Lucile Petry Leone

She married Nicholas C. Leone in 1952. They divorced in 1967. She died on November 25, 1999, at the age of 97 in San Francisco, California.

Leone received the Florence Nightingale Medal of the International Red Cross and the Distinguished Service Award of the United States Public Health Service. She was named by the University of Maryland School of Nursing "as one of seven who significantly impacted the nursing profession." She was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine in 1970.

When she retired from government service in 1966, Lucile P. Leone was the Assistant Surgeon General and Chief Nurse Officer.

In 1955 the Lasker Foundation jointly awarded the Mary Woodland Lasker Public Service Award to Leone along with Margaret Arnstein and Pearl McIver.

During the 1950s she was a member of the nursing advisory committee of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. During the 1960s, she served as President of the National League for Nursing.

Petry was the chief nurse officer for the U.S. Public Health Service after the war. In June, 1949 Petry became the first nurse and the first woman to be promoted to assistant surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health Service. Simultaneously she was also an associate chief of the agency's Bureau of Medical Services. At that point she was rated the equivalent of a brigadier general in the health service.

Leone participated in the first assembly of the World Health Organization as a delegate in 1948. In 1956 she was a delegate again, to the ninth assembly. Leone continued her career n nursing education, serving as Assistant Dean and a teacher of nursing at Texas Woman's University until 1971.

From 1941 until 1966 Leone worked at the United States Public Health Service. Initially she was 'on loan' to the US Public Health Service as an educational consultant, with the directive to accelerate nursing education nationally in the U.S. By 1943 various groups were organizing to provide for additional training for wartime nurses, including an effort by the American Legion Auxiliary to fund a 'Victory Nurse Corps'. Then in June, 1943 Petry became the founding director of the Cadet Nurse Corps.

Petry's first position after earning her M.A. was assistant supervisor of clinical instruction at Yale for a summer. Then Petry was hired to be one of two instructors at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing in 1929. Her initial role was to coordinate and update instruction and curriculum in the nursing school. She spent the next eleven years teaching nursing students and recruiting faculty and students to the school under the directorship of Katharine Jane Densford. She took one year during that period to earn her doctorate degree at Columbia Teachers College. Her role expanded to Associate Professor and Assistant Dean for the 1937–1938 academic year, while Miss Densford took a sabbatical leave to work with the International Council of Nurses in London. Petry attended the convention of the National League of Nursing Education in April, 1938. Petry was instrumental in laying the academic foundations for nursing education and the preparation for teachers and administrators.

Lucile Petry Leone (January 23, 1902 – November 25, 1999) was an American nurse who was the founding director of the Cadet Nurse Corps in 1943. Because the Nurse Corps met its recruiting quotas, it was not necessary for the US to draft nurses in World War II. She was the first woman and the first nurse to be appointed as Assistant Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service.

Born in 1902 in Frog Heaven, Ohio, Lucile was the only child of a high school principal and his wife. She was raised in Selbyville, Delaware. Lucile Petry completed a double major in chemistry and English at the University of Delaware in 1924. While attending the University of Delaware she worked as a nurses' assistant over the summer, confirming her interest in nursing. "I knew I wanted to work with both my hands and my head," Petry said. "I wanted to see science work. And I knew I wanted to work with people, not things." She received a nursing degree from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1927 in one and a half years, and during that time she held six different nursing positions. She served as head nurse, night supervisor, and in several wards including a psychiatric ward at Phipps Clinic. She earned a master's degree from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1929 on scholarship."