Clara Adams-Ender Collection

Details

Who's responsible?: Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries (Repository)
How much has been digitized?: Most of this collection has been digitized. Some items have not beed digitized due to copyright or other logistical issues.
What's in the full collection?: 10 September 2005 oral history transcript; photographs of Clara during service in the United States Army Nurse Corps, 1964-1995 from her nurse instruction postion at Fort Sam, Texas to position as Chief of the Army Nurse Corps in Washington, D.C. in 1988; photographs of Clara with many high level United States and international political dignitaries.
Full biography: Clara Leach Adams-Ender (b. 1939) of Willow Springs, North Carolina, served as an officer in the United States Army Nurse Corps from 1961 to 1993, rising to the rank of brigadier general in 1987. She was chief of the Army Nurse Corps from 1987 to 1991, and retired in 1993 as the commanding general of Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Clara Adams-Ender was born in Willow Springs, North Carolina, on 11 July 1939, the fourth of ten children. She was raised on a tobacco farm in Wake County where her father was a sharecropper, and graduated from Fuquay Springs Consolidated High School at the age of sixteen. Adams-Ender then attended North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she participated in the famous Woolworth's sit-in that begin on February 1, 1960. She entered the army's student nurse program to help pay her final two years of nursing school, and upon her graduation in 1961 was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps. Adams-Ender attended the officer basic orientation course at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. She then served as a staff nurse at Fort Dix, New Jersey, from 1961 to 1963 and completed an intensive care nurse course at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center in Denver, Colorado. In 1963 she was assigned to the 121st Evacuation Hospital in South Korea, and from 1964 to 1967 she attended and then instructed at the United States Army Medical Training Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Adams-Ender then attended the University of Minnesota for two years, earning a master's degree in medical-surgical nursing. She married her childhood sweetheart, James Adams, but they divorced five years later. Adams-Ender returned to nursing instruction at Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing in Washington, D.C., in 1969, and three years later was appointed as its education coordinator. In 1974 she directed the Department of Nursing, United States Army Medical Activity, at Fort Meade, Maryland. In 1975 she attended the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and upon her graduation in 1976 became the first woman and the first nurse to earn a master's degree in military arts and sciences from the school. She was assigned to the United States Army Health Services Command at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where she inspected hospitals. From 1978 to 1981 Adams-Ender served as assistant chief and later chief of the Department of Nursing at the 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany. While there, she was promoted to colonel and met Heinz Ender, whom she married in 1981. Adams-Ender next directed nurse recruiting at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, from 1981 to 1984, and attended the United States Army War College, becoming its first black nurse corps graduate in 1982. She then served as chief of the Department of Nursing at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for three years, the first African American to do so. In 1987 Adams-Ender was promoted to brigadier general and named chief of the Army Nurse Corps. She served in that position until 1991, when she was named commanding general at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the first army nurse and African American woman ever to command a major army base. Adams-Ender retired from the army in 1993, and later started a management consulting firm.
Topics: Women's History
Military
Branch of service: Army -- Army Nurse Corps
Conflict: Vietnam Era (1964-1974)
Subject headings: Vietnam War, 1961-1975
United States. Army--Women
Contributing Institution: Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries

: Clara Adams-Ender and General Max Thurman; Clara Adams-Ender, Chief of the Army Nurse Corps, speaks with General Max Thurman, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army and her personal mentor, at the Army Nurse Corps 89th anniversary celebration in February 1990.

: Clara Adams-Ender and President Bill Clinton; Clara Adams-Ender shakes hands with President Bill Clinton in the White House, circa 1995.

: Clara Adams-Ender and Rene Woo; Clara Adams-Ender (center) poses with Lieutenant Rene Woo and husband Heinz Ender before a wreath-laying ceremony in Washington, D.C., in August of 1992.

: Clara Adams-Ender and Senator Daniel Inouye; Clara Adams-Ender, in civilian clothes, greets Daniel K. Inouye, a senator from Hawaii and recipient of the Medal of Honor, who was serving as guest speaker at Walter Reed Medical Center, circa 1999.

: Clara Adams-Ender and Surgeon General James Mason; Clara Adams-Ender (center, in blue mess uniform) stands with Acting Surgeon General James Mason (far right) and his staff in front of a large American flag at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., in July 1991.

: Clara Adams-Ender at South Korean field hospital; Clara Adams-Ender, wearing fatigues and smoking a cigarette, stands outside the tent that served as Post Operative Ward 2 at a field hospital in South Korea in 1964.

: Clara Adams-Ender at Tachikawa Air Terminal; Clara Adams-Ender, in service uniform and holding gloves, poses beside a sign for the Tachikawa Air Terminal in Tokyo, Japan, in 1964. She was returning home after a tour in South Korea.

