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Betty Berry Godin Collection

 Collection
Identifier: WV 0096

Content Description

19 June 1999 oral history transcript; Newspaper article photocopies: San Diego Union Tribune article from December, 1995 titled about her service as a WWII Army Air Force Evacuation Nurse; November 1995 titled "Flight nurses saved 40,000 in remote World War II theater" and The Bomber Newspaper from Bowman Field, KY, May 1943 article on Betty's Air Nurse Evacuation School Graduation with a copy of photograph of the graduating class ; copy of Book cover "No Time for Fear: Voices of American Military Nurses in World War by Diane Burke Fessler; copy of "The Story of Air Evacuation 1942-1989"; various photographs of Betty during her services with the 803rd Air Evacuation Squadron in Chabua, India, 1943-1944; Dha (national sword of Burma)with a single edged- wide blade, with wooden scabbard and attached cane cord.

Dates

  • circa 1943-1999

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright is retained by the creators of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information. Please see our Sensitive Materials Statement.

Biographical / Historical

Elizabeth "Betty" Berry Godin (1919-2006) of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, served as a United States Army Air Forces (AAF) evacuation nurse from 1943 until January 1948.

Betty Berry Godin was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. She graduated from high school in 1937 and did nursing training at West Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh until 1940. She then worked in obstetrics at Women’s McGee Hospital in Pittsburgh until joining the Army Air Evacuation Nurses in spring 1943."

Godin attended the School of Air Evacuation at Bowman Field in Louisville, Kentucky, and graduated two months later as a member of the 349th Air Evacuation Group. She was then sent briefly to Camp McCall, North Carolina, and then Camp Anza, California, for overseas debarkation.

In summer 1943, she sailed on the George Washington, stopping briefly in Hobart, Australia, before going to Bombay, India. From Bombay, a British ship took her to Calcutta, India, and then Godin was flown to the staging area of the 803rd Air Evacuation Squadron in Chabua, India, in the Assam province. She remained there over a year, ferrying soldiers to hospitals, until returning stateside at the end of 1944.

From the Miami Beach Replacement Training Center, Godin was next assigned to the orthopedic ward at Buckley Field in Denver, Colorado, where she met her future husband. She later moved to Lowry Field, also in Denver, when Buckley closed.

After V-J Day, she volunteered to return to flying status and was sent to Hickam Field in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she flew all over the Pacific. In 1947, she flew to San Francisco, California, to marry Gene Godin, then returned to her duties in Hawaii, while her husband worked in Denver and later Korea and Japan.

Godin left the military in January 1948 and moved to Japan to be near her husband. The Godins had many residences as a result of Gene Godin's twenty-one year career with the Medical Service Corps of the United States Air Force, including Tucson, Arizona; Madrid, Spain; Santa Barbara, California; and Westover, Massachusetts. He left the military in 1964 and went to work at a hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts, before the Godins retired to Florida. They later settled in Etowah, North Carolina. Godin died in November 2006.

Extent

3.21 Linear Feet (4 folders, textile box, artifact box )

Language of Materials

English

Metadata Rights Declarations

  • License: This record is made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Creative Commons license.

Condition Description

The condition is fair.

Offensive Language Statement

The UNC Greensboro University Libraries collects, preserves, and makes accessible unique and historical materials for learning and research. The nature of historical materials is such that some material may represent positions, norms, and values that are offensive and objectionable. These materials represent the opinions and actions of their creators. By providing access to these records in our reading room and through our digital collections, we recognize that archives and rare books can play a vital role in holding those creators accountable and in helping us learn from the past.

Our finding aids and other collection descriptions may occasionally re-use language provided by creators or former holders of the materials, but we strive to place outdated or offensive terminology in context. That said, we recognize that we may not always make the right decision and welcome feedback from all sources so we can learn and adjust our practices. Please contact us at scua@uncg.edu if you encounter problematic language in our finding aids or other collection description. We will review the language and, as appropriate, update it in a way that balances preservation of the original context with our ongoing commitment to describing materials with respectful and inclusive language.

Processing Information

Processed by Matthew McCarthy.

Title
Betty Berry Godin Collection
Status
In Progress
Author
Matthew McCarthy
Date
2022 June
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
eng

Repository Details

Part of the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives Repository

Contact:
P.O. Box 26170
320 College Ave.
Greensboro NC 27402-6170 US
336-334-5246