Interview of retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Kathleen O’Neal 
on her service as a nurse in the regular Army and Army Reserve


Ruth Stewart:	[0:02] February 18, 2004, and Kathleen O'Neal-Rheinlander is being interviewed, uh, for the Women's Overseas Service League in San Antonio, Texas. Ruth Stewart is the interviewer.

	Kathy, would you start by telling us a little bit about where you were born and about your growing up days?

Kathleen O'Neal:	Um, I was born in Seguin, Texas. Um, my parents, um, moved to New Braunfels when I was a year old. Um, my dad worked at the textile mill in New Braunfels for 42 years and my mother worked in the school, um, in the cafeteria for the school, was a cook, after my sister and I were old enough to go to school. Um, I graduated from New Braunfels High School in 1966. Um, and I actually really didn’t know what I wanted to do, only that I wanted to go to college. And, my senior year in high school, we had an army recruiter that came and talked to us about, um, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing. And so it sounded like something great for me; it was gonna pay for my education and I would go in the military, which sounded like, um, something that I would like to do. So, um, I applied for the program and actually found out that I was accepted in the program on my senior trip so, um, my parents actually called me and told me that I was, that I had been accepted into the program. So, um, then I went to southwest Texas my freshman year, uh, for college and then I went to the University of Maryland my sophomore year and then transferred to University of Maryland at Walter Reed and that’s where I graduated from, in 1970, from the program there.

Ruth Stewart:	[2:10] And did you then go directly into, um, some kind of military training from your nursing?

Kathleen O'Neal:	Right. We graduated, um, at the end of May of 1970, and then we went to basic training at Fort Sam in July, and I was assigned to Fort Sam. Uh, I worked in, uh, on 42E, which was in the old, um, Peach Pavilion and I, um, I was a staff nurse, that was a, um, female orthopedic, neurosurgery, ENT, [laughter] I think there were like 7 different services that we had on that floor at the time because that was, Vietnam was still going pretty good so all the women were kinda put on one floor. So, I worked there until, um – I was really interested in community health nursing. I had had a couple of really good instructors in, um, during my nursing, uh, when I was at Walter Reed, we actually did training down at Fort Belvoir and so I really wanted to go into community health nursing. So I was, um, accepted into the program and started that in 1971, so I was at BAMC for about a year and then I went into the community health nurse program and I actually went through the school at Fort Sam for that and then I was transferred to Hawaii. And, when I was in Hawaii, I did community health nursing there. Um, I lived off-base, most of the nurses, um, could live off if they wanted to. I was single and I had an apartment in Honolulu and, um, we traveled all over the island, actually, doing home health visits and primarily we did well-baby because we had 350 deliveries a month at Tripler [laughter] at that point so we did a lot of expectant parents classes and a lot of, uh, well-baby clinics. And we did some other com-, communicable disease things and things like that, too, but I did a lot of traveling to a lot of classes up at Schofield Barracks, which was, um, in the, basically in the middle of the island.

And, um, as far as other things, I traveled a lot when I was there. Um, I had, um, friends that were stationed in Bangkok, Thailand so I went to Thailand and visited them. I had a friend in Okinawa; I went to Okinawa. I took trips to Japan and, uh, so took advantage of, uh, being able to travel some when I was there for the 2 years. And found…

Ruth Stewart:	[4:51] While you were in Hawaii itself, were there activities there that you did, off-duty time?

Kathleen O'Neal:	Um, I spent a lot of time at Fort DeRussy Beach. [laughter] Actually, I remember one time, which was really kind of fun, we took, um, they were looking for nurses to volunteer to take some of the Vietnam casualties that were patients at Tripler. We went down to, um, uh, Fort DeRussy, actually and the Smothers Brothers and, there was some kind of special that they were having for TV, so we were down there, kind of chaperoning the patients and, uh, and got to listen to the show that they were putting on. They actually taped it for television, so – um, and then there were, um, uh, a lot of different, I mean, the navy was there and we did, um, a lot of times they would find nurses to go to some of the other – they had good, um, joint training exercises with, um, uh, people from, or ships were from Australia and New Zealand and stuff like that. And they would have parties and they would invite the nurses to go to those parties. And I traveled – I had a lot of family. My parents came over for their 25th wedding anniversary and I took them around the island, so I was sort of the unofficial tour guide for, and some of my other parent’s friends would come over and I took them, and my sister came over so I did a lot of, um, visiting of different places around the island, too, the Polynesian Cultural Center and, um, Pearl Harbor, and, uh, and visited all of the other islands with nurse friends, we would go. And I liked to swim. I did not learn to snorkel, which was something I really ki-, oh, I snorkeled but not, um, scuba dived. But, um, I kind of regret not doing that, but…Um, I had a lot of company when I was over there and other friends, high school friends that would come over and visit, so I, I was the, I knew the island pretty well by the time I left 2 years later, so, it was, it was a great assignment. And I got to see a lot of the Far East, too.

