MONTGOMERY - Elma L. Rinehart, a farm girl from Eaton, Ohio who tended wounded soldiers as a U.S. Army nurse on the battlefields of Western Europe in World War II, died Sunday. She was 92.
Ms. Rinehart, a Montgomery resident, died of congestive heart failure at Hospice of Cincinnati in Blue Ash, said her nephew Richard Dineen of Montgomery.
When the men of her generation were called to service, Ms. Rinehart answered as well, taking her training as a registered nurse at Earlham College and enlisting on Sept. 8, 1941, before the United States entered the war.
She rose to the rank of captain, serving until V-E Day as a surgical nurse and earning three bronze battle stars for campaigns in the Ardennes Forest, the Rhineland and Central Europe.
As with many of the men of her generation, she didn't talk up her war service, her nephew said.
"She always liked to tell the story of how she left to come back home again," said Dineen. "That's a good news kind of thing."
Ms. Rinehart did speak of the danger, of being bombed by Luftwaffe planes during the Battle of the Bulge. She spoke of 12 hour days six days a week, working in a tent on the most serious of chest wounds in the 128th Evacuation Hospital near the battlefront.
A proud patriot, she always honored her service and arranged reunions and gave to military-related charitable causes, among them Veterans of Foreign Wars.
As the war wrapped up, Ms. Rinehart found herself in New York City, working at a military hospital on Staten Island.
While there, she earned bachelor's and master's degrees in nursing from New York University before returning to Ohio in the late 1950s to care for her aging parents George Rinehart Sr. and Ruth Druley Rinehart, both of whom lived into their 90s.
Ms. Rinehart was eventually associate director of nursing at General Hospital, which later became University Hospital.
She also worked at Good Samaritan Hospital and authored "Management of Nursing Care," a textbook she was still receiving royalties for as recently as several years ago, her nephew said.
Ms. Rinehart, who was born Dec. 10, 1917, never married and had no children, instead committing her life to helping people.
"Her legacy was service to others. She was just made that way," Dineen said.
