Mary G. Phillips

Mary Genevieve Phillips (December 2, 1903 –January 30, 1980) was the eighth superintendent of the United States Army Nurse Corps. She was the first Chief of the Army Nurse Corps to compete the statutory four-year appointment as Chief of the Corps and the first graduate of the Army School of Nursing to serve as Chief. Her overseas assignments included service in the Philippines and the Pacific. During World War II, she became Director, Nursing Services, Armed Forces of the Western Pacific. Under her tenure as Chief, the ANC which was exempted from the Army-wide requirement that all commissioned officers hold or achieve baccalaureate degrees, set the goal for its officer to complete an accredited program leading to an undergraduate degree, preferably in nursing. She presided over the Corps during the first year of the Korean War. She received the Legion of Merit among her awards and honors.

Phillips was born on December 2, 1903, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. After attending and graduating from Medford Area Senior High School, and then University of Wisconsin–Madison, to become a teacher, she worked as a clerk and teacher for four years in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, Lime Ridge, Wisconsin and Medford, Wisconsin. The year she left, 1926, Phillips entered the Army School of Nursing, where she graduated three years later and joined the United States Army Nurse Corps. Later, in 1935 she would get a Bachelor of Science from Teachers College, Columbia University. In the time before Phillips earned her degree, she worked at the Army School of Nursing, and later Walter Reed General Hospital, Fort Slocum and Fort Jay. On January 30, 1980, she suffered a stroke and died.