Ruth Stewart:	[7:03] Okay. So then you left there in…?

Kathleen O'Neal:	‛73, and I went to, um, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, which was a, um, a single community health nurse [squad 7:21] there, so I was the only community health nurse there. So, my assignments were a lot more varied there. Um, I, I did home visits but I did a lot of clinics. We had um, uh, TB clinics and, uh, we still did well-baby and we still did, um, expectant parents classes but we had, um, um, I did STD stuff there I had not done before and so we were, we were sort of a jack-of-all-trades, whatever they needed us to do. We did some prevention stuff, um, people were getting more into teaching about the, the, uh, smoking and the problems with smoking and stuff so the community health were actually, at that point, I think was giving more into doing more preventative classes and stuff, not just doing more of the education stuff, but some of the prevention kind of things, too. Um, unfortunately, I did a lot of, um, child abuse cases, too. Um, a lot of guys coming back from Vietnam had had trouble really adjusting and we had, we had quite a bit of problems with that. And that’s really, I think, part of the reason that I decided that I would get out. So I got off of active duty at that point. I had done, um, I did 2 years there and, uh, so then I went off of active duty and went into the reserves. Um, and I was…

Ruth Stewart:	[8:48] And that was, um…?

Kathleen O'Neal:	Mm…‛75.

Ruth Stewart:	[8:52] Okay.

Kathleen O'Neal:	Um, and I came down here to San Antonio. One of my friends from school had moved down here, too. Her husband, um, uh, was, um, going to, I think, I’m not sure exact-, anyway, they, they had moved down here. And so she, she was originally from Idaho, and she found out I was coming back and so she was one that really told me to join, got me into joining the reserve unit. ‘Cause I had, with the Walter Reed Program and the active duty, I had 10 years of active duty time already.

So I joined the reserve unit here and it started out very, very small. We only had maybe 10 people drilling here when I first started in ‛75. And we were actually, uh, we were, um, part of the 94th General Hospital out of Mesquite, Texas, which is right outside of Dallas. And we eventually became a detachment and, um, we were Detachment 1 of the 94th. Um, I was there and worked, um, on, um, orthopedic floors and just worked on the weekends, just did regular nursing, clinical nursing on the weekends, um, until I got married in 1979. And my husband had been in the air force but had gotten out years before. Um, I was actually working at that time for, um, uh, EDS – Electronic Data Systems – out of Dallas and I was doing the, um, uh, I was Utilization Review Manager for the Texas Medicaid Program in Austin. And, uh, I went to work for them actually aft-, when I got out. Well, I’d gone to school for a year; in ‛75/‛76, I went back to school and decided, uh, I didn’t really, I was looking at doing something different other than nursing. I kinda got burned out being at, um, being in, uh, New Jersey and, with a lot of the child abuse stuff and the lack of support of, of the community and things. So I decided to get, to do something different but I decided I didn’t really want to do that, either, so that’s why I went to work for EDS and I did its utilization review for Medicaid stuff.

And, uh, we got married. I, uh, met my husband there and we, I got married in ‛79 and we were asked to go to Alabama with Alabama, um, Medicaid Program, EDS had gotten the contract there. So I went as, um, [laughter] kind of the back-end manager. I had, I was responsible for all of the, um, refunds and adjustments for Medicaid, the provider file, um, utilization review. I had a couple of nurses – we reviewed programs and things like that for prog-, uh, for, um, uh, the Alabama Medicaid Program. Um, and I joined a reserve unit there, which was totally different from the reserve unit here. It was with the, um, Tuskegee Institute. In Tuskegee was, um, and you know, I don’t remember the name of the unit. It was a, uh, it was not a general hospital, it was a, um, field hospital, I believe. I don’t remember the number of it but, um, um, it was rather interesting. There were 5 of us that were white and the rest were all black, so I got my first taste of a little reverse discrimination, [laughter] if you want to call it that. Uh, but the people were educated and they were nice, I mean, we didn’t really do much but, um, sit in the reserve unit on the weekends, which, um, I was there for 2 years and I left and then we moved back to Dallas and I got back into the 94th General Hospital in the reserve unit there. I transferred back into that unit.

