World War II Veteran Co-Founds Nurse Practitioner Program

A nationwide shortage of physicians in rural areas spurred a World War II nurse to work with a pediatrician and create the nurse practitioner program in 1965. 

Loretta Ford, a native of the Bronx, New York City, earned her nursing diploma in 1941 and was working at Middlesex General Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, when her fiancé was killed during World War II. His death inspired Ford to serve as a nurse in the Army Air Forces, which later became the Air Force in 1947 after it split from the Army.

During the war, she served at military base hospitals in Maine and Florida. Following the war, Ford used her G.I. Bill to attend the University of Colorado, where she earned a bachelor's degree in nursing in 1949.