Retired S.A. military nurse turns 101, lives to help others

But staying up late was about as much excitement as she wanted. A low-key way to celebrate her second century of living struck Zachar as just the right approach.

There will be no big party, unlike her 100th birthday, only dinner with friends Friday night and perhaps some thinking later on about a long and consequential life.

“I keep saying I’m surprised to be here. But I have no idea,” Zachar said, referring to why she’s lived so long. “Most of my family died in their early 70s. One sister lived to 84, so there was no hint that I would be 101. And I have a little joke about who in the world would want to be 101 — well, someone who’s 100.”

Long retired, Zachar is clearheaded, upbeat and has done a few things of note.

She was among the first women to reach lieutenant colonel after the Army’s promotion list was opened to females in 1967, said San Antonio historian John Manguso, a neighbor of Zachar’s in the Towers, a high-rise just outside Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston.

It was a time of profound change and upheaval. The Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts had only been on the books a few years, and the Vietnam War was raging.

Personal freedoms were growing, with some combat arms jobs opened for the first time to women in the early 1970s, Manguso said, recalling a female training in his advanced artillery class at Fort Sill, Okla.

Zachar also helped drive the decision to place nurses in every Department of Defense school overseas.

She had spent time in 17 schools as a nurse and examined thousands of children when she decided it was an impossible job. Zachar wrote a paper arguing that the system should place nurses in each school to better care for those kids, all dependents of American troops.

Her idea won approval.

That wasn’t the last time Zachar did something to make life better in the world — a thing she says just might be the secret to her longevity. She was working in a ward during the 1950s at Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Denver when doctors performed their first successful heart operations on children.

If common now, those procedures were relatively new in that era, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.

“I would care for each child during the lengthy pre-op period and send the child to surgery on the day of their operation,” she told the Women In Military Service for America Memorial. “They didn’t return. This happened for several children.

“At last, two young boys successfully lived through the surgical procedure and thrived. It was such a momentous event. The hospital released a detailed report to the local media.”

She also helped create a scholarship for academic achievers at Jefferson High School in Iowa, where she graduated as the class valedictorian in 1939.

“I just think if you can help somebody, it helps you, too,” she explained.

Zachar grew up on a 200-acre farm northwest of Des Moines. Her parents, Arthur and Bertha Brown, grew corn and oats and raised pigs, cows and chickens.

It was perhaps in the solitude of the Midwest that the desire for traveling first took root, but the potential for seeing different places and people became apparent after she met Capt. Bert Young in Anchorage, Alaska, where he was posted, and she worked in a hospital and a construction company dispensary.

He went there on orders. She simply decided to go there.

“I wanted to see something else, saw an ad for Alaska and just went — didn’t know anybody.”

Zachar was widowed in 1953 and working at a hospital in Rochester, Minn., when she decided to join the Army the following year. She had seen life as a military wife, enjoyed the occasional moves and saw the practical side of putting on the uniform — a better retirement plan.

“At first, I thought I’d try it and see what I think,” she said. “Well, I tried it for 20 years.”

When you talk with Zachar, she often talks of “challenges,” not problems. It’s a military way of looking at a world full of imperfections.

None of what she endured in the Cold War military ruffled her feathers much, including the time a group of Marines and sailors got into a brawl on Okinawa, Japan. They were treated at the local hospital for a variety of fractures, and still so drunk doctors didn’t need to use anesthetics.

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The work of a nurse could be hard, particularly when staffing was thin. On Okinawa, for example, there was no backup nearby, so medical personnel made do. At one point a pediatric nurse, Zachar later moved into public health and saw that as a break.

“It was helping them stay well,” she explained.

The thrust of that job was preventive medicine, starting with teaching women to examine their breasts for signs of cancer. It wasn’t unusual for young mothers to feel overwhelmed, and the nurses in her program could ease that a bit. When women brought their newborns to the clinic, it was easier to diagnose problems well before they festered.

“Usually, the first baby, we would visit the home to make sure everything was going all right. We had well-baby clinics two or three times a week,” Zachar said. “I just felt like we were helping them keep healthy.”

Another challenge was the second-class status of women for much of her career.

The main difference between men and women in the military for her was that she wasn’t on the same promotion schedule as her male counterparts. It wasn’t something Zachar thought much about because gender discrimination was baked into federal law.

Still, the system bothered her when she learned of a married woman who had joined the Army. Her husband also had intended to join, but he was declared unfit for military service because of high blood pressure.

While the spouse of a male soldier and her children qualified for military benefits, he didn’t.

“I did not think that was fair,” she said. “It was a real sacrifice for them.”

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Zachar was settling into a master’s in nursing program at UCLA when a letter came in the mail identifying her as “Lt. Col. Hazel Zachar.” Wondering what that was about but no longer posted on a military installation while at UCLA, she got resourceful and picked up the phone.

“I was in a civilian situation, so I called the recruiting office in Santa Monica and asked if they had a recent Army Times and was there a list of promotions for nurses and lieutenant colonels. They looked and, yes, there was and, yes, my name was on it. So I was one of the first to be promoted after the law changed,” she said. “That was a surprise.”

Before she closed out her career as a bird colonel, Zachar served as chief of Fort Sam’s Army Health Nurse Program at Brooke Army Medical Center, a post she held from 1970-74.

Over the decades, she’s developed a point of view that’s carried her through 101 years. It’s founded in one of the dark chapters of her days, a time when her second husband, Martin Zachar, suffered from Alzheimer’s.

At one point, she recalls being clinically depressed.

“And after he died and everything was taken care of, I just said, ‘I’m tired of being overcome by the problems.’ I chose to live a happy life, and I said with friends, ‘If you do agree, welcome aboard, and if not, it’s been nice knowing you,’” she said, laughing like a pirate.

“So I really try and see the positive, no matter what the situation, and I like to help people. That’s very rewarding to me.”

sigc@express-news.net