Gertrude L. Scott

2LT Gertrude L. Scott was from Bradford, Pennsylvania. She holds the distinction of being the first former TAAF nurse to give birth. In the July 15, 1944 Hawk’s Cry, writer Robert Taylor records the delivery in the Hospital Headlines section, “…the distinction of being the first former TAAF nurse to become a proud mother at this installation goes to Mrs. Gertrude Scott Burton, wife of Capt. Roscoe P. Burton, Headquarters Property Officer. A bouncing baby boy arrived to their delight, and mother and child progressed so well that they were discharged last week…”

Scott was a surgical nurse at the air field in 1942. Earlier, she and nurse Elizabeth Dozier were part of an item reported in the October 15, 1943 base paper (nine months before her son’s birth). The two nurses were reported back on the job after being sick. In the November 5, 1943 edition of the Hawk’s Cry, it was written that she had been transferred as a patient to Northington General Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “We hope her recovery will be rapid and her return soon.” It was noted at the 1977 Tuskegee Airmen Convention that Gertrude Scott-Burton was deceased. In ancestry.com, there was mentioned a Gertrude Scott who was born on September 1, 1908 and died in 1977.

(Information from 1942 yearbook, Hawk’s Cry and station hospital roster, ancestry.com, Pittsburgh Courier, August 15, 1942)