Higbee was born