Charlotte Cooley graduated from Tonkawa High School in 1944 and then from OU School of Nursing. With degree in hand and the Korean War mounting, she immediately joined the Air Force, which sent her to Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama where she was commissioned as a First Lieutenant with the 1453rd Medical Air Transport Squadron. She spent two years nursing wounded soldiers on flights from Tokyo to Japan. In 1979 Charlotte obtained a PHD in Education and continued to work in nursing, including establishing a nursing school in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Charlotte Cooley’s parents were Clyde and Ida Manley Cooley. She also had a sister, Cynthia, who graduated from THS. The Cooleys will probably be best remembered by Tonkawa folks as owners of the Prim Shop. Charlotte’s information was sent by Eddie Manley. Manley also sent an article from Cosmopolitan published in May of 1953. Charlotte told Eddie “the camera man followed her around for almost two weeks taking pictures for the article. Originally, she was supposed to be on the cover, but Marilyn Monroe beat her out.”
The article is titled “Flight Angel” and notes that she is from Tonkawa, Oklahoma and her Air Force pay was $270 a month, raised to $399 by the time the article was written. It also chronicles her assignments and duties from her first station in Honolulu, flying 100 hours a month taking sick servicemen to San Francisco. Still stationed in Honolulu when the Korean War broke out, Charlotte flew to Tokyo four times a month, picked up medical vats, coffee, box lunches, and forty-five to sixty wounded delivered to San Francisco two days later. She is described as “nurse, mother, and sweetheart to the wounded she helps transport. The same article is about ten pages of photos highlighting Charlotte ministering to wounded soldiers on board the C-97 on which she flew. One photo shows an amputee calling her “sweetie pie” while another features her administering sedation to a “serious case” whose head was partly replaced with a steel plate. During calmer times, she catnaps and knits, and at the end of a flight she puts her records in order and prepares for the next flight. The article quotes her feelings about her career as military nurse: She “knows she has done her small bit to make them healthier and happier, but they have done far more for her.”
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