From left to right: Gray and Betsy Hutchison during World War II; Betsy Hutchison at the Frankie Lemmon School in 2019
LIFE OF SERVICE Veteran and gardener Betsy Hutchison by KATHERINE POOLE photography by S.P. MURRAY
B
etsy Hutchison waves goodbye from the balcony of her third floor apartment inside her retirement community in Five Points. Waving back, her granddaughter Anne Wein says that Hutchison always comes out on the balcony to see her visitors off safely—at 99, she’s still living her life in service to others. Hutchison was born Betsy Dana in 1920, the second of six children, and was raised on a farm in Newport, Ohio. She didn’t envision a life on the farm for herself—she wanted to care for people. Hutchison entered nursing school at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and the Japanese bombed
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Pearl Harbor during her second year of training. She felt the call to serve and volunteered for the Army when she graduated, commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant. With a shortage of American nurses at the start of World War II, Hutchison was quickly deployed, and served as a private duty nurse at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, which was converted into a hospital during the war. Hutchison also cared for Italian prisoners of war at Camp Atterbury in Indiana, and in 1943, she was assigned to the 49th Field Hospital in Torquay, England, a seaside town across the English Channel from Normandy, France. Hutchison was in Torquay on D-Day, and the memory still evokes strong emotions for her. “We
“Well, that’s the secret. I believe you have to stay involved. That is what I’ve done.”
courtesy Betsy Hutchison (HISTORIC IMAGE)
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