CDR Lucy D. Ozarin, USN Ret. Oral History Part 1

title:

CDR Lucy D. Ozarin, USN Ret. Oral History Part 1

creator:

Ozarin, Lucy Dorothy (1914 Aug 18 - )

subject:

Navy WAVES

description:

Part 1 of 2. Lucy D. Ozarin was born on August 18, 1914 in Brooklyn, New York, where she lived with her parents and three older siblings until they moved to Long Island when she was seven. She graduated from Lawrence High School in 1930 and went to New York University for three years, then going to medical school at the Medical College of New York, getting her bachelor’s degree in 1934 and finishing medical school in 1937. Her two-year internship after graduation was at Harlem Hospital. Her last six months there were spent in pediatrics, but her favorite service was doing home medical care and running ambulance. After her internship, she worked at the Westchester County Hospital and the Gowanda State Hospital from 1939 to 1943. She tried to join the Navy in 1942 but the hospital she worked at labeled her as an essential worker, so she resigned from that hospital and was able to join in October 1943. She was shipped off to Bethesda, Maryland to work in psychiatry at the US Naval Hospital there. She was there for four months as a sort of orientation, then got orders to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Although she’d worked in psychiatry for four years at that point, her Commanding Officer had her doing physicals on laborers hired to work at the base. After six weeks there, she wrote to a doctor she knew in Bethesda and soon after got orders to the WAVES Training Station in the Bronx, New York. She stayed in an apartment to herself at Hunter College while stationed there for a year. There were three or four other women doctors stationed at Hunter College at the same time as her. Her final station was as a Ward Medical Officer at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. After leaving active duty in June 1946, she began working at the VA Central Office in Washington, DC. She remained in the Navy Reserve for another eleven years, resigning in 1957 when she left the VA to work with Public Health Service. In 1960, she went to the Harvard School of Public Health. She worked at federal mental health centers for the rest of her career, from 1963 until her retirement in 1981. While working at PHS, she went on a three-week work trip to Guam, Cypan, and Truk and Yap, and in 1973 she went to India for two months to work with World Health, both of which she greatly enjoyed. When she left the service Ozarin had reached the rank of commander, and for her service she was awarded an American Campaign Medal and World War II Victory Medal. A transcript of this interview is available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Bellafaire, Judy

date:

2005-03-02

type:

Moving Image

format:

Hi-8

identifier:

716.01; 2005.716

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk

language:

English

relation:

470041

coverage:

World War II (1939-1945) | 1943-46

rights:

Unrestricted