"Clara D. Noyes, R.N.: Life of a Global Nursing Leader"

By Roger L. Noyes

Shires Press, 341 pages

Trailblazing women are rightly celebrated for being first in their fields, paving the way for those who follow. Think Nobel winner Marie Curie, or Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress.

But is there such a thing as a second-generation pioneer?

If so, then Clara Noyes, a nurse from a prominent Old Lyme family, has as much claim to the title as anyone. A new biography illuminates the career of this consequential figure in the development of caregiving.

"Clara D. Noyes, R.N.: Life of a Global Nursing Leader" is the story of a woman whose accomplishments were well-known enough in her time that her picture once appeared on a postcard alongside that of Florence Nightingale.

Nightingale, whose birthday Saturday wraps up National Nurses Week, is celebrated as the founder of modern nursing. Noyes, born a half-century after her, was an early champion of nursing as a profession.

Throughout her well-spent life, Noyes not only raised the bar for what it meant to be a nurse, but she also acted as a general, organizing and deploying nurses in time of war, plague and natural disaster.

She was best known for her work with the American Red Cross, where she was director of the organization's nursing service for the last 20 years of her life. Taking the job in 1916, she marshaled thousands of nurses to respond to three immense humanitarian crises.

The book follows Noyes through her own eloquent writings and the broader sweep of history as she establishes a virtual army of women to treat the sick and wounded after the United States entered World War I.

Toward the end of the war, an even bigger health crisis arose with the outbreak of Spanish influenza, the greatest pandemic in history. Noyes organized the response, and many of her nurses died of the very disease they were treating.

Within a decade came the third crisis, the Mississippi River flood of 1927, and again Noyes led the Red Cross' charge to the rescue.

To gauge her impact, one must understand the state of nursing in her time. The book gives such heavy context that it doubles as a history of early 20th century nursing.

When Noyes graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1896, the movement to formally train nurses was in its infancy. Outstanding recent graduates were pressed into leadership roles at hospitals, and Noyes was soon overseeing the improvement of conditions at Bellevue Hospital in New York.

The emphasis on context serves a second purpose, filling gaps in Noyes' biography. A voluminous writer who gave a thorough account of herself professionally, she nonetheless left behind barely a hint of her personal life. Thus the book is more the biography of a career than of a person.

Yet the author, Roger L. Noyes, who is Clara Noyes' great-great-nephew, does capture her essence, even if the picture is incomplete. With broad strokes, he paints a portrait of a woman seized by a calling and driven by duty. She is fiercely competent and unintimidated by male authority that surrounds her on all sides.

The younger Noyes, communications director for the Home Care Association of New York State, was inspired to research his aunt by parallels he saw between her career and his own.

In a phone interview, he said he didn't want to be too easy on her, exploring less flattering qualities like her tendency to be autocratic and touchy.

"The concern was, quite frankly, writing a book about a family member," he said, adding that he worried it would be seen as family history not vigorously researched. But he spent two years on the project, and the notes and bibliography run nearly 100 pages.

Noyes said he uncovered glimmers of his aunt's personality he wishes he could explore, like her sense of humor. But he said it's likely that little evidence survives because of her devotion to her career.

"If there's anything that motivated her throughout her life," he said, " ... it was guarding the status of the profession of nursing."

Clara Noyes demanded and achieved respect for nurses, women who had been marginalized and exploited in their jobs by men.

Addressing a recurring problem from the war — the sometimes dismissive attitude of soldiers — she campaigned for a solution both logical and daring: military rank for nurses. With no less an ally than former President William Howard Taft, she succeeded, and the measure passed Congress in 1920.

Women also won the right to vote at this time, and the author considers whether his aunt was a feminist. Not active in the suffrage movement, Noyes sought progress for women, but always in the context of nursing.

The book also treats something no American story is complete without: the question of race. In this formative era for nursing, black women were also joining the ranks.

It is disheartening to read that within a gender fighting for equality, there was a group further held back by a second helping of prejudice. Black nurses were able to practice their profession, but under largely segregated conditions, and they did not serve overseas.

Noyes was progressive by inclination and, as a leader, often in a position to help. But the author doesn't hide the fact that while she was willing to rock the boat on behalf of nurses, the color line tested her resolve. Her championing of black nurses was more a matter of good intentions than action.

After the war, Red Cross relief work in Europe gave Noyes a new frontier in her crusade. On inspection tours, she worked for better conditions at schools in Poland, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere.

Noyes grew up in Maryland, where her parents moved from Old Lyme after her father fought in the Civil War. But she maintained ties with family here.

During World War I, she returned to Old Lyme to address the local Red Cross chapter, and The Day noted that she found it hard to speak before so many friends and relatives.  The story also reflects her hard work.

"Miss Noyes did not leave headquarters for about three months," the story relates. "She said she would dictate letters and telegrams while standing and eating a sandwich."

In motion till the end, she died in 1936, stricken while driving. She was buried at Duck River Cemetery in Old Lyme.

The name on the headstone may not be familiar to many, but any hospital nurse who's decently paid and any Army nurse saluted by an enlisted man is in her debt.

j.ruddy@theday.com