Sgriccia was 18 when she signed up to be an Air Corps nurse
PHOTO PROVIDED
This was 2nd Lt. Marie Sgriccia at age 20, when she graduated from nursing school at Indiana Hospital in Indiana, Pa. in 1943. She became an Army Air Corps nurse.
In 1939, the year Marie Sgriccia graduated from high school, the 17-year-old had to wait a year before attending college to become a registered nurse, because they wouldn’t take her until she was at least 18.
“In those days, there wasn’t very much a girl could do if she wanted a job. She could be a teacher, be a secretary or go into nursing,” the 92-year-old Punta Gorda resident recalled with a smile. “I got started in nursing in 1940, before the war. They didn’t think nursing was a good thing for a girl to go into. But then World War II started and then it was a different story.