Biography

In 1969, shortly after graduating from the Mount Carmel School of Nursing in Columbus, Ohio, Diane had a brief stint working on the orthopedic unit before heading to Ft. Sam Huston, Texas for her Army Nurse Corps basic training. Diane’s nect two years were at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky as a general duty nurse (MOS 3499) and Ft. Meade, Maryland in obstetrics. In 1970, 1LT Diane Dye married the love of her life, Richard Helferich, whom she had med on a bliind dat during her junior year at Mount Carmel. Richard was still finishing up his Engineering degree at The Ohio State University, so he got a dependent ID and could partake of all the privileges accorded to active duty/family members. However, after he graduated from college, he could no longer have a dependent ID and lost all of his family privileges simply because Diane was a female. (Men married to female service members were not granted full ‘dependent’ status until ordered to do so via the May 14, 1973 Frontiero v. Richardson Supreme Court ruling). For her service, Diane was awarded the National Defense Service Medal.

After the Army, Diane’s children, Matthew and Christina, were her main focus, as they were born 17 months apart in 1971 and 1973, respectively. They raised these two wonderful red-headed children in the design of her mother-in-law who was known to have said, “Children are an investment in the future, and grandchildren would be the return on that investment.” Diane now states that their investment paid off as they are currently blessed with 10 grandchildren and one great-grand child. But Diane, as a stay-at-home mom was still serving her country and community by joining the local volunteer fire department with her husband, where Diane served as a firefighter, driving the fire engine and operating the pump, and paramedic. Once the children started grade school, Diane began to work part-time as an ER nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Dayton, Ohio. Diane states that until settling in the Dayton area, most might remember her as ‘the girl from Kansas,’ because she was the only one in her graduating class not from Ohio. Diane finds it humorous that they settled in Ohio after the Army and now have lived in the Dayton area for the past 52 years. In 2025, Diane and her husband celebrated their 55th anniversary.

During these earlier career years, Diane noticed a newspaper articles about the GI bill advising that Vietnam-Era veterans had only a few more years to use it before the education benefit expired. She immediately registered in the BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) program at Wright State University, studying full-time from 1979 to 1982. After graduating from Wright State, Diane taught one quarter of critical care nursing at Sinclair Community College from 1983 to 1989, was the Continuing Education coordinator for four years at the Maria Joseph Living Care Center, taught one year of Paramedic Education at Good Samaritan Hospital, and was a Program Coordinator for United Health Services for 10 months. Diane completed a Master’s degree in Healthcare Administration from Central Michigan University during this time as well. From 2006-2007, Diane served her community again as a County Veterans Service Commissioner. Her final job was working at the Ohio Board of Nursing as a Regional Consultant for seven years, and then as a Compliance Agent investigating nursing complaints submitted to the Board. Diane retired in 2010 after 20-plus years there. Today, Diane enjoys her retirement as a lifetime AMVETS member, professional wife, mom, and grandma.

Summary

The second of three continuous generations of women that have served in the United States Military, Diane Helferich served as a nurse during the Vietnam War era. Despite the misgivings of her mother (herself a World War II era nurse) and future husband, Diane joined the Army ROTC program in her last year of her three-year nursing program in order to have her degree paid for and a guaranteed job when she graduated. During Diane’s service, the attitude of both her mother and her husband changed. Between September 1969 and July 1971, Diane served as a pediatric nurse, a nurse in the Upper Respiratory Infection (URI) ward, and a labor and delivery nurse for military wives before ultimately leaving the service due to her own pregnancy. During her time at Fort Campbell as a nurse in the URI Ward, Diane cared for soldiers going through basic training, particularly those who caught meningitis and many who ultimately died. She saw diseases in soldiers returning from Vietnam such as Blackwater Malaria that she, “Would never have come across if I hadn’t have been where somebody had just gotten back from a jungle where there things like that.” Diane recalls how the negative cultural reactions to the war impacted her service.

In addition to her experiences in hospital wards, Diane discusses both her experience making lifelong friends in the military and her experience being sexually assaulted by a military doctor. While she never deployed to Vietnam, Diane tells of how she felt at being told that she would be. She later connects it to her daughter’s own service in Afghanistan, and how Diane, “Never allowed myself to dwell on anything negative.” Diane uses her own experiences during Vietnam and the Fall of Saigon to draw comparisons to the United States’ actions in the Middle East and the exit from Afghanistan, saying she feels more emotionally involved with Iraq and Afghanistan because of her daughter’s experiences. Having known that she wanted to be a nurse from a young age, Diane explains how nursing gave her an opportunity to take care of people, which has been a through line of her entire adult life.

1After retiring from the military, Diane served first as a paramedic and then as an emergency room nurse, where she continued to help others. Diane stresses the importance of the education that was required for her bachelor’s degree in nursing and how it made her a more effective advocate for her patients. She continued her education to get a master’s degree in hospital administration and worked to set up the nurse training program in the state of Ohio while working as a nurse investigator. After retirement, at the prompting of her family, Diane began to identify as a veteran. She has never seen her service as sacrifice. Instead, it was a choice, a duty, and something she, “Got out a lot more than I put in.” Diane would like people to learn that lesson from her story; life is about what you put into it and what you get out of it.

