SAN ANTONIO - The month of March is Women's History Month and for weeks we've been bringing you stories of local women who made contributions and helped shape our culture into what we know it as today.
- March is Women's History Month
- Dr. Eleanor Bjoring was a pioneering nurse and educator
- Served in the Air Force during the Korean War
We caught up with an Air Force veteran who's living at the Army Residence Community in San Antonio. She never let being a woman get in the way of her success.
"Whenever a door opened up, I walked through it very boldly," said Dr. Eleanor Bjoring.
Growing up in a military family, service came naturally for 90-year-old Bjoring. However, it didn’t start the way she envisioned.
"I got a scholarship to some dumb girls school that only offered arts degrees," she said.
Bjoring had big dreams of becoming an engineer and was even the only female accepted to Penn State’s engineering school. By this time it was the 1940s and her dad had other ideas for her life's journey.
She shared her photo album with us and the memories came rushing back. Her father served in the military during World War 1.
"Dad said if he had a hundred daughters, they'd all have to be nurses first," she said.
Turns out later down the line, Dad was onto something. She could take that degree anywhere - and she did.
"I applied to Penn, Johns Hopkins, and Massachusetts General Hospital," Bjoring said.
She was accepted into all of them, and decided on Penn.
"I tested every rule in the book. We had stupid rules. We had a notebook full of these and one of them was 'a gentleman caller after the hour of 6 had to wear a coat and tie,'" she said.
After school she became a YMCA nurse and then in 1952 she was recruited to be a disaster relief nurse during the polio epidemic.
"I never felt that being a woman was an impediment to my progress. Whenever I felt I wanted to needed to do something, I did it," she said.
After helping polio patients, she wanted her service to continue so she joined the Air Force and served as a nurse during the Korean War.
"If we had an emergency that we had to get evaced, my commanding officer asked me to be the nurse to go with the patients, so I did that numerous times. Both of my husbands were in the Air Force and two of my sons were in the Air Force. I had four sons and I only have one left," she said.
Through a life of love and loss, Bjoring kept pushing.
Over time, she earned her Ph.D, taught at UT for 19 years, and directed Penn State's graduate program in nursing until 1996.
"I consider myself very lucky, I really do. If I were told I was going to die next week, I would be shocked of course, but it doesn't matter because I've had such an incredible life and that's what life is about," she said.