Letter from Virginia B. Elliman to John C. Buck

am folder Archives March 5, 1957 Mr. John C. Buck Pattison Pontiac Co., Inc. 2120 Canal Street New Orleans 19, La. Dear Mr. Buck: We have considerable information concerning Mrs. William C. Stanfield, Jr., who was Agnes Hannah vonKurowsky when she sailed for Milan, Italy as a Red Cross nurse in June of 1918. She served there until she returned to the United States on the SS Re d'Italia, July 9, 1919. Again in 1920 she served abroad with the Red Cross Commission to Roumania until November 9, 1921 when she returned to the United States on the New Amsterdam. On July 4, 1926 she sailed for Haiti on the SS Ancon where she was assigned by the Red Cross to work in a school of nursing organized by the medical corps of the United States Navy in connection with the City General Hospital in Port-au-Prince. While in Hai ti Miss Kurowsky married Mr. Howard Preston Carner in November of 1928. After returning to the states she obtained a divorce from Mr. Carner, sometime in 1931. According to information received from her during the following years she remarried in 1934 to William C. Stanfield, Jr. We have had no contact with Mrs. Stanfield since 1944. At that time she gave as her address, 80 East Main Street, Middletown, Orange County, New York. You may be interested to know that throughout her service with the Red Cross she held some very important and often difficult positions. Her work was of outstanding quality and we are proud to count her among our pioneer staff. It was said of her by one of her supervisors during those early days -- "She is an unusually earnest, conscientious worker, lovable to an extraordinary degree, and generous almost to a fault of time and effort. She possesses an exceptionally fine disposition, and is a patient teacher." I hope this information is helpful to you, and if there is anything specific you need for your purposes we will try to provide it for you. If you wish to read about the activities of Red Cross nurses during 1914-1918 you may be able to borrow from a local hospital the History of American Red Cross Nursing, published by the Macmillan Company. No doubt the Charity Hospital has a copy. Sincerely yours, Virginia B. Elliman, Director VBE:vm Disaster Nursing and Nurse Enrollment cc-area