The service will be at 7 p.m. Sunday at Berks Bible Church in Shillington, Pa. There will be a private burial.

Visitation will be for one hour prior to the service at the church. Memorials are preferred to Disabled American Veterans or the National MS Society. Arrangements are with Klee Funeral Home & Cremation Services in Shillington, Pa.

She was born May 14, 1948, in Montevideo to Melvin and Edith (Carlson) Lee. The family moved to Minneapolis in 1961. She graduated from Minneapolis North High School and attended nursing school.

 She was a Navy veteran of the Vietnam War.

She was a member of Berks Bible Church and served as a former church secretary, taught the children's choir and helped teach Sunday school. She was volunteer for the MS Society.

She is survived by her daughter: Dawn (and James) Gilbert Sr. of Shillington, Pa.; three grandchildren; her parents of Litchfield; and four siblings: James Lee of Lakeville, Carol McWilliams of Minneapolis, Doris Snyder of Fredericksburg, Va., and Elaine Julin of Brooklyn Park.

Nancy Lee Guest Book 

Like many of the men going over to Vietnam to serve their country, young women from all over the nation volunteered to serve as nurses in the hospitals and medical facilities in South Vietnam. These women volunteered for a variety of reasons: to serve their country, to help the service men who were wounded, to receive training and an education, to further their military careers, to prove themselves or just to have an adventure. The nurses served in the hospital ships of the Navy, the airlift helicopters and airplanes of the Air Force and the hospitals and field hospitals of the Army. They arrived in Vietnam with various levels of nursing experience, from newcomers to the field with barley six months of Nursing under their belts to experienced veterans of twenty plus years. Usually the more confident and experienced the nurse, the better they were able to cope with the stress and the sheer number of casualties they treated on a daily basis.

The Vietnam War was the first major conflict to use the helicopter to transport wounded quickly to medical facilities; sometimes a man would be in the hospital receiving medical care barely half an hour after he had been wounded. This new medevac system saved the lives of thousands of men who in previous conflicts would have died in the battlefield waiting for medical assistance. Because of this phenomenon, Vietnam nurses were faced with more patients and more severely wounded men than they had seen in previous conflicts. These nurses were required to make quick decisions on who was treated first and what type of treatment they would receive; a much more autonomous state than nursing in the states where they were expected to follow a doctor’s orders and nothing more.

Combat nurses worked twelve hour shifts six days a week and when a mass casualty incident occurred, like a major battle, those twelve hour shifts could easily turn into twenty-four to thirty-six hour shifts. Nurses also volunteered their time in the communities around them, often going to the local orphanages or hospitals to offer the civilians their medical services or to teach classes on basic hygiene, first aid or even English. In addition, nurses had to deal with numerous emotions: stress from the amount of patients they had to serve, anger at seeing young men so horribly wounded and guilt at not being able to save all of the wounded men or make them whole again.

Despite the long hours and sometimes horrifying wounds these women had to face, many nurses found their service rewarding. They were able to serve their country and save and comfort the wounded men in their facilities. During the Vietnam War 98% of the men who were wounded and made it to the hospital survived. Nurses witnessed some truly miraculous events such as men recovering from their wounds or acts of true selflessness that are common during combat situations, and many nurses made close friends with their fellow coworkers some of whom still keep in contact into the present day.

WOMEN IN THE U.S. NAVY, VIETNAM

Ginny and Susan

It might have been merely one photograph

in an album of long ago memories

had you not died

Instead it became the last image etched in Kodachrome

of a life cut short

for a friend who still mourns your loss

No one could know 

as you stood in that Honolulu airport 

holding the baby of a stranger

(because you were going to Vietnam for a year 

and might not get to hold a baby)

that in a few short weeks you would be killed,

ironically stabbed to death 

by one of the soldiers you had come to help

Many years after the shutter snapped shut

that photo forged a treasured bond 

between your family who had never seen it

and your friend who was finally able to give it to them

Even in death you have helped to heal the living

Thank you for posing

emily strange

JOB DESCRIPTION:

DONUT DOLLIE

I flew to desolate fire bases

filled with the tools of war

and the men who used them

it was my job to perform the miracle

of making the war disappear

  (however briefly)

for boys who had been trained to kill

it was my mission to raise the morale

of children who had grown old too soon

watching friends die

it was my calling

to take away fear and replace it with hope

to return sanity to a world gone insane 

I was the mistress of illusion

as I pulled smiles from the dust and heat

the magical genie of "back-in-the-world"

as I created laughter in the mud

but when the show was over

I crawled back into my bottle

and pulled the cork in tightly behind me

Emily Strange

"Please Forgive Me"

