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Eloise Rallings Lewis Collection

WVHP

Collection finding aid (offsite)

Eloise Patricia Rallings Lewis (1920-1999) of Pageland, South Carolina, served on the faculty of Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and as an assistant director of the Cadet Nurse Corps with the Army Nurse Corps during World War II. Lewis served as dean of the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) from 1966 to 1985. Eloise Patricia Rallings Lewis was born on 22 April 1920 in Pageland, South Carolina, the fourth daughter of Dr. and Mrs. J. Monroe Rallings, a country medical practitioner and a college speech teacher. She graduated from Pageland High School in 1936. Lewis attended Winthrop College in Rock Hill, South Carolina, for two years, and then transferred in 1938 to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She graduated in 1941 from their hospital school program. Lewis served on the faculty of the Women's Medical College School of Nursing in Philadelphia from 1941 to 1943. From 1943 to 1945 she was an instructor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Lewis joined the Army Nurse Corps in the spring of 1945. After attending basic training at Fort Lee in Virginia, she became the assistant director of the Cadet Nurse Corps at the Valley Forge General Hospital in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, which was a primary burn and blind center. She was discharged in December 1945 as a first lieutenant. Lewis received her master's degree in education in 1951 from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was also on the faculty from 1946 to 1952. She joined the faculty of the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1953 and taught there until 1966. She also earned a doctorate in education at Duke University in 1963. Lewis became the first dean of the School of Nursing at UNCG in 1966. She retired from UNCG in 1985. Lewis was active with the UNCG community and in various professional organizations throughout her career and after her retirement. She was the president of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing from 1978 to 1980 and the first editor of the Journal of Professional Nursing in the mid-1980s. She was also very active with hospice care in Greensboro. Lewis received numerous awards for her contributions to the nursing field and four honorary degrees. Eloise Lewis died in 1999.

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