Lt. Col. Rachel Diane “Rae” Landy (1884-1952) was a military nurse who served in both World War I and II and was one of the first of two American nurses sent to Palestine by Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, to support the development of community public health initiatives.
Landy was born in Lithuania; her family emigrated to Cleveland in 1890 when she was six years old. In 1904, she graduated from the newly founded Jewish Women’s Hospital (now known as Mt. Sinai Hospital) in Cleveland. From 1913-1915, she worked for Hadassah, assisting in the creation of the first public health and sanitation systems in Palestine.
Landy’s archives at AJHS reflect the range of medical care that she and Rose Kaplan, the other American nurse dispatched to Palestine by Hadassah, provided. Care included treating trachoma, an eye disease caused by a bacterial infection, and furnishing pre- and post-natal care to mothers and infants in an effort to combat elevated maternal mortality rates. Working under difficult conditions with limited supplies, equipment, funds, and personnel, Landy and Kaplan established a training program for midwives as well as a settlement house and clinic to teach nursing skills, provide medical treatment, and counseling. Landy’s letters home also detail the effects of wartime starvation in Palestine and the lack of supplies due to locusts destroying crops and high costs of soap, petroleum, and coal.
World War I and the blockade of Palestine temporarily ended the program, and in November 1915 Rae Landy returned to Cleveland to care for her parents. After moving to New York City in 1916, Landy became assistant superintendent of nurses at Fordham Hospital. In 1918, she joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and was stationed in Coblenz, Germany and Antwerp, Belgium. Landy also served at the White House in 1924 during the serious illness of President Calvin Coolidge’s son, Calvin Jr.
From 1935-1938, Landy worked as chief nurse at the U.S. Army base in the Philippines and at various army installations throughout the United States. In 1940, she became one of four assistant superintendents of the Army Nurse Corps and was stationed on Governors Island in New York Harbor. Landy was eventually promoted to Lt. Colonel.
In a speech in 1937 commemorating Hadassah’s 25th anniversary, Landy recounted her wartime experience, writing: “I feel my part was just a mere drop in the ocean, for I gave so little in comparison to what I received, while living and working in Jerusalem for nearly three years. I learned so much from Hadassah, from my friends and my co-workers in Jerusalem of idealism and the true spirit of service.”
A letter from Zip Falk, the fourth president of Hadassah, signed “Mrs. Robert Szold” (Robert Szold, a lawyer and Zionist movement leader was the third cousin of Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold), praises Lt. Col. Landy’s work as chief nurse at Crile Veterans Hospital in her hometown of Cleveland as well as her service to Hadassah.
Lt. Col. Landy died in 1952 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. AJHS honored her and all veterans this past Memorial Day.
