• Battle of Corregidor 1942

Date of birth:

July 16th, 1910 (Harmony-Filmore County/Minnesota, United States)

Date of death:

January 15th, 1988 (Hennepin County/Minnesota, United States)

Nationality:

American (1776 - present, Republic)

Hortense E. McKay was born on a farm, northeast of Harmony, Minnesota on July 16th, 1910 as the daughter to George and Lydia (Hahn) McKay. Later the family moved to Brainerd, Minnesota. She graduated at Brainerd High School and attended St. Cloud Teacher's College and University of Minnesota School of Nursing in 1933. She started out as a teacher and workerd in the Deerwood TB Sanitarium. For a short period she did public health work at Louisville, Kentucky and later was transferred to Galveston, Texas. In 1939, she entered the U.S. Army Nurse Corps at Fort Benning.

She was sent to the Philippines where she arrived at USAT Grant, Manilla on February 20th, 1941. She was stationed at Fort Stotsenburg, next to Clark Field. Evacuated to Corregidor on December 24th, she cared for wounded in the Malinta railroad tunnel hospital. Early in 1942 she transferred to the primitive Hospital 2 at Bataan. Later she again returned to the Malinta Tunnel Hospital and was evacuated on May 3rd, 1942.
McKay was evacuated on board the submarine U.S.S. Spearfish from the Philippines to Australia and worked the following three years in New Guinea, Leyte and the Philippines.

In 1945, Hortense E. McKay helped to reorganize the Army Nurse Corps and graduated from the University of Minnesota in June 1949.
Later she became director of the department of nursing at the Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas in 1953 and until May 1956 as Chief Nurse in Orleans, France, Chief Nurse at the Fort Eustis VA. Army Hospital until May 1957 and as assistant chief of nursing at Fort Ord, California until her retirement in June 1960.

Hortense Eleanor McKay died at the University of Minnesota Hospital on January 15th, 1988.

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• Photo 1: Nichole McKay
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  - Brainerd’s Hortense McKay to receive Congressional Gold Medal Saturday, March 25 - Brainerd Dispatch