Ruth Stewart:		[12:58] 97th?

Kathleen O'Neal:	Yeah, 94th, 94th so, um, and that was the main unit out of Mesquite.

Ruth Stewart:		[13:09] That’s the same one you had been in?

Kathleen O'Neal:	Mm-hm. Yeah, I was just in the detachment in San Antonio.

Ruth Stewart:		[13:13] Okay.

Kathleen O'Neal:	And that was in, let’s see, that was in ‛81. That was when my daughter was born. We moved out there in ‛79 and moved back in ‛81 when my daughter – I had a daughter. My daughter was born in Alabama in ‛81, my first one, [Katie 13:28]. And, uh, right after she was born, we were offered another job through EDS, both of u-, my husband and I both were working for EDS back in, uh, the headquarters, uh, with EDS in Dallas. And I went to work then with, um, uh, marketing support and actually wrote proposals bidding on Medicaid programs throughout the country. Uh, and then I was with the 94th there and, while I was there, I worked at the VA in Dallas on the weekends and, um, was there until ‛85 and my husband got transferred back to Dall-, back to San Anton-, well, back to New Braunfels. Actually, he took a job in New Braunfels. He got a job working for the county in New Braunfels so we moved back to New Braunfels where my parents were. And, um, I transferred to Detachment 1 of the 94th and then I worked again on the floors at BAMC and then I started doing, uh, officer evaluation reports. I was, worked in administration.

Ruth Stewart:	[14:40] Um, [inaudible 14:44]?

Kathleen O'Neal:	As a lieutenant colonel, uh, when I got back. I guess I made major in Alabama and then after being back here, and then when I got promoted, then I kind of came off the floor and started doing more administrative stuff. And I did the of-, the officer evaluation reports. And then we were activated in, um, we moved back in ‛85, and in ‛90, we were activated for Desert Storm. And we went to, um, Germany.

Ruth Stewart:	[15:15] That was in…?

Kathleen O'Neal:	‛90.

Ruth Stewart:	[15:17] 1990. You say [inaudible 15:19] reserve unit…

Kathleen O'Neal:	Actually 1, ‛91. My reserve unit, right. The t-, the whole 94th General Hospital was activated and it was actually in January of ‛91. And, so we were at Camp [Bullis for 15:32] in the middle of January, which was very cold and we all got – we were there for about, oh, about 10 days, I think, and just getting ready to be deployed overseas. ‘Cause we knew we were going to Germany and then we were gonna be split up when we got to Germany and we back-filled the hospitals because the people in Germany had been sent to the desert. So, and we were all sick by the time we, [laughter] because it was so cold out there and, um, so we, we left, um, we left Kelly Air Force Base, uh, on the 16th of January and that was the night that they started bombing in… So when we landed, everything was like shut down and people didn’t know we were coming and, of course, everything was under high alert because we had just started, you know, bombing in, in, uh, Kuwait so it was, it was an interesting night. Um, they couldn’t get us, well, we sort of got assigned to different places and I was assigned to Wurzburg, um, and, which was about an hour and a half, two-hour drive, I guess, by – and they loaded us all up on buses and, and headed us down that direction and we got there about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. [laughter] And there was like, nobody knew what to do with us so they put us on some of the old empty wards at the hospital and they said, “Somebody’d figure out what to do with you in the morning,” so we were all – ‘cause we’d been up for like 2 days flying and all that, so.

