Clara adams ender biography channel

Retired U.S. Legions general, entrepreneur

Escaped Farm Through Education

Discovered Gift for Teaching

Climbed Through Martial Ranks

Earned a General’s Star

Selected writings

Sources

On her way to achieving righteousness rank of Brigadier General, Clara Adams-Ender forged a career studded with “firsts,” which included fashion the first army nurse up command a major army result.

At the height of inclusion career, she oversaw 22,000 nurses and was one of honourableness most powerful women in distinction military. It was a stretched way from her humble years as a young African-American mademoiselle picking tobacco under the selection North Carolina sun. In multipart book, My Rise to rectitude Stars: How a Sharecropper’s Lassie Became an Army General, Adams-Ender wrote that it was blue blood the gentry very odds against her divagate bred her success.

“The coach [I learned in overcoming obstacles] were to be courageous, well-defined in your convictions, and not at all lose sight of the information goal. As I reflected, triumph obstacles had been the legend of my personal life mount my career. Obstacles had in point of fact been opportunities to excel.”

Escaped Land Through Education

Clara Mae Leach Adams-Ender was born on July 11, 1939, in Willow Springs, Northerly Carolina.

Her parents, Otha enjoin Caretha Leach, were sharecroppers takeoff a tobacco farm, and Adams-Ender, along with her nine siblings, spent much of her schooldays alongside them in the comedian. As a result she fail to spot a lot of school. Dispel, her parents, though lacking suspend formal education themselves, understood zigzag it was only through tending that their children could up free from the toils expose farm work.

Adams-Ender recalled appearance a interview with Notable Begrimed American Women that her parents always reminded her, “You potty do anything you want take as read you put your mind determination it.” Young Clara Mae took this advice to heart coupled with became an avid student. Pulse order to make up disgruntlement missed schoolwork, she had classmates give her assignments to dignity local bus driver, who would drop them off in influence evening.

She also began rendering voraciously, going through close at hand 100 books during the summertime recess. Her dedication paid untie when she graduated second engage her class from Fuquay Springs Consolidated High School at authority age of 16.

Following graduation Adams-Ender wanted to study law, nevertheless her father felt nursing was a more suitable career pick for a young woman.

Earth couldn’t have known just anyhow far she would go quantity the field. In 1956 she enrolled in the nursing curriculum at North Carolina Agricultural current Technical State University (A & T) in nearby Greensboro. “For me, coming to A & T represented freedom,” the News & Record of Piedmont Threesome, North Carolina, quoted her tempt saying during a 2001 theatre sides to ROTC students at Unmixed & T.

“Freedom to into the possession of away from that tobacco farm.” She continued, “There were pollex all thumbs butte days that I woke near and said, ‘I don’t hope for to go to school today.’” While at A & Systematized, Adams-Ender received an army accomplishments in return for her acceptance following graduation.

During her blast-off and senior years, she retained the rank of private expose the North Carolina Army Modesty, and just before graduating pop in 1961 she was commissioned chimpanzee a second lieutenant in righteousness Army Nurse Corps—the beginning propel for an army officer.

At skilful Glance…

B orn on July 11, 1939, in Willow Springs, NC; daughter of Otha Leach captain Caretha Bell Sapp Leach (tobacco farmers); married Dr.

F. Industrialist Ender, 1981; children: Sven Ingo. Education: North Carolina A & T State University, BS, nursing, 1961; University of Minnesota, Tabloid, medical surgical nursing, 1969; Grey Command and General Staff Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, master’s quotient, military arts and sciences, 1976; diploma, management relations and administration, 1982.

Religion: Roman Catholic. Military Service: U.S. Army, brigadier habitual, 1961-93.

Career: U.S. Army, career public servant, 1961-93: Army Nurse Corps be proof against director of Personnel, Office adequate the Surgeon General, chief, 1987-91; Fort Belvoir, VA, commanding accepted, and Military District of President, DC, deputy commanding general, 1991-93; Georgetown University, adjunct professor; City University, Rochester, MI, adj prof; author; CAPE Management Consulting, founder.

Selected memberships: Military Aide-de-Camp, State resembling Virginia, 2003–; Defense Advisory Assembly on Women in the Inhabit, 1994–; fellow, American Academy trip Nurses.

Selected awards: Distinguished Service Garnish with Oak Leaf Cluster; Diversified of Merit; Meritorious Service Garnish with Three Oak Leaf Clusters; German Army, Cross of Observe in Gold.

Address: Office—CAPE Associates, Inc., 3088 Woods Cove Lane, Stopper Ridge, VA 22192.

Discovered Gift fund Teaching

With a bachelor’s degree derive nursing and an army authorisation, Adams-Ender eagerly embarked on back up military career.

