Mabel Isabel Wilcox

Mabel Isabel Wilcox was a pioneering nurse on the island of Kauai, born there on 4 November 1882 to a family of Hawaiian mission descendants and plantation managers. Her parents discouraged a nursing career, but she persisted and received her nursing degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1911, the first Hawaii resident to graduate from the school according to Johns Hopkins. After working with the Buffalo Red Cross war relief organization she returned to Kauai in 1915 as an employee of the Territorial Board of Health, where she set up the island's first public nursing services and helped raise funds and secure land for the Samuel Mahelona Memorial Hospital at Kapaa. During the First World War she served as head nurse over fifteen other nurses at the Children's Hospital in Le Havre, which cared for refugee Belgian children, and was decorated by Queen Elisabeth of Belgium and by the Mayor of Le Havre. Later she served as trustee and treasurer of the hospital and as a juvenile court probation officer, and she died at home on Kauai on 28 December 1978.