Evelyn Jean Wright

Colonel Wright spent twenty years in various nursing assignments at U.S. Air Forces bases in California, Florida, Texas, and overseas in Germany, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. Colonel Wright received her nursing training at Mercy Hospital School of Nursing in San Diego in 1951. She was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and attached to the 2796th Medical Group where she worked in surgical wards. She went on to attend Flight Nurse training and earned her wings in 1954. She earned a Master's Degree in Maternal/Child Nursing and upon graduation, she was assigned to the 1453rd Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron in Tachikawa, Japan. As a flight nurse, she transported a variety of patients across the Pacific to Travis AFB in a C-135 aircraft. Other assignments included maternity wards, and developing and teaching an advanced obstetrical nursing course, the first of its kind in the military. She was appointed as a Consultant in Maternal Nursing to the Surgeon General, attended the University of Kansas Medical Center to become a Nurse Practitioner, and retired from the military in 1973. Post-military, she volunteered with hospice patients and was an accomplished glider pilot.