FLORINE JEWEL BROOKS PENNINGTON – March 10, 1010 – September 25, 2019
Co-authored by her son Daniel Pennington & Sharon Pigeon
ON SEPTEMBER 13, 1943, Florine Jewel Brooks graduated from the George Ben Johnston Memorial School of Nursing and received the certification title of Industrial Registered Nurse. She had completed the first step in making her dreams come true.
This feisty 22-year-old from the Cracker’s Neck section of the tiny town of Coeburn, deep in the mountains of far Southwest Virginia, was perky and cute and had been a favorite among the young men in her St. Paul High School graduating class. However, this petite dynamo wanted to serve her country during the worldwide crisis of World War II. Equally important, though, she craved adventure.
Florine had read the newspaper column written by President Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, and she was energized by the First Lady’s words: “American women are a weapon waiting to be used.” The First Lady knew that women were already actively serving in Great Britain and Russia. Florine’s spirit caught fire. and she joined the US Naval Reserves.
On March 7, 1944, Florine was called to “active duty”, effective immediately. She boarded a train in Abingdon, Virginia and headed to Raleigh, North Carolina. Remarkably, the order directed that no part of her travel would be on a government conveyance, and it would be at her own expense by bus or train! Truly, her adventures had begun.
Having volunteered for flight duty, she completed Officer Indoctrination Training in Raleigh before her next duty station, which was back in Virginia at Portsmouth Naval Hospital. Now with the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade, the equivalent to the rank of First Lieutenant in the other military branches, Florine reported for active duty in Portsmouth on March 29, 1944.
Records reflect that she was paid $34.88 for travel from her Coeburn home to Portsmouth, reimbursement at the rate of $0.08 per mile. That distance of 438 miles was lightyears away from Wise County, Virginia for this young woman, but it was just the beginning.
Thereafter, on October 17, 1944, Lt. Brooks received orders to proceed to the Naval Dispensary at Atlanta, Georgia where she served until receiving orders on August 28, 1945 to report to the Naval Air Station in Alameda, California. At that location, on December 10, 1944, the Navy had previously established their first “School of Air Evacuation”.
Her training there was intense, including lectures and demonstrations of survival training, air evacuation techniques, advanced first aid and the transport of patients in both pressurized and non-pressurized aircraft. She was exposed to basic aeronautical functions of aircraft and their cockpit instrumentation, as well as spending significant training time in flight simulators and high-pressure air chambers.
This was to teach the flight nurse to recognize the effects of high-altitude hypoxia on her patient. However, during one of those sessions, Florine suffered a right ear drum rupture. That injury would ultimately turn into one of those unfortunate/fortunate incidents.
Like many residents of the Appalachian Mountain communities of that time, Naval Lt. Brooks had never learned to swim. This presented a serious hurdle, as the Flight Nurse candidates were required to pass a rigorous physical training program, which included eighteen hours of swimming. That part of the training required the nurse to be able to swim for a mile, including under or through burning water, and to be able to tow a victim for forty yards in ten minutes.
By outwitting the schedule, Lt. Brooks would report to Sick Bay for medical attention to her ruptured ear drum just before the end of the class active swimming event sessions. Upon return, she would splash water on her face and hair and dishevel her blouse so that it appeared she was getting dressed, having just climbed out of the water.
This ruse worked and on September 24, 1945, she was designated a Naval Flight Nurse, authorized to wear the coveted Naval Flight Nurse Wings breast insignia. With her new certification, she received orders to proceed to Naval Air Transport in Honolulu, Hawaii.
A wounded transport squadron had been formed from that location in March 1945, based on Guam. The Guam operation was pivotal to the American war effort in the Pacific, particularly following the bloody battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. This operation was responsible for transporting the wounded and delivering badly needed units of whole blood and other such supplies. The job of the Flight Nurse was hard and stressful, yet extraordinarily valuable.
Florine was popular among the women and men with whom she served, so it is no surprise that after two years and one month of service, upon leaving the Navy, she married a young Naval flight officer. After the war, they moved to California, where they added two more to their family, a son and a daughter.
In 1963, Florine and her two children moved back to Southwest Virginia. In a short time, she was nursing supervisor at the Appalachian Regional Hospital in Wise where she continued until her retirement. Her days at ARH were happy ones, but she was always Navy in her heart.
She was always Southwest Virginia in her heart, as well. She loved to share the story of the time when she and a couple of friends got lost in Norfolk and were soon being frightened by the unwanted attention of a group of unknown sailors following them.
Even though the nurses outranked them, they were not sure how to handle the delicate situation. However, the rowdies “scattered like cockroaches” when Florine and the others heard the voice of Lieutenant Commander Gothard Bays, one of her high school beaus and who was working that night as Norfolk Shore Patrol, saying “Good evening, Lieutenant Brooks. May I have the pleasure of escorting you and your companions to your residence this evening?” All at once, the comfort of home was not so far away.
From Navy parents to Navy son to Navy granddaughter, three generations of this family have served in uniform. Southwest Virginia’s long, proud tradition of military service continues to this day.
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