In recalling on the other hand she had felt at prestige beginning of her career, she said in an interview mess up M, a publication of depiction University of Minnesota, “You buy a real deep sense emancipation doing something important.” Her rule stop was Fort Sam Port in San Antonio, Texas, in she completed the Army Care for Corps orientation course.

Her be foremost post was at Fort Dix, New Jersey, as a stick nurse in the intensive hefty care unit (ICU) at Walson Army Hospital. In 1963, since the Vietnam War was vaporization up, Adams-Ender was sent in the vicinity of work as an ICU with the 121st Evacuation Health centre in Korea, where she extremely worked in the ICU. She was never assigned to endure duty, and after 13 months returned to the United States to complete an advanced nursing course, again at Fort Sam Houston.

In 1964 Adams-Ender became a surgical nursing instructor deliver ward chief at the base’s medical training center.

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It was her first fashion with teaching, but she would prove to be a apparent, and for the rest handle her career—both military and civilian—teaching would be an essential item of her life. While stationed at Fort Sam Houston, Adams-Ender achieved one of many “firsts” in her career: she became the first woman in authority U.S.

Army to earn loftiness Expert Field Medical Badge.

In 1967 Adams-Ender enrolled at the Asylum of Minnesota at Minneapolis come to an end pursue graduate training in nursing. Though she told M, “I remember the school fondly, dowel I believe in its proper and ideas,” it was amuse Minnesota that she first confronted racism. While growing up slice North Carolina she had free a lot of the profligacy of racism, since both ivory and black sharecroppers were evenly oppressed by the moneyed ladies.

Later, while a student squabble A & T, she participated in lunch counter protests, on the contrary kept her focus on institution books, not on racial affairs of state. However, by 1967 Adams-Ender could no longer avoid the period of racial discord that locked away engulfed the country. The nonmilitary rights movement was still incident, and the country was dogged adjusting.

Martin Luther King abstruse marched on Washington, the Appointment Rights Act had passed, nearby a few brave black division had begun to desegregate Austral universities. “When I got command somebody to Minnesota, people were up pulse arms,” she recalled to Category. “Many people had never aberrant an African-American person in their lives, but most had their opinions and most of them were bad.” She added, “I really did not realize rectitude depth of hatred based disappointment ignorance that existed.

It was a very illuminating experience misjudge me.” With a directness become absent-minded would come to characterize cobble together leadership style, Adams-Ender confronted illustriousness problem head-on. She joined exceptional local priest and “[held] short sensitivity sessions. We did pure lot in terms of informative people,” she recalled to M.

Climbed Through Military Ranks

After earning precise master’s degree in surgical nursing in 1969, Adams-Ender resumed supreme career as a military public servant.

Although she was a swarthy female in a traditionally pallid male environment, Adams-Ender was battle-cry bothered. She confessed to Pot-pourri, “My own expectations for actually were so much greater go one better than anyone else’s that I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on around me.” By that time she confidential already been promoted to class rank of captain.

From 1969 to 1972 Adams-Ender served formerly again as a surgical educate instructor, this time at Director Reed Army Medical Center restrict Washington, D.C., the largest care facility in the armed revive. She then moved up surrender the post of education compere at Walter Reed’s Institute interrupt Nursing.

At the same spell she served as assistant large of the department of nursing at Kimborough Army Hospital, sited at nearby Fort Meade, Colony. During this time Adams-Ender sailed through the rank of elder and in May of 1975 was promoted to the tier of lieutenant colonel.

Later that best Adams-Ender enrolled in the Gray Command and General Staff Faculty at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

In the way that she graduated in 1976 she added three more “firsts” come within reach of her resume: first woman, chief African-American woman, and first grow to earn a master’s proportion in military arts and sciences from the school. Her succeeding post was that of censor general at Fort Sam Houston’s Army Health Services Command.

Connect 1978 she was transferred behold West Germany, where she became chief of the department censure nursing at the army’s 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt. Adams-Ender oversaw four ICUs at nobleness hospital and actively worked let fall recruit and train skilled Unit nurses. The American hospital fetid close relationships with local Teutonic hospitals, and Adams-Ender was involved in the development of connotation of West Germany’s first neonatal ICUs.

For her service, say publicly German Army awarded Adams-Ender lying Cross of Honor in Cash. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army promoted her to the rank time off colonel. Before leaving Germany, she met F. Heinz Ender, ending oral surgeon and orthodontist. Rectitude two were married in 1981 and later had a litter, Sven Ingo.

Earned a General’s Star

Back in the United States, Adams-Ender became chief of nurse recruiting for the army at Start Sheridan, Illinois.

During this employment, she took time off touch on attend the army’s prestigious Conflict College and became the foremost African-American Nurse Corps officer know graduate from the school, long for a leadership diploma in 1982. In 1984 Adams-Ender scored in relation to “first” when she became position first African-American nurse to put up the position of chief entrap nursing at Walter Reed Soldiers Medical Center.

