Falls Church, VA – The Senate confirmed Thursday Lt. Gen. Nadja Y. West to serve as the new Army Surgeon General and Commanding General, U.S. Army Medical Command (MEDCOM). This makes West the Army’s first black Surgeon General.
Additionally, with the appointment as the 44th Army Surgeon General, West picks up a third star to become the Army’s first black female to hold the rank of lieutenant general. West was sworn in as the Army Surgeon general on Friday by Acting Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning. She most recently served as the Joint Staff Surgeon at the Pentagon.
The Army Surgeon General provides advice and assistance to the Secretary of the Army and Army Chief of Staff on all health care matters pertaining to the U.S. Army and its military health care system. West will be responsible for development, policy direction, organization and overall management of an integrated Army-wide health service system and is the medical material developer for the Army. These duties include formulating policy regulations on health service support, health hazard assessment and the establishment of health standards.
Dual-hatted as the MEDCOM commanding general, West oversees more than 48 medical treatment facilities providing care to nearly 4 million active duty members of all services, retirees and their Family members. MEDCOM is composed of three regional health commands, the Medical Research and Materiel Command, and Army Medical Department Center & School.
West holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Doctorate of Medicine from George Washington University School of Medicine. She has held previous assignments as Commanding General, Europe Regional Medical Command; Commander of Womack Army Medical Center, Fort Bragg, N.C.; and Division Surgeon, 1st Armored Division, Army Europe and Seventh Army, Germany.
West hails from the District of Columbia, and she finished high school at the Academy of the Holy Names in Silver Spring, Md.
While West’s promotion to lieutenant general is already effective, she will “pin” on the rank in a formal ceremony in early 2015.
article via eurweb.com
Posts tagged as “blacks in the military”
WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. — A Michigan woman who was believed to be the nation’s oldest veteran at 110 has died, about a month after meeting President Barack Obama in the Oval Office.
Emma Didlake died Sunday in West Bloomfield, northwest of Detroit, according to the Oakland County medical examiner’s office.
Didlake was a 38-year-old wife and mother of five when she signed up in 1943 for the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. She served about seven months stateside during the war, as a private and driver.
She spent time with the president in July during a trip to Washington that was arranged by Talons Out Honor Flight, a southwest Michigan chapter of a national nonprofit that provides free, one-day trips for veterans to visit monuments and memorials in the nation’s capital.
“Emma Didlake served her country with distinction and honor, a true trailblazer for generations of Americans who have sacrificed so much for their country,” Obama said Monday afternoon in a statement. “I was humbled and grateful to welcome Emma to the White House last month, and Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to Emma’s family, friends, and everyone she inspired over her long and quintessentially American life.”
Didlake was born in Alabama and moved with her family to Detroit in 1944. She was known to her family as “Big Mama” and recently moved to an assisted living family in suburban Detroit.
She was deemed the oldest U.S. veteran based on information gleaned by Honor Flight representatives through national outreach campaigns.
Granddaughter Marilyn Horne told The Associated Press last month that when Talons Out officials presented her grandmother with a short-sleeved shirt bearing the group’s logo to wear on the trip to Washington, Didlake took a look and said: “‘I don’t have Michelle Obama arms — I’m going to need a jacket.'”
During her visit to the White House, Didlake wore a patriotic-themed neck scarf and sat in her wheelchair in the same spot in the Oval Office where foreign leaders sit when they meet with Obama.
article by Associated Press via nbcnews.com
Maryline Morris Whitaker is the founder of the Sister Soldier Project, a grassroots organization that provides hair care products to African American women soldiers to help them comply with the militaries requirements for hair. “If hair is longer than your ears, it has to be pulled back and tucked under, and as a Black woman I just don’t understand how that happens without the right product,” Whitaker says.
In 2008, Whitaker raised enough money and donations to send 1,000 packages of hair care products to African American women serving in combat areas overseas. She received a large number of thank you letters from the women soldiers. “These women never complained,” said Whitaker, commenting on the letters she received. “They just talked about their lives in the service. They were happy to be there. They talked about the families they left behind, and they’d send pictures of their children.”
Whitaker realized that she had a treasure trove of letters documenting the experiences of African American women serving overseas in the armed forces. She volunteered to donate the archive to the Smithsonian museum but the museum was not interested.
But Whitaker found a home for her archive at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. The Schlesinger Library holdings date from the founding of the United States to the present and include more than 3,200 manuscript collections, 100,000 volumes of books and periodicals, and films, photos, and audiovisual material. The library holds many collections from African American women including Mildred Jefferson, the first Black woman graduate of Harvard Medical School, author June Jordan, civil rights activist Pauli Murray, and author Dorothy West.
article via jbhe.com