Elsie F. Ulrich Szecsy

September 28, 1925 - June 19, 2005

Elsie Ulrich learned of the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps while a student at Pleasantville High School in Westchester County, New York. She and her sister lived with an aunt, who took care of them after their previous caregiver left employment by their father. Her mother died in childbirth when she was 8, and in those days a man was ill-equipped to care for two daughters. Elsie's childhood was difficult, and she received little encouragement to pursue her dreams.

Elsie saw the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps as both a way to serve her country as was a means to improve her prospects as an emancipated adult at a time when achieving this status was difficult for women. She started Nursing School in 1943 and graduated in 1946. Her favorite specialties were surgical and psychiatric nursing. She continued working in the hospital where she trained until she married. When she and her husband moved to Queens, NY, for her husband's work as an industrial nurse with an airline, she continued her work in nursing at Queens General Hospital. When they moved to suburban Long Island and started a family, Elsie resigned her hospital nursing position to pursue a career as homemaker, caregiver, and encourager to her two children in reaching for a better life for themselves. Through her experience with the USCNC, Elsie had the knowledge to equip her children to work hard and do well in school so that they would be prepared for college.