Attitude and Outlook on Military Service

Camila Bohabot: Knowing that you could have been sent to Vietnam, how did you feel about that? Were you nervous? Were you accepting of it? How were you?

Diane Helferich: Well, I knew that it was totally possible that I was going to go to Vietnam, and it was and we are one of the few branches of women in the world that were stationed—except for the girls Red Cross girls, who they call the doughnut dollies, which I think is kind of a put down on them because they did a lot—but they went over to Vietnam, too, but the army nurses, basically everybody else was on a ship or they’d be in and out. But the army nurses were basically the ones that were down on the ground in with wherever they were at. Like we saw M*A*S*H*, you know, that was kind of about what it was. I totally thought it could happen. I did have a dream one night that I was getting ready to go to war, and I was scared, getting shot at and everything. Then I just woke up and I said, “Forget that. It’s going to happen? It’s going to happen.” I’ve had veterans in our family that went to war. My grandfather was in World War I, and my uncle and father were in World War II and Korean War. That was—and we just, if you’re going to make it, you’re going to make it. That’s just what’s going to happen. I didn’t really, I didn’t really obsess on that. No. But I was ready to go. When you got through there, they made you say, “Sign me up,” because you’re like, oh yeah. Anyway. And when you’re young, you think you can do anything. You’re not—nothing scares you really.

Desire to Be a Nurse and Its Reality

Eliza Souser: Did you always know that you wanted to be a nurse?

Diane Helferich: From about the time I was ten-years-old, I realized what my mother did and everything. I want to be like her. I always wanted to be like her. Strong lady. . .

The Military as a Male-Dominated Field

“The biggest thing that really irked me when I was in was in, when my husband and I eloped and got married, he was in his fifth year of a five-year program in Engineering at Ohio State. When we got married, he came down, and I got his blood test done at the hospital, and then we went and got married and all that stuff, and then I took him over to the ID place because we were married now, so he could get a dependent ID, so he did. He got a dependent ID, so he could go to the grocery store with me, commissary, PX. He could get medical treatment because he was my spouse. Well, then he graduated, and he was working at Annapolis, and I got transferred to Fort Meade, and so I went over. I said, ‘You know what? Let’s go get you a new ID,’ because, I don’t know why I wanted to. I forget, I guess. I forget what I wanted to do, but I went over there, and I said, ‘We need his ID, and this is why.’ The military said, ‘He’s not your dependent anymore.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, he’s not my dependent? He’s my husband,” and they said, ‘No, he’s not your dependent anymore,’ so he couldn’t get an ID. He couldn’t get medical care. He couldn’t go to PX with me. He couldn’t go to the commissary. He couldn’t get on the post without me being there, and it was only because I said to them, ‘What do you mean? Because he’s working on everything.’ I said, ‘I work with nurses whose husbands are enlisted, and they make twice as much as he do, and they’re dependents, and they can go to the grocery store, and they can do all these things.’ And they said, ‘It’s just the way it is.’ That was in ’70. I think it was in ’72 or ’73, somewhere around there. Ruth Bader Ginsburg brought a case like this to the Supreme Court of an Air Force woman whose husband could not get their treatment. Same thing happened, and she brought that through, and the Supreme Court made a decision on it that that was unconstitutional, and they could do that.”

Thoughts on the Vietnam War: Past and Present

Camila Bohabot: To continue with that, there was a lot of anti-war movements then. Would you be able to explain that time a little more just for context, your ideas on the war, I guess, your ideas on the war then and your ideas on the war now?

Diane Helferich: Well, I didn’t like the fact that we were at war in Vietnam. I didn’t like the fact guys were going over there and getting killed. I didn’t understand the whole history and look back at it and I say, “Why were we there?” But I was there for the people who had no choice about going over there, and they needed to have the help. The other thing, too, is I remember we had raincoats that were really cool looking raincoats for our uniform. But they said, If you’re ever going to wear them out in public, take all of your rank and everything off of them because it’s not real popular. If somebody thinks you’re in the military, you’re out there walking around. It’s okay. I never said much about when I was when I was in the military. I was out in public. Though I did do some military standbys and you had to have your uniform on for that, but everybody was just like nobody bothered me then.

Thoughts on Vietnam War: Fall of Saigon parallel to Afghanistan and Iraq

Diane Helferich: Somewhere around that time, I think, when Saigon fell. I just thought that was, it was so hard to be there. And you know, you see that anytime in Afghanistan when we pulled out of there. There’s just no easy way to do it. It’s just hard and the people that are back there, especially the ones that helped us, the interpreters and that sort of thing. I don’t know in Vietnam.

Jason Higgins: Did watching the fall of Kabul also resurface some of those memories from 1975 for you?

Diane Helferich: I think it probably was going around in my head a little bit of all the people trying to hang on to the helicopters and everybody being so panicked. It’s just unimaginable, especially when you were helping people, and then they pull up and you’re gone. They can’t do anything about it. A lot of people lost their lives because of that, in Vietnam and in Afghanistan.

Advice for Women and Nurses in the Military

“Well, you’re going to be, whatever you’re doing in your life, whether you’re in the military or out of it, you make choices about how you’re going to live your life, and you make the choices based on where you’re at and what you want to do or what direction do you want to go and it really is kind of a little scary when you think about the fact that, but for this simple little decision you made at this point in time, that your whole world changed.”