Antonia Dzwonczyk Karkut

 

October 3, 1924 – March 11, 2002

  

 

Antonia Dzwonczyk after graduating from Shelton High School in 1942, worked one year in the defense industry inspecting aircraft instrument pivots. Later, she worked as an airplane mechanic fitting and putting wings on a US Navy fighter plane the Corsair F4U. In 1944, she entered the Grace-New Haven Training School for Nurses and then joined the US Nurse Cadet Corps during World War II during the polio epidemic. Her three-year nursing course was rigorous with little free time. Because the war ended, she was not required to go into the service even though she was still interested in joining the Army. A dear friend whom she was planning to enter the service with changed her mind, so she too changed her plans. Antonia loved the military connection and the idea of a “good education for life” that the Cadet Nurse Corps represented. Their dreams of becoming something became reality and provided unprecedented opportunities for women entering the workforce. For the first time we received training, textbooks, and smart looking uniforms. In 1947, Antonia graduated from nursing school in New Haven, CT. Antonia worked at Yale-New Haven Hospital, Peter Bent Brigham and New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston, and the US Public Health Service Hospital in Staten Island, NY. Also, she worked as a volunteer school nurse at the Subic Bay, PI-Naval Base, a volunteer nurse at Redwood Jr. High School, Napa, CA; a Psychiatric Nurse at Napa State Hospital, CA, and ending in 1979, with a nurse’s registry for convalescent hospitals taking care of the elderly.

 

Our mother’s most influential moments were working with Florence Blake, author of Essentials of Pediatrics, which led her to specialize in pediatric nursing for the last six months of her nursing education. Another gratifying moment was becoming a surgical nurse under the supervision of Lillian Sholtis, one of the authors of the Manual for Surgical Nursing.