In August remark 1987 Adams-Ender transferred to distinction Office of the Surgeon Regular in Falls Church, Virginia, position she became chief of honourableness Army Nurse Corps. The people month she was promoted finish off the rank of brigadier community. According to Ebony she was the “second black to imagination command.” At the same disgust, Adams-Ender assumed the role show consideration for director of personnel for grandeur Surgeon General.

She was rendering first army nurse to attire this position. As the ordinal commander to lead the Bevy Nurse Corps, Adams-Ender oversaw 22,000 nurses. Under her command, zillions of nurses were sent count up battle during Operation Desert Tempest in 1990 and 1991. “She was basically the top bring up in the Army,” an office-holder told the News & Record.“There’s not too much further order about can get than that admire the nurse corps.”

While that possibly will have been true, Adams-Ender hot to go further.

Normally, tail finishing a term as fine corps chief, an officer retires. Adams-Ender became the first unit chief to remain on bolshie duty as a general office-holder after her tenure. In 1991 she was appointed deputy empress for the military district receive Washington, D.C., and commander collide Fort Belvoir, Virginia, making unlimited the first nurse in armed force history to become the controlling general of a major martial base.

In this role she oversaw 12,000 personnel and dinky budget of $90 million. Pause, she did not abandon added love of teaching and booked adjunct professorships in nursing nearby both Georgetown University in General, D.C., and Oakland University subordinate Rochester, Michigan.

In August of 1993, after a brilliant 32-year-long warlike career, Adams-Ender left the U.S.

Army. During her retirement party, composer Marge Wheeler conducted unmixed performance of “The General Adams-Ender March,” a majestic musical area created by Wheeler in bless of Adams-Ender. Following her privacy, Adams-Ender and her husband wool in the town of Tank container Ridge, Virginia, where she in a minute wrote and self-published her recollections, My Rise to the Stars: How a Sharecropper’s Daughter Became an Army General, along lay into co-author Blair Walker.

As quoted on Walker’s website, prominent doctor and author Dr. Benjamin Biologist wrote of the book, “General Adams-Ender treats us to clean up intimate glimpse of the trials as well as the amusement associated with military life. She helps us to realize go off at a tangent our own drive, determination extract hard work can guide impractical to the realization of blur dreams.

This is a just what the doctor ordered book for both ‘young’ stomach ‘old’ dreamers.” Adams-Enders also traditional CAPE Associates, an acronym connote Caring for People with Eagerness. CAPE is a management consulting firm with an emphasis restraint developing motivation and leadership. “With CAPE, I’m trying to edifying make people stars.

Not person can be a general, however everyone can be a main attraction if you care about refuse to eat and make sure you classic dealing with folks with faith in oneself and respect,” she told Set. It is the same comment she learned from her parents years ago while working put back the tobacco fields. With choice book in the works, by reason of well as a very jam-packed schedule of seminars and speeches, it is a message saunter she plans on sharing.

Selected writings

(With Blair S.

Walker) My Gush to the Stars: How copperplate Sharecropper’s Daughter Became an Blue General, CAPE Publishing, 2002.

Sources

Books

Adams-Ender, Clara, and Blair S. Walker, My Rise to the Stars: Attempt a Sharecropper’s Daughter Became type Army General, CAPE Publishing, 2002.

Periodicals

Black Enterprise, June 2002, p.

254.

Ebony, June 1989, p. 64.

Jet, Oct 21, 1991, p. 8.

News & Record (Piedmont Triad, NC), Hike 16, 2001, p. B3.

On-line

“Adams-Ender Saluted for Extraordinary Service,”NTI News, www.slackinc.com/nti/2003/tues.htm (May 23, 2003).

“Brigadier General Clara Adams-Ender (Ret.),”DefenseLink Biographies, www.defenselink.mil/specials/AfricanAm2003/ender.html (May 23, 2003).

“Clara Adams-Ender,”Army Nurse Corps, http://history.amedd.army.mil/ANCWebsite/18_Ender.html (May 23, 2003).

“Clara Acclaim.

Adams-Ender,”BlackSeek, www.blackseek.com/bh/2001/208_CEnder.htm (May 23, 2003).

“Great (and Grateful) Grads,” M, www1.umn.edu/urelate/m/winter2002/greatgrads.html (May 23, 2003).

“Inspirational Memoir Recounts Lessons Learned on the Put by Up,”Army Magazine, www.ausa.org/www/armymag.nsf/(reviews)/20025?OpenDocument (May 23, 2003).

“My Rise To The Stars,”Blair Walker Official Website, www.blairwalker.com/books.htm (May 23, 2003).

“Rise to the Stars,”OR Manager, www.ormanager.com/mtors/mtorsdocs/mtors02.pdf (May 23, 2003).

—Candace LaBalle