ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 18, 1996 TAG: 9601180019
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: E-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RANDY WALKER STAFF WRITER
MEMO: Story ran in Current on Jan. 21, 1996
Nurse Susan McCall sat beside the litter in the darkness. The young serviceman had a gunshot wound in the head and was not expected to live. The scene was outside a field hospital in Panama 1989, during the U.S. invasion.
"Do you know where you are?" she asked.
"Yes, I'm in hell," he said.
"No, you're at an air base," she said.
"No, I'm in hell and my head is on fire," he said. He asked McCall to pour water on his head.
A corpsman suggested pain medication instead, but the serviceman declined. He knew that head injury cases weren't supposed to receive pain medicine.
Despite his delusion about hell, McCall thought he was too coherent to be dying. She asked a doctor to re-evaluate him. He was flown back to a military hospital in the United States, where he eventually recovered with his mental function intact.
Susan McCall had come a long way from being a candy striper at Lewis-Gale Hospital.
She would go farther still: being promoted to assistant chief of the Army Nurse Corps, second in command of the Army's 4,100 nurses, six years later, in November 1995.
Col. Susan McCall, 52, began life as Susan Carol Sweeney, third oldest of the eight children of Cecil and Edith Sweeney. Cecil was a draftsman for Appalachian Power. The Sweeneys lived then, as they still do, on Tipton Avenue in Garden City, a semirural neighborhood in southeast Roanoke.
Growing up in the 1940s and '50s, the children's pleasures were simple. They packed lunches and climbed Mill Mountain; they participated in events at Garden City Baptist Church. Sometimes one or two children would catch a bus to the city library and get books for everyone.
Susan attended Garden City Elementary and Lee Junior High, and graduated from Jefferson High School in 1961. She decided on a nursing career after serving as a candy striper at the old Lewis-Gale Hospital in Roanoke.
She earned a diploma in nursing at Roanoke Memorial Hospitals, then worked at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. There, she met Rich McCall, whom she married in 1968.
Rich McCall was obligated to serve two years in the Army. When he entered service in 1971, Susan decided to enter with him.
Somewhat to their surprise, the McCalls found they enjoyed military life. When the two years were up, they applied for service in Europe. One assignment led to another, and the McCalls became career Army officers.
The McCalls were always stationed together. At first, the two careers advanced equally. "Then mine sort of took precedence after we reached the rank of major," Susan McCall said.
Among her posts have been Mannheim, Germany; Fort Myer, Va.; Fort Knox, Ky.; Fort Bragg, N.C.; and Fort McPherson, Ga. She was chief nurse at Gorgas Army Hospital in Panama and chief nurse in the Panama invasion. She treated victims of Hurricane Hugo on the island of St. Croix and indigent citizens of Honduras.
At age 43, McCall attended jump school at Fort Benning, Ga.
"That's pretty unusual - not many nurses go, and the average age is about 20. I was twice everybody's age. We were in the process of developing a new type of unit,'' she said. ``It was called a Forward Surgical Team, a light mobile airborne unit that could perform lifesaving surgical procedures. All of the people and equipment could fit on one aircraft."
McCall enjoyed jumping out of airplanes and later attended Jump Master School with the 82nd Airborne Division.
This nomadic lifestyle has been possible partly because the McCalls have no children. "That's one of the reasons I stayed in," says McCall, a soft-spoken woman who pauses before answering questions. "I feel like I couldn't have done both. I don't think I could have been as successful."
McCall's latest assignment brings her to Falls Church, headquarters of the Army Nurse Corps. "I provide the operational guidance," she said. "I assist in policy-making for the corps. And because the whole Army is continuing to downsize, I'm involved in determining how we're going to downsize."
One area of interest will be mobile field hospitals, the modern-day MASH 4077s. McCall has made the equipment of field units and training of field nurses her specialty. In Bosnia, for example, the operations of Army hospitals bear her stamp. In her new position she will have even more influence.
At the appointment ceremony, the oath of office was administered by her husband, retired as a colonel after 22 years of service. Also in attendance were Susan's parents.
"I was very proud to have them there, because throughout my career, whenever I had gotten a promotion, they had not been able to attend,'' she said. ``I was proud to think that someone from Garden City who never intended to make a career in the Army was now in a position of influence. And I was certainly proud for my parents because I know they were proud of their daughter."
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Col. Susan McCall (right) takes the oath of appointmentby CNBas assistant chief of the Army Nurse Corps. Administering the oath
is her husband, Lt. Col. Richard McCall (retired). Susan McCall's
parents, Cecil and Edith Sweeney of Roanoke, watch.