ABSTRACT
ZELLER, VERINA (1912-2007) The fi rst commander of the postwar Air Force Nurse Corps, Verina Zeller, demonstrated true executive ability in the creation and implementation of a new military corps.
She was born in rural Kansas, and, after graduation from Mount St. Scholastica Academy in Atchison and nurse’s training at St. Francis Hospital in Topeka, began her career as a Red Cross nurse in 1934. Western Kansans were suffering from “dust pneumonia,” a respiratory disease called by the massive air pollution of the era’s “dust bowl” in the drought-stricken Midwest. Her aunt chaired the local Red Cross, and, as Zeller later told the Topeka Capital-Journal, her aunt “didn’t ask me if I wanted to go. She just said ‘you will go.’”