PLEASE FORGIVE ME

for not remembering your name

i know it is here somewhere on the West Wall

probably around panel 20

i remember your face, your smile

as you showed me the picture of your wife and new baby

i remember how they teased the new papasan

as you danced around that desolate firebase laughing

i remember walking into ICU

as they unwrapped the gory stump that was your leg

and i remember my sorrow when the nurse whispered,

"expectant - he was already in a body bag

when the medic noticed slight breathing"

PLEASE FORGIVE ME

for not staying

i wanted to hold your hand and tell you

to hang in there for your wife and new baby

but the nurses and doctors surrounded you

trying to keep you alive

and i would have only been in the way

so i told the nurse i would check on you later

PLEASE FORGIVE ME

for not returning

i just did not want to know

that another wife would receive that knock on the door

confirming her worst fears

i couldn't bear to know that another child

would grow up having never known his Father

for i had an early take off the next morning

to fly to another desolate firebase

to laugh and dance with other soldiers

before they too were killed

PLEASE FORGIVE ME

emily strange

Light Casualties

For a Mother

who is receiving

the folded Flag

from her son's casket,

"Light Casualties"

is a heartbreaking oxymoron

emily strange

First Lieutenant Sharon Ann Lane

Just four days before being mortally wounded by enemy fire while working in the 312th Evacuation Hospital in Chu Lai, Republic of Vietnam, 1LT Sharon Ann Lane signed a letter to her parents in her characteristically upbeat manner, “See you sooner.”

Writing to them about the heat, the GIs in her care, and the movie she missed the night before, Lane assured her parents that things were “still very quiet around here…haven’t gotten mortared in a couple of weeks now.”  Ironically, within days of writing her parents, she was killed in a rocket attack upon the hospital where she was stationed.

Sharon Ann Lane was born 7 July 1943 in Zanesville, Ohio.  Two years later the Lane family moved to Canton, where Sharon spent the remainder of her childhood.  She graduated from Canton South High School in June 1961 and decided to pursue her dream of becoming a nurse by attending the Aultman Hospital School of Nursing.  She graduated on 25 April 1965 and worked at a local hospital for two years before trying her hand in the business world.  She made it through three quarters at the Canton Business College before deciding to join the U.S. Army Nurse Corps Reserve on 18 April 1968.

Training for 2LT Lane began on 5 May 1968 at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.  She graduated on 14 June 1968, and just three days later reported for duty at the Army’s Fitzsimons General Hospital in Denver, Colorado.   Her first assignment was with three tuberculosis wards, but after receiving a promotion to first lieutenant, she was placed in the Cardiac Division’s Intensive Care Unit and Recovery Room.  She worked in the ICU until 24 April 1969, when she reported to Travis Air Force Base, California, with orders sending her to Vietnam.

1LT Lane arrived at the 312th Evacuation Hospital at Chu Lai on 29 April.  She was originally assigned to the Intensive Care Unit, but a few days later was reassigned to the Vietnamese Ward.

Nursing the Vietnamese in Ward 4 was often physically and emotionally challenging, yet Lane repeatedly declined transfers to another ward.  She worked five days a week, twelve hours a day in Ward 4, and spent her off-duty time taking care of the most critically injured American soldiers in the Surgical ICU.  She thrived despite the demanding schedule, and was adored and respected by co-workers and patients alike.

On the morning of 8 June 1969, the 312th Evacuation Hospital was struck by a salvo of 122mm rockets fired by the Viet Cong.  One rocket struck between Wards 4A and 4B, killing two people and wounding another twenty-seven.  Among the dead was 1LT Lane, who died instantly of fragmentation wounds to the chest.  She was one month shy of her twenty-sixth birthday.

Though one of eight American military nurses who died while serving in Vietnam, Sharon Lane was the only American nurse killed as a direct result of hostile fire.  A memorial service was held in Chu Lai 10 June 1969 and a Catholic mass followed the next day.   Lane was buried with full military honors at Sunset Hills Burial Park in her hometown of Canton, Ohio.

For her service in Vietnam, 1LT  Sharon Ann Lane was awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star with “V” device, the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal, the National Order of Vietnam Medal, and the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross (with Palm).

In the years that followed her death, various individuals and organizations honored Lane in a variety of ways.  On 11 November 1969, the Fitzsimons Hospital named its recovery room the Lane Recovery Suite and put a plaque and a picture on display.  In that same year, the Daughters of the American Revolution named her Outstanding Nurse of the Year, and posthumously awarded her the Anita Newcomb McGee medal in 1970.  In 1973 a statue of Lane was dedicated in front of  Aultman Hospital, and in 1986, the Hospital opened the Sharon Lane Woman’s Center in its front lobby.  The Canton Chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America officially changed its name to the Sharon Lane Chapter #199, and roads in Denver, Colorado, and at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, have been named in her honor.  Despite the fact that over thirty years have passed since her death, 1LT Sharon Ann Lane remains an important symbol representing the sacrifices and service of the thousands of American women who served in the Vietnam War.