Florence Marguerite Patterson graduated from Burlington High School in Burlington, Wisconsin, in 1893. She enrolled at Northwestern University where she became a member of Gamma Phi Beta.
The Gamma Phi Beta Chapter at Northwestern University. Florence Patterson is in the picture.
A 1904 Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta reported, “Mary Bunting Gamma and Florence Patterson Epsilon are both taking courses at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Zeta (Goucher College) was glad to have them at fraternity meeting not long ago.” In 1907, she graduated from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.
October 1911, The Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta
Florence M. Patterson
1914, The Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta
Between graduation from Hopkins and America’s entry into World War I, Patterson had several jobs in medical social service work and public health nursing including as assistant superintendent of nurses at the Allegheny General Hospital, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
She joined the staff of the American Red Cross in June of 1917. The following month she became the chief nurse of the first American Red Cross Commission for Roumania (now Romania). An article in the March 15, 1918 issue of the Oshkosh Northwestern stated that she was “believed to be in Odessa, reported captured by the Germans. She is with a Red Cross unit.”
In June 1918, the unit was recalled from the Balkans and she was assigned to the Paris headquarters of the American Red Cross. She returned to Roumania with the second Red Cross Commission. She was its chief nurse and assistant director of civilian relief. Patterson was awarded Roumania’s Regina Maria Cross and France’s Medal of Honor for Epidemics for her efforts as well as the Florence Nightingale medal from the Japanese Red Cross.
An article in a 1921 Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta told this story:
While Florence M. Patterson, Epsilon, was assistant director of nursing for the American Red Cross at Washington, a cabled request for aid came from Queen Marie of Roumania. In response to this request, a special commission whose task it was to make a medical and social survey and to recommend reconstruction was sent with Miss Patterson as head of the nursing unit which on arrival at once took over a hospital of five hundred beds and gave both civil and military relief. When the German peace with Roumania was signed the Red Cross workers returned to London by way of an Arctic port and Miss Patterson left England for service in France where she was assistant to Miss Julia Stimson chief American Red Cross nurse in that country. While in Roumania, Miss Patterson was decorated by the Queen with the Regina Marie medal and from many quarters came enthusiastic words of praise for her wonderful work.
In 1934, she was awarded an honorary master of arts degree from Northwestern University. It was given for these reasons:
One of the most prominent women graduates of the College of Liberal Arts at Northwestern, a quiet and serious worker for the welfare of society; an officer of the Red Cross who has brought both efficiency and imagination even to administrative duties; a humanitarian who has built her sense of the spirit and of justice into improved living conditions for the American Indian, the soldier in Europe, and the citizen in America; a woman, in brief, of vision, judgment, tact, and competence, a wise and inspiring leader who has made the world a better place for her living in it.
Patterson died in 1962 and is buried in Wisconsin. In 2016, she was honored at the Wall of Inspiration ceremony at Burlington High School, 123 years after she graduated.