: Clara Adams-Ender at awards ceremony; Heinz Ender (left) and Clara Adams-Ender, in the U.S. Army blue service uniform, stand to the right of members of the German Army during an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., in September of 1990.

: Clara Adams-Ender receives certificate; Clara Adams-Ender receives a certificate of appreciation from U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Togo West Jr., circa 1998.

: Clara Adams-Ender teaching at Medical Training Center; Clara Adams-Ender (left) instructs a student in IV use during a medical-surgical nursing course at U.S. Army Medical Training Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, circa 1964.

: Clara Adams-Ender with Barbara Bush; Clara Adams-Ender shakes hands with First Lady Barbara Bush at the ceremony posthumously awarding African-American WWI soldier Freddie Stowers the Medal of Honor on 19 September 1991.

: DACOWITS members; Clara Adams-Ender (left, in evening dress uniform) poses with fellow members of DACOWITS (Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services), in Washington, D.C., circa 1995. Behind them a woman speaks at a podium, and the woman in the center displays a certificate.

: Oral history interview with Clara Adams-Ender; Primarily documents Brig. Gen. Clara L. Adams-Ender's background; her service with the U.S. Army Nurse Corps from 1961 to 1993; and her marriage to Heinz Ender. Adams-Ender also comments on management and leadership issues related to the Army Nurse Corps. Adams-Ender describes growing up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina in the 1940s and 1950s; missing school to work on the farm; having a large family; the importance of education; and her father's insistence that she attend nursing school rather than become a lawyer. " She also discusses her work in hospitals in Greensboro and Oteen, North Carolina, and New York while a nursing student at North Carolina A and T State University; her involvement in the sit-in at the F.W. Woolworth in Greensboro; preparations for the sit-in; and the philosophy of non-violence during the civil rights movement. Adams-Ender explains her decision to join the Army Nurse Corps in 1961, while still in college, including her meeting with a recruiter; her financial motivation for joining; her parents' response; and turning down a marriage proposal so that she could serve in the army. " Adams-Ender provides a brief overview of her entire career in the Army Nurse Corps and offers details about certain duty stations, including officer basic training at Fort Sam Houston and her work as a staff nurse at Fort Dix in the early 1960s. Topics include working as a surgical nurse and in intensive care units; working with a sergeant who had been in the Korean War; particular medical cases; and patients that she helped. " Adams-Ender talks about her 1964-1967 assignment to Fort Sam Houston, where she trained medics for service in Vietnam. In addition to explaining her work as an instructor, she describes an incident where she received an adverse efficiency report for personal reasons. She notes that it appeared to be discrimination against African Americans and comments on how the situation was rectified by the army. " Adams-Ender discusses working as an instructor and education coordinator at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing from 1969 to 1974, including the atmosphere at Walter Reed during the Vietnam War. She speaks in more detail about attending the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from 1975 to 1976, and describes the types of courses and skills that were taught; incidents of chauvinism; leading a section; the difficulties holding a program honoring women in the military; and taking a physical fitness test that female officers were exempt from. Adams-Ender also briefly comments on her work in the late 1970s on the inspector general's team at Fort Sam Houston and the importance of nurses meeting high standards for care. " She also comments on her duty at the Frankfurt Army Regional Medical Center from 1978 to 1981. Topics include being involved in a German-American medical society; German customs and drinks; discrimination from her commander as a nurse and an African American; doing a march to commemorate the liberation of the Dutch by the Allied troops during World War II; and meeting her husband, Heinz Ender. " Adams-Ender also describes her work as chief of the Army Nurse Corps, including her responsibilities; working with Congress and the political work it required; and her work to recruit and retain nurses. Comments related to her last assignment as commanding general at Fort Belvoir from 1991 to 1993 largely pertain to the lessons that prepared her for command. " Adams-Ender frequently speaks about the organization of the army's medical facilities and about management. She explains the hierarchy between doctors, chief nurse, nurses, and corpsmen and trying to match physicians and chief nurses when assigning people to various facilities. She discusses learning her jobs; developing skills throughout the course of her career; roles and responsibilities of nurses; management issues; and her management style. " Adams-Ender also comments on the purpose of the Army Nurse Corps and its relationship with the rest of the army; her relationship with Lillian Dunlap as her mentor; her promotion to full colonel; the process of being promoted to chief nurse; her promotion to brigadier general; her family's response to her promotion; and a party to celebrate. " Other personal topics include her conversion to Roman Catholicism; meeting her husband, Heinz Ender, while stationed in Frankfurt; their relationship and marriage; Heinz taking care of their home while she worked; and Heinz's work and activities and being a military spouse.