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    "localId": "2661248",
    "label": "Clarke, Mary A.",
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    "contentType": "document",
    "title": "Clarke, Mary A.",
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    "coverageEndDate": {
        "day": 9,
        "logicalDate": "1944-02-09",
        "month": 2,
        "year": 1944
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        "logicalDate": "1911-03-08",
        "month": 3,
        "year": 1911
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{
    "seq": 24,
    "pageIndex": 0,
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    "ocrText": "Return to miss Rebrea\n(The following article appeared in the \"Philadelphia Record\" - 7/31/1941)\nM\nWomen in Defense\nar\nAT 86, MISS CLARKE WANTS TO VOLUNTEER AGAIN\nShe Helped Form Red Cross Corps (By Jeannette McLaughlin)\n\"How gladly would I say 'I wish to join' if I had new arms and hands, legs and feet,\"\nwrote Miss Mary A. Clarke in response to the Red Cross call for Second Reserve Nurses to\ntake the 'brush-up course' preparatory to teaching civilian classes in First Aid.\nMiss Clarke is Second Reserve because she's over 40 - 86 in fact. But back in 1910\nshe was second in command in the enrollment of the first Red Cross Nurses for the service\nwhich now numbers 9,650. As assistant to Miss Jane A. Delano, who organized the service\nin World War I, she sent out the first letters to nursing schools asking for volunteers -\n\"and they volunteered like wild-fire.\"\nEach volunteer was investigated - letters from the superintendent of her nursing\nschool and the president of her alumnae association - the same procedure that the Red\nCross uses now in enrolling new nurses. Miss Clarke was so busy enrolling new members\nthat she didn't get around to joining herself until No. 1,224. When she returned to\nPhiladelphia in February, 1912, the nursing service had 3000 members.\nTaught First Aid\nIn Philadelphia, Miss Clarke taught the first First Aid class to the Girls' Friendly\nSociety of the Free Church of St. John in Kensington. Then, during the war years, she\nhad other classes in various churches, at Red Cross House, in the Ogontz and Walnut\nLane schools.\nIn 1918 she took a position with the Board of Health in the Child Hygiene department.\nBesides making complicated maternity mortallity reports, Miss Clarke took over 950 polimyeli-\ntis cases, endeavoring to secure care and hospitalization for them.\nAlthough she left the department in 1931, she is trying very hard to get in touch\nwith Benny Andrioli, who used to live near 2427 Master St., for a little girl, Bertha Ossin,\nwho hasn't walked for years, is in New York taking a new cure, and has showed so much im-\nprovement that she will walk in three months if all goes well. Bertha wants Benny to\nknow about the new cure, and Miss Clarke has tried every way to reach him. Miss Clarke\nlives now at Christ Church Hospital - from the old English meaning 'hospitality, 49th\nnear Belmont ave.\nQuaker Stock\nAlthough she comes of Quaker Stock - William Penn's printer was her original ancestor\nin this country - and the family lived for years on the original grant near Princeton,\nN.J., Miss Clarke came to Philadelphia when she was four years old. When both parents\ndied, she left at 14 to go to La Crosse, Wis. to live with a brother. She came East\nagain to enter Bellevue Hospital in New York for nursing only to escape a persistent\nsuitor who was pressing an estate of a million and a half dollars upon her!\na"
}