2LT, US Army Piedad Esquivel

Piedad Esquivel joined the Army Nurse Corps in March of 1945. ¹

She was awarded the World War II Victory Medal and was honorably discharged in January 1947. ^{1, 2}

Esquivel was born in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico. She enrolled in the Regina School of Nursing in Albuquerque in 1941 and graduated in 1944. ³ Esquivel completed advanced work in nursing from the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, graduating in 1949. ⁴ In the 1950s, she worked at the Public Health Service Office in Albuquerque and in public and Native Health Services in California, Arizona, and Montana. In 1955, while transporting a sick child to the Native Service Hospital at Tanana, Alaska, the plane she was on crashed on the frozen Yukon River. ⁵ The pilot and two passengers were thrown from the plane, but all three survived. She spoke of the incident, “When I thought of my pain, I just looked over at the wrecked plane, completely demolished, and realized how lucky I was.” ⁶ Esquivel later became director of public health nursing of Humboldt County in California and was supervising nurse for San Joaquin Public Health Department in Stockton. ⁷ In the 1960s, she was an assistant professor of public health nursing at the University of San Francisco School of Nursing. ⁸ There, she was the director of a federally funded project aimed at improving the public health nursing curriculum. In 1969, she became the director of public health nursing for Mendocino County in California. ⁵