Remembering Rear Adm. Maxine Conder, Stalwart Leader of the Navy Nurse Corps (1926-2021)

Photo By André B. Sobocinski, Historian | On October 18, 2021, Rear Adm. Maxine Conder, the former Director of the Nurse Corps and the second woman in the Navy to achieve flag rank died. She was 95.  

FALLS CHURCH, VA, UNITED STATES

10.28.2021

Story by André B. Sobocinski, Historian 

U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery

On October 18, 2021, Rear Adm. Maxine Conder, the former Director of the Nurse Corps and the second woman in the Navy to achieve flag rank died. She was 95.

Admiral Conder took helm of the Navy Nurse Corps in July 1975, becoming its thirteenth leader and only the eighth person to hold the title of “Director of the Nurse Corps.”

During her 4-year tenure, she sought to develop career ladders and new professional opportunities for Navy nurses while helping to adapt the Nurse Corps to “post-Vietnam readiness requirements.”

Under Conder the first Navy nurses were assigned to greenside billets and construction battalions. And new pathways for promotion were developed for nurses serving in administrative, education and clinical billets.

In 1977, Admiral Conder took part in an American Nurses Association-sponsored trip to the People’s Republic of China. As one of the select nursing representatives, she was the first U.S. Navy nurse to visit mainland China and one of the first U.S. military officers to visit since the end of the Chinese Civil War (1949).

Admiral Conder was born and raised in Utah and grew up in a host of mining towns outside of Salt Lake City. She obtained a nursing diploma from St. Marks Hospital School in Salt Lake City after the war and worked at St. Marks Hospital before deciding to enter the Navy.

After the start of the Korean War, Conder applied to the Navy and nine months later was accepted into service. She was commissioned on April 25, 1951 and was assigned to the Naval Hospital San Diego.

Her first impressions of naval service was trying to learn the ranks, protocol and especially the Navy jargon, which she later remarked could be a challenge at times. When recalling her first duty station she spoke about learning what, in essence, was a new language using the experiences on the wards as an example. “If you were assigned a patient to a bed, you assigned them to the port side or the starboard side.”

As the war was winding down Admiral Conder received orders to USS Haven (AH-12), one of three Navy hospital ships operating off of Korean Peninsula. Arriving in theater months after the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed, most of the patients treated aboard the ship were not combatants, but Korean civilians ranging in age from the very young to the elderly. With the end of the hostilities and a reduced need for nursing aboard ship she was reassigned to the Naval Hospital Guam in April 1954.

Conder’s greatest challenge in those first years was perhaps poliomyelitis (polio). In 1955, she reported to the Naval Hospital Chelsea in Massachusetts just as the state was hit by one of the worst polio epidemics in U.S. history. Over the spring and summer months, more than 3,500 men, women and children in Massachusetts were stricken with the disease; 800 of them in Boston alone. The Navy Medical Department worked with the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the Red Cross in assisting overburdened civilian hospitals. Throughout the summer, the Navy shipped 10 “iron lungs” (negative pressure ventilators) to Boston-area hospitals and loaned out Hospital Corpsmen, nurses, orthopedic surgeons and occupational therapists to help care for victims and assist in their recovery. That summer, Naval Hospital Chelsea opened up the military’s first polio ward for military dependents. Admiral Conder was responsible for setting up the new ward and getting it ready for its first patients.

There were several patients at the Chelsea who were placed in iron lungs. And during that summer Conder remained on constant watch in the ward checking patients’ vitals, respiratory cycles, and intravenous feedings, coordinating staff schedules and overseeing medications and supplies.

Admiral Conder spent over 70 percent of her 28-year Navy career serving at Medical Treatment Facilities.

After leaving Chelsea in 1957, she served at: Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton, Calif. (1957-1960); Assistant Chief Nurse, Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune, N.C. (1966-1968); Chief Nurse, Naval Hospital Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (1968-1969); Chief Nurse, Naval Hospital St. Albans, N.Y. (1969-1970); Chief Nurse, Naval Hospital Portsmouth, N.H. (1970); Chief Nurse, Naval Hospital Chelsea, Mass. (1970-1974); and Chief, Nursing Service, Naval Regional Medical Center Philadelphia, Penn (1974-1975).

Throughout her career education remained very important for Admiral Conder. She returned to school in 1960 to obtain her BSN at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. After a tour as the Nurse Programs Officer at the Naval Recruit Station in Seattle, Wash. (1962-1966) she obtained her Masters in Nursing from the University of Washington.

Admiral Conder was always quick to remind her nurses that education and training was the foundation of Navy Medicine. And she would often point out to those serving in the civilian sector that the U.S. military was the “largest educational system in the world.”

Conder retired from the Navy in July 1979 and returned to her home state of Utah. Over the ensuing decades she remained active in her local community and was recognized by various institutions for her years of service.

In June 1988, the University of Utah awarded Admiral Conder an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree. She was later recognized by Utah Valley University’s Women’s Walk as “one of Utah's most influential women.”

Years later while being interviewed about her Navy career she stated that she was always very proud of becoming of a flag officer and the Director of the Nurse Corps, but her career was highlighted by the chance to work with junior officers and Hospital Corpsmen and helping to “motivate them and grow.”

For those who had the opportunity to work and know Admiral Conder her leadership philosophy may be the core of her career legacy. As a leader she always tried to ensure all nurses had the same opportunities and were treated fairly and with respect.

“I could really and truly guarantee to the Nurse Corps officers that I would be as fair as possible to each and every one of them.”

Sources:

Conder, Maxine. Personnel Card, Navy Nurse Corps Personnel Collection. BUMED Archives.

Conder, Maxine. Oral History (Conducted by Michelle Welch, August 6, 2006). Utah Valley University Library.

Sterner, Doris. In and Out of Harm’s Way: A History of the Navy Nurse Corps. Peanut Butter Publishing Co: Seattle, WA, 1996.

Sullivan, Marguerite. “Navy woman does ‘admiral’ job.” North Penn Reporter, May 28, 1976.

• Date Taken: 10.28.2021
• Date Posted: 10.28.2021 14:19
• Story ID: 408243
• Location: FALLS CHURCH, VA, US