LCDR USN (Ret) Eunice Barrow is believed to be our oldest member and was also a CC/MOA “plank-holder” when our Chapter was chartered on 21 November 1974.
She just recently celebrated her 94th birthday. Eunice was born on 27 April 1914 at Cedar Island, NC and graduated from Atlantic High School. She received her nurse’s training at Winston-Salem’s City Hospital School of Nursing, graduating in 1937. She joined the Navy Nurse Corps on 15 August 1938. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Eunice was stationed at NAS Pensacola, FL. Shortly thereafter, she was sent to Quonset Point, RI and later Oakland, CA for further training. Eunice served aboard the naval hospital ship USS
Relief (AH-1) from 1943-45 caring for wounded soldiers, sailors and Marines. She remembers making several Trans-Pacific voyages between San Francisco and the Central and Western Pacific during those years. In the early days of World War II, women held what were called “relative ranks.” The first grade she was appointed to was Lieutenant Junior Grade. Eunice was twice promoted to Lieutenant Commander, first as a temporary wartime promotion, and later permanently.After World War II, Eunice served the next 14 years at naval hospitals and health clinics at Naval Station Norfolk, NAS Norfolk, the naval shipyard in Hawaii, NAS Pensacola, Naval Hospital Memphis, Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow, CA, Naval Station San Diego and again at Memphis. She was married in 1948.
Eunice retired from the Navy at Naval Hospital Memphis in 1959
after completing 21 years of service. She and her husband moved to Cotton Plank,
AR after her retirement to be near his family. Seven weeks after her
ret
irement,
her husband passed away suddenly from a heart attack, and so with no ties to
Arkansas, Eunice decided to return home to Carteret County to be near her own
family. Her parents urged her to take a job with the small hospital in
Lowland, but she thought the staff there was “unprofessional” so she moved to
New Bern and took a position at the old St. Luke’s Hospital. When Craven
County Hospital opened in 1963, she transferred there serving as chief
gynecology nurse and chief post partum nurse until retirement in 1978.
Eunice owned her own home on Kimberly Road in the Forest Hills neighborhood of New Bern until moving to The Courtyards at Berne Village in 2005. Her main hobby since retirement is traveling in the USA and she has visited every state except Alaska.
Chapter Secretary and News Letter Editor Maj. W. (Bill) S. Culler, USMC (Ret) interviewed LCDR USN (Ret) Eunice Barrow and wrote this story.