But it turned out, you know, they were, the people were really very friendly and, and the staff was really good and so we went through a couple of days of orientation and we all got assigned to the, to the wards and that hospital was really interesting because it had just opened a brand-new hospital in August of that previous year. And so it was built in the back, in the, the old hospital, which was the old Wurzburg hospital, which was a German hospital during World War II. They built the new hospital sort of in the center. The hospital is way up on a hill and it was in a semi-circle so that, and they had big windows that you could open up on both sides and the wind, you know, you could just, the breeze could blow through there. It was winter when we got there but, they put us out on those old floors so, um, but then, you know, we got assigned to the new hospital and we got, got not really very busy, which was, we were very grateful for. We had some casualties come back. I worked on a surgery floor but the primary, uh, injuries went to Landstuhl and stuff. The only people that we really got were people that were normally stationed there. So we had some women come back that had gotten pregnant and had problems or, um, then we had some, we had some casualties but not very many. Uh, but we were assigned to start working on opening up all the old wards because they expected to have a lot more casualties than we did, but, by what, April, they – March, I guess, or so – it was pretty well over but we couldn’t go back. They wouldn’t let us go back home until they closed everything out in the desert and moved the people back so that they come back to their original positions at the hospital.

So, we came back to the States probably, um, in, I think it was the end of, the end of April when we got to come home.

Ruth Stewart:		[18:57] Of ‛91?

Kathleen O'Neal:	‛91, yeah.

Ruth Stewart:		[18:59] So you were only there a few months?

Kathleen O'Neal:	Yeah, just a few months. And we got to come home. Um, I got, actually, after we knew that the w-, that they had pretty much surrendered and the thing was pretty well over, we were just kind of waiting for people to come back. They let me work in the community health nu-, with the community health nurses because they really had more than they needed on the floors and that was really interesting! I got to see some of the clinics, the outlying clinics, and the community health nurses were real happy to have me there ‘cause I could do some of the classes and stuff. So I kinda got some of the cobwebs out and did some new parents classes and some expectant parents classes. It was fun. It was, it was, uh, it was a good experience and I got to see a lot of the outlying clinics and everything. I know look back at that and wish I’d have had a tour over there. [laughter] But, uh, anyway, so when I got back, um, I had had a total of right at 25 years, between 15 years in the reserves and, and, uh, 10 years active duty. So my 4-, I had a 4-year-old at the time so she had been back at home and I kinda promised her that I would get out when I got back, so… And I always laugh because when I was on the bus going out to, um, the airport to get on the plane to go to Germany, there was a young soldier that was sitting next to me and he said, “You know, my dad was in Vietnam,” [laughter] “and now I’m gonna be in the war.” And I was like, “Okay, it’s time for me to retire!” [laughter]

So, anyway, but, um, it was, uh, I have lots and lots of fond memories of being in the military and I have a lot of good friends that I still keep up with, so…

Ruth Stewart:	[20:39] Tell me a little bit about your, uh, how you, um, well, of course, you got your educa-, your college education because of the military…

Kathleen O'Neal:	Right.

Ruth Stewart:	[20:48] Uh, are there other things that you feel that you gained from your military, that are a part of you or a part of your life, at this point?

Kathleen O'Neal:	Oh, I think, um, well, a lot of friends. Um, I mean, I still keep in touch with a lot of the people ‘cause the, the, the RAIN Program that I was in, there were, there were people that, I mean the girls that came there where from all across the United States and from all walks of life. There were a lot of girls that were there whose parents were military. Uh, we had actually the Surgeon General’s daughter was one of the girls that graduated with me, Caroline Taylor, and her dad was Surgeon General, I think, at the time or became right quickly after that. And then there were people like me that, you know, my dad was in World War II but, you know, that, that was really all the military that I had. And I had grown up in a very small town and I think my ability to travel and to see the world and I think I’m a lot more tolerant than – living back in New Braunfels after all these years, um, it’s, it’s very interesting. I mean, I think that that has given me, besides just the friendships and everything, but just being tolerant and being able to accept people of different cultures and different, uh, skin color and whatever, you know, that to learn that, you know, the differences in the, in that great experience were able to do that. Now, in Hawaii, I mean, you think about Hawaii but I had a lot of friends of Japanese descent and Chinese and, and Samoan and the whole that part of, part of the world and, uh, I don’t know. I mean, I think that’s been one of the good things. Plus, um, just the friendships that I’ve kept over the years, too. Um, and sometimes it’s kind of fun to sit and talk to somebody because a lot of people that I had in New Braunfels have not left New Braunfels. [laughter] And so, I, um, I think it’s made me a much more well-rounded person and certainly a much more well-educated person in the truest sense, I think.

Ruth Stewart:	[22:55] Were there any experiences that you would like to reflect on now, either that had particular impact on you


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