1LT, US Army, Kathleen “Katy” Laumer Dexter

Visiting Nurses Association in 1944 and graduated from the University of Wisconsin School of Nursing on January 9, 1945, as a registered nurse. ^{1, 2, 3, 4} In June of 1945 she was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps and in September of that year was stationed in the Philippines. ¹ Returning to the US in the fall of 1946, she was honorably discharged from the Army. ¹ After the war, she then worked as a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital in Wausau and Tomah Veteran’s Hospital and attended a semester at Catholic University in Washington DC. ^{1, 5} On May 1st, 1948, she married George Dexter, an Army officer she had met in the Philippines. ^{1, 6}

Laumer Dexter was born in Wausau, Wisconsin to Edward and Malinda Laumer. 1, 7 She attended Wasau High School and participated in girls’ basketball, the glee club, choir, the school newspaper, the German Club, and was in the senior class play. ⁸ She was also a competitive swimmer. ⁹ Laumer Dexter’s husband stayed in the Army, and together they traveled to many stations within the United States, including Fort Benning, Georgia; the Washington DC area; Fort Leavenworth Kansas; New Orleans, Louisiana; West Point New York; Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; and Austin, Texas. ¹ During these years, she raised eight children and while in Austin, she went back to school to earn her Bachelor of Science in nursing. ¹

 In 1976, the family moved to Albuquerque where Laumer worked for the Albuquerque Visiting Nurses Service for eight years, attending to homebound patients primarily in the North Valley. ¹