E. Ann Hoefly

Ethel Ann Hoefly was an American nurse who rose to lead the United States Air Force Nurse Corps. Born in 1919 in Queens, New York, she graduated from the Methodist Hospital School of Nursing in Brooklyn in 1943 and entered the Army Nurse Corps in 1944, serving with a general hospital unit in the European Theater. After the war she worked in civilian hospitals, studied anaesthesia and rejoined the armed forces in 1949 as part of the newly formed Air Force. She specialised in neuropsychiatry, became a flight nurse and taught psychiatry at the Medical Field Service School. She was appointed chief of the Air Force Nurse Corps in 1968, responsible for some 180 medical facilities, and was promoted to brigadier general on 1 July 1972. She received the Legion of Merit, and an annual flight nursing award bears her name. She died in 2003.