Daphine Doster Mastroianni Collection

Only a part of this collection has been digitized.

16 February 1999 oral history transcript; Newspaper Clippings; copies of correspondence, 1942-1945; book "L.O.D. Yes: An Odyssey of the Army's 18th General Hospital", 1947; 1948 Military Papers; Newsletters; Programs and Miscellany; Photographs depicting basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina; and her service as a surgical nurse in the Army Nurse Corps in New Zealand, Fiji and India,and Mastroianni's return to the states after the war. Mastroianni wrote detailed descriptions on the back of many of the photographs; She had sent those to her future husband; Joe Mastroianni, a Red Cross worker she had met in Fiji; audiocassettes and correspondence with and about an author doing research for a proposed book about women in WWII military service, 1983-1987; 15 page "A Study of a Selected Group of Veterans Overseas with Social References to Attitudes and Social Behavior" probably written by Mastroianni.

Daphine Doster Mastroianni (1906-2000) of Monroe, North Carolina, served in New Zealand, Fiji, and India with the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) from 1942 to 1945. After the war, Mastroianni continued her nursing career with the United States Public Health Service, the Arkansas Health Department, and later as dean of University of Arkansas School of Nursing. Daphine Doster Mastroianni was born 7 October 1906 in Monroe, North Carolina, to a railroad worker and a nurse, and was raised in Gibson, North Carolina. She graduated from high school in 1923 and then attended the North Carolina College for Women (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro), where she studied music. After graduating in 1927, Mastroianni worked as a music teacher at Cherryville High School and later Kings Mountain High School. She enrolled at John Hopkins School of Nursing in 1933 and graduated in 1936. She worked as a surgical nurse for three years in the operating room of John Hopkins and later Berea College Hospital in Berea, Kentucky. Mastroianni also did public nursing in Richmond, Kentucky, and Bowling Green, Kentucky. Mastroianni joined the Army Nurse Corps in 1942 with a unit from Johns Hopkins Hospital, the 18th General Hospital. She went through basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and then served as a surgical nurse in New Zealand and Fiji from 1942 to 1945. In 1945 she was transferred to Calcutta, India. She returned to the United States and was briefly assigned to Fort Devens, Massachusetts. Following her discharge, Mastroianni received her master's in public health from the Minnesota School of Public Health. She worked for twenty-four years with the United States Public Health Service providing loans and personnel to aid states. During that time she worked for two years in the Arkansas Health Department. From 1952 to 1953 she served as acting dean of the school of nursing at the University of Arkansas while developing a four-year bachelor of science program in nursing. In 1992 she married Joe Mastroianni, whom she had originally met during World War II. Daphine Doster Mastroianni died on 3 August 2000.

Women's History
Military
Schools and Colleges

Army -- Army Nurse Corps

World War II era (1940-1946)

World War, 1939-1945
United States. Army--Women

Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries