Ref. The Third Age - News and Information for Contemporary Seniors Vol. 29, No. 4; pp 6 & 7 Senior Spotlight Column by Teri Baker Name of Article: Nursing career was life of service and travel. Phyllis Dana knew when she graduated from Lake Stevens High School in 1935 that she wanted to do something worthwhile with her life, something that would support her financially and still satisfy her soul. "I didn't want marriage and I didn't want to teach school," says the Marysville woman, known as "Phyl" to a legion of friends. "I had learned to type in high school, but I was no stenographer. That didn't leave many choices for a girl at that time, so I decided to become a nurse." To enter the nursing program at Everett General Hospital, Phyl took Latin and chemistry classes at Everett High. A practical person eager to learn all lshe could, she was undaunted by the rigorous courses at nursing school, but says ofr hospital duty, "students work like dogs!" Upon graduation in 1939, Phyl did as the nursing faculty suggested and joined the Red Cross Nursing Program. "We were told we would be called upon in the event of a national disaster, " Phyl recalls. "I thought, floods, earthquakes - of course I would want to help. So I signed on the dotted line, then went out and got a job. Phyl was working in a tuberculosis sanitarium in North Seattle when a friend told her nurses where so need in Hawaii that the government would pay their fare. the opportunity to practice her profession and to travel again appealed to Phyl, who had not forgotten living as a child in Belgian Congo where her parents were Mathodist-Episcopal missionaries. Born in Chicago on Easter Sunday, 1917, Phyl was only four when she went to Africa. When her father contracted a severe case of malaria five years later, the family came to New York. When someone brought real estate brochurds showing a place with green trees and blue water, her father said, "That's for me!" and as soon as he got out of the hospital, the Dana family move to Lake Stevens. The grown up Phyl loved the Northwest, but Hawaii beckoned. "They gave me $85 to travel on the Lurline, a luxury liner,"she says. "We were in steerage, but how many people did I know that could say they had traveled by ocean liner!" It was December, 1940 and Phyl stepped off the ship onto an island perfumed by a myriad brilliant blossoms. "I lived and worked in Honolulu and enjoyed everything and everybody," she says with a laugh. "It was a wonderful. There was big old dumb me and there were men everywhere." Then one day a stack of papers arrived for her. The top one said, "You will report Aproil 15, 1941 to Pearl Harbor." Perplexed, she asked the Navy ensign she was dating what he thought it was about. He replied, "Looks like orders to me." Orders? Phyl looked more closely at the papers. Because she was a member of the Red Cross Nursing Service, she discovered she was now in the Navy! She went to Pearl, crying all the way, and was immediately put to work in the base hospital. By June she was wearing a uniform with an ensign's insignia. Rate and rank meant a lot, she says, because now she could live in officers quarters instead of the nurses dormitory. Her hours were long, but the Navy treated Ensign Dana well. She and Nellie, her roommate, were getting ready to to on a picnic with a couple of fellows one day when Phyl saw airplanes "coming in kin of low." Nellie told her to ignore them and get dressed. There would be no picnic. It was December 7, 1941. "When the Japanese bombed the Arizona, it released fuel oil into the channel," Phyl says. "That's why we had eight wards of burn victims." There was no time to be afraid because the nurses worked eight hours on and four hours off for more than a month. It wass Three days before P{hyl even got a chance to shower. "Later, when we finally had time to think," she says, "we were positive we would be taken prisoner. We lived with that fear until March or April. "When someone would complain about the food, we would just say, 'It beats fish heads and rice' and there would be no more complaints." Phyl returned briefly to the states in a convoy of ships evacuating military personnel and their families. "There were 150 men, women and children, all sick, with only four Navy nurses to take care of them," she says. "We had no escort so we had to travel at 40 knots and zigzag every seven and a half minutes. It took us five miserable days to get to San Francisco." She was exhuasted and desperately wanted to see her mother in Lake Stevens, but every form of transport was booked. "it took three days to get a ticket," she remembers. "It gave me a chance to unwind so that by the time I got to Mom's house, I was a human, not a robot." TO BE CONTINUED . . . . . . . . .