was an influential archeologist and anthropologist who worked extensively throughout Alaska.
Cora Dell Croft enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve Force at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in September 1918. She served during and after the First World War with two other Yeomen (F) who had joined the Navy with her, Mabel Nora Croft and Frances Gormley, at the Bureau of Navigation in Washington, D.C.
She entered the Navy Nurse Corps in March 1909 and served in Naval medical facilities in the United States and in the Philippines during the years prior to World War I. She was a Chief Nurse at Navy Base Hospital # 1, in Brest, France, in 1918-19, and served as an Assistant Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps in 1923-30. Subsequent assignments included duty at Great Lakes, San Diego, and Philadelphia.
After 2 1/2 years of civilian nursing, she became a Navy Nurse in February 1937 and was first stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station Hospital, Great Lakes, Illinois. In 1939, she was transferred to San Diego Naval Hospital.