U.S. Navy's First Female Admiral Passes Away

[jpak]

Source: maritime-executive.com

Retired Rear Adm. Alene B. Duerk, the Navy's first female admiral, passed away July 21, 2018. She was 98 years old.

"It took 197 years and a forward-looking Chief of Naval Operations, Elmo Zumwalt, to break with tradition before Alene Duerk became the first woman admiral in the U.S. Navy," said Naval History and Heritage Command director Sam Cox. "But the credit goes to Duerk. From the crucible of caring for wounded Sailors, Marines and prisoners of war during World War II in the Pacific, she blazed a trail of stellar performance in tough jobs, serving as an inspiration for an ever increasing number of women officers who have followed her path."

Born in Defiance, Ohio, on March 29, 1920, she received nursing training at the Toledo [Ohio] Hospital School of Nursing, from which she earned her diploma in 1941. From there, Duerk entered the U.S. Naval Reserve and was appointed an ensign in the Nurse Corps.

"Alene Duerk was a strong and dedicated trail blazer who embodied the very principles that continue to guide Navy Medicine today," commented Vice Adm. Forrest Faison, Navy surgeon general, upon learning of her passing. "She will forever be remembered as a servant leader who provided the best care to those who defended our nation, honoring the uniform we wear and the privilege of leadership."

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Read more: https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/u-s-navy-s-first-female-admiral-passes-away#gs.CCxtIgM

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[Docreed2003]

1. Fair winds and following seas!

[Historic NY]

5. .

[Old Vet]

2. She would of had to do everything TWICE as good as the men to make admiral...

[BumRushDaShow]

3. R.I.P.

and thank you for your service.

[sarge43]

4. Peaceful passage, ma'am. Duty done.

[irisblue]

6. She took care of POWS after the surrender

Snip...."
sea service aboard the Navy hospital ship USS Benevolence in 1945. While anchored off the coast of Eniwetok, Duerk and the crew of the Benevolence would attend to the sick and wounded being brought back from the Third Fleet's operations against Japan.

Upon cessation of hostilities on Sept. 2, 1945, Duerk and the Benevolence crew took on the task of repatriating liberated Allied prisoners of war..."

[yuiyoshida]

7. US NAVY

[Aristus]

8. Thank you, Admiral.

[backtoblue]

9. Thank you Admiral

[mahatmakanejeeves]

10. I had thought that Grace Hopper was the first.

Shows you how much I know. She's been dead for quite some time.

Grace Hopper

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (née Murray; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first compiler related tools. She popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.

Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was rejected because she was 34 years old. She instead joined the Navy Reserves. Hopper began her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark I team led by Howard H. Aiken. In 1949, she joined the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation and was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC I computer. At Eckert–Mauchly she began developing the compiler. She believed that a programming language based on English was possible. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers. By 1952, Hopper had finished her program linker (originally called a compiler), which was written for the A-0 System.

In 1954, Eckert–Mauchly chose Hopper to lead their department for automatic programming, and she led the release of some of the first compiled languages like FLOW-MATIC. In 1959, she participated in the CODASYL consortium, which consulted Hopper to guide them in creating a machine-independent programming language. This led to the COBOL language, which was inspired by her idea of a language being based on English words. In 1966, she retired from the Naval Reserve, but in 1967, the Navy recalled her to active duty. She retired from the Navy in 1986 and found work as a consultant for the Digital Equipment Corporation, sharing her computing experiences.

Owing to her accomplishments and her naval rank, she was sometimes referred to as "Amazing Grace". The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC. During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. A college at Yale University was renamed in her honor. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Technology. On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

[Girard442]

12. Me too.

I had the honor of meeting (then) Commodore Hopper twice. I’m not the type to be star struck, but for her I made an exception.

[Crash2Parties]

14. She was promoted to Rear Admiral in 1985

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ghopper.htm

[maxrandb]

15. Duerk was selected for Flag Rank in 1972

[Tactical Peek]

11. Slow hand salute

[efhmc]

13. Thanks and blessings on this wonderful person. nt