Wednesday, March 30, 2022

The Gray Ladies of the American Red Cross

March is Women’s History Month. Currently at the History Center we have a display about the American Red Cross, including photos and memorabilia from our collection. The volunteers depicted are all Bossier Parish women.

The American Red Cross (ARC) was founded by a woman, Clara Barton, in 1881. Ms. Barton’s American Red Cross nurses went to foreign war fronts or worked domestically as public health and blood drive nurses. Non-nursing roles to assist soldiers in maintaining sound body and mind were soon found and filled by the Red Cross, too. The Red Cross Hospital and Recreation Corps began in 1918 during WWI at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. Soldiers gave the volunteers the affectionate nickname, “the gray ladies,” due to their gray uniform dresses. The name stuck, although the service did not become officially known as the Gray Lady Service until after World War II.

The "Gray Ladies" for many years provided services of a non-medical nature to sick, injured, and disabled patients, including thousands of wounded American servicemen. During World War I, World War II and the Korean War, the Gray Ladies wrote letters and read to wounded soldiers, helped them get involved in crafts and other activities to alleviate the isolation and boredom of a hospital stay. They also fulfilled this need in veteran and some civilian hospitals.

The first hospital in the Shreveport area to have a Gray Ladies service was the Pines Road Sanitarium in 1938. Soon the Veteran’s hospital at Fort Humbug (later called the Overton Brooks V.A. Medical Center) gained a large cadre of Gray Ladies and the base hospital at Barksdale Air Force Base also had Gray Ladies within its Barksdale ARC chapter. In fact, it relied heavily on Red Cross volunteers.

At a party for Barksdale Red Cross volunteers to honor retiring and newly-arriving field directors in 1958, Barksdale’s volunteer services chairman, Mrs. D. P. Wood, requested that potential volunteers contact the base Red Cross office ASAP. She made her case by passing along a statement from Col. W.D. Preston, commander of the base hospital, that “there is a great need for many more who can work as volunteer registered nurses, nurses’ aides, Gray Ladies or staff aides, to help expedite a competent medical program for dependents and service personnel.” The Well Baby Clinic, for example, “is completely staffed by volunteers and more are needed to keep this important service going as it should.”


A Gray Lady went through several hours of training and a probationary period to “earn her cap” in a special candlelit ceremony at the base chapel with military and Red Cross dignitaries in attendance. Her cap would be presented by the base’s own Gray Lady chairman or co-chairman. An example of one of the women in these professional-level, volunteer positions was Mrs. Mildred Buckingham, an officer’s wife who was chairman of the Gray Ladies of the Barksdale Chapter of the American Red Cross. The Barksdale Observer reported in 1959 that, much to the chagrin of her teen and preteen children, Mrs. Buckingham kept her home telephone line tied up with the work of coordinating the schedules, duties and needs of the Gray Ladies of Barksdale. Like many of the women in base volunteer leadership positions, she had volunteered many hours herself, as a PTA officer, in welcoming other Air Force families through base Family Services, and of course, serving as a Gray Lady herself.

The Gray Ladies program ended in the 1960s when Red Cross programs became more streamlined. If you have any information, stories or photos about the Gray Ladies at Barksdale or other Bossier Parish Red Cross volunteers, we would love to see them or to copy them, with permission, to add to the History Center’s research collection. Please come to the History Center to see our exhibit on the American Red Cross at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA. We are open M-Th 10-8, Fri 10-6, and Sat 10-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

Photo: Mrs. Mildred Buckingham, Chairmanof the Gray Ladies of the Barksdale Chapter of the American Red Cross, 1959

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, 

Article by: Pam Carlisle

No comments:

Post a Comment