DISTINGUISHED SERVICE
Teachers College Women in the Military The U.S. military and Teachers College, the nation’s first and largest graduate school of education, are partners of long standing. The Eisenhower Leader Development Program, operated by the College and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, prepares many graduates for service as Tactical Officers who command Cadet Companies at West Point. The College is home to the Resilience Center for Veterans & Families, which pairs groundbreaking research on human emotional resilience with clinical training of therapists to assist veterans and their families in transitioning to civilian life. TC also participates in the Yellow Ribbon GI Education Enhancement Program, which helps cover the cost of post9/11 era veterans’ tuition expenses at private colleges and universities.
Women are a major part of the Teachers College community, and our female graduates are especially well-represented in military history. Their ranks include: Olivia Hooker (M.A. ’47), the first African-American woman to serve in the Coast Guard and later a prominent advocate for the learning disabled. As a child, Hooker survived the infamous Tulsa Race Riots of 1921. She graduated from The Ohio State University, became a third-grade teacher and volunteered for national service in World War II. When the Navy declined her application, she served in a Coast Guard unit called SPAR – short for the Coast Guard’s motto, Semper Paratus, or “Always Ready.” Hooker earned an M.A. in Psychological Services at Teachers College and a Ph.D. at the University of Rochester. She advocated for incarcerated women incorrectly labeled “learning disabled”; directed the Kennedy Child Center; taught at Fordham University; and served as a psychologist at the Fred Keller School. She co-founded the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, which seeks reparations for the riot’s victims. At 95, Hooker joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary. In 2015, the Coast Guard Sector in Staten Island named its dining and training facilities after her. In 2016, she received Teachers College’s Distinguished Alumna Award. She recently celebrated her 103 rd birthday.
Army nurse Anna Mae McCabe Hays (B.S. ’58), the first woman in the U.S. armed forces to wear the insignia of a Brigadier General. Hays enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. She deployed with the 20 th General Hospital to India in 1943; and, in 1950, she deployed to Korea with the 4 th Field Hospital as part of the Inchon Landing, helping to treat more than 25,000 patients. Hays also played a field pump organ for weddings and church services, often on the front lines. Hays became Colonel and head emergency room nurse at Walter Reed Hospital, once acting as a private nurse to President Dwight Eisenhower. In 1967, she became the Army Nurse Corps’ 13 th Chief. Hays was promoted to Brigadier General in 1970. On her recommendations, the military ceased automatically discharging officers who became pregnant and determining appointments to the Army Nurse Corps Reserve based on the nurse’s dependents’ ages, and began awarding spouses of female service members privileges like those of spouses of male service members. Hays passed away in January of this year at the age of 97.