Margaret Harper

Colonel Margaret Harper (1911 to 2000) was an American Army nurse who served as the eleventh chief of the United States Army Nurse Corps from 1959 to 1963. Born in Potomac, Illinois, she graduated from the Evanston General Hospital School of Nursing in 1934 and was commissioned in April 1941 at the hospital at Fort Lewis, Washington. During the Second World War she served overseas in Australia, New Guinea and Europe, and she also worked as a superintendent of nurses at hospitals in Chicago. After the war she studied at Teachers College, Columbia University, earning a bachelor's degree in nursing education and in 1953 a master's degree in nursing service administration. She became assistant chief of the Corps in 1955. As chief she led an intensive recruiting program in 1963, Operation Nightingale, to meet a serious nursing shortage as military operations in Southeast Asia were expected to grow. She received the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal and the Army Commendation Medal and died in San Antonio, Texas.