Myrtle Huber was a young nursing student in 1944 living in Walnut, Iowa, when she received a letter from another nurse, who was treating her older brother, a road-building engineer, for malaria in Burma at the time.
She said she decided then if someone could care for her brother, she could do the same thing to help others. So even before she knew she had passed her state boards, she asked her mother to drive her to a recruiter’s office, where she signed up to join the Army Nurses Corps.
“I said, ‘I’m going to do something.’ It was an interesting two years,” she said of her Army service.
She grew up in Iowa with two brothers and two sisters.
“I was the baby,” she said. She took basic training at Fort Carson, Colo., which “was kind of fun,” and she was at Camp Kilmer and Camp Lejeune for a couple weeks before boarding the Queen Mary II for a cruise through the Panama Canal to The Phillipines.
She served in The Phillipines for 18 months in something resembling a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. She served with a rank of second lieutenant.
“There were casualties of all kinds,” she said. At the end of her service she cared for four men in iron lungs.
Her older brother, who was 45 at the time, was in the Pacific on a Navy ship, but the closest they ever got to each other was about a mile apart, she explained.
Her brother said he was coming to Goshen after the war and moved here to work for Penn Controls, so Myrtle also came here after her service ahead of him. While waiting for him, she went to work in the Goshen Hospital on North Fifth Street, met and married her husband, Orris, in September, 1946.
She and Orris raised two sons, Newell, now living in Orange Park, Fla., and Roy, who lives south of Goshen on U.S. 33. They also have seven grandchildren.
Orris had a career at Bendix, South Bend, before he died in 1993.
Myrtle worked several years at both the old and the new Goshen hospitals, then went to work for a new Goshen doctor, Dr. Neil Harris, for the next 13 years. She then was employed at Elkhart General Hospital for 12 more years. At age 63, she decided to retire to go visit and help her mother.
“On my last day of work, a woman came to me and said I would be great in home health care,” she said. And after she returned from her visit with her mother, she joined the home care business.
She said except for the military service, she enjoyed home health care the most.
But after a time, she got bored, she said, and moved to Florida, living in the Avon Park and Sebring areas. It was during her 15 years in Florida that she helped start a Veterans of Foreign Wars post for residents of “Fed Haven,” a retirement community.
She also has been a member of the Goshen VFW and American Legion posts the past 36 years. She has served as adjutant of both her VFW organizations and is currently the only woman member of VFW 985.
“I make suggestions” she said. She tries not to say “we did that in Sebring” about her ideas for the Goshen post. She said the VFW helps families of soldiers who are serving overseas.
“I’ve even recommended that a nurse go into the service,” she said.
After battling osteoporosis and diabetes recently, she said she is feeling much better and hopes to return to being active at the VFW. She credits some of her recovery to the workout she gets at the nearby exercise room.
Since she has been back in Goshen the past seven years, she has been active at her current community, Greencroft. She has attended Presbyterian churches here and in Florida, but now stays in Greencroft usually on Sunday.
“There are plenty of religious programs here,” she said, besides those on TV.
Her small apartment is decorated with her collection of tigers — stuffed animals as well as paintings.
Plans Veterans Day Event
“I was here three years before I asked ‘What we do on Veterans’ Day?’” Huber said. “I was told ‘We don’t do anything,’ and I said ‘we’re going to now.’”
With the help of friends at the VFW and Legion, she has helped sponsor a program each November at Evergreen Place, which she described as the “easy living” unit.
“We have had it every year since then. We invited 125 veterans that first year. We had 75 last year,” she said. After the program, there is a social time for residents to get acquainted.
“There is something going on every time you turn around, even in Manor II,” she said. She said the food is good, but she often cooks for herself.
“I stay home a lot, but I’m not lonesome. I’m not alone. There are 500 people here,” she said. “If you’re alone or lonely, it’s your fault. There are good people here.”
And she occasionally runs into a former patient of Dr. Harris in the halls.
Myrtle stopped driving about eight months ago and gave her car to a granddaughter. She now relies on friends or the Greencroft transportation system to get around town.
Her son, Roy, sometimes picks her up in his motorhome and takes her on road trips.
“That’s how we vacationed. Someone would say ‘Where are we going?’ and the answer was ‘who knows?’ The four of us jumped in the car and headed out,” without a real plan, she said.
The family has visited Mackinaw City, Mich. and Mackinac Island and traveled to Florida, too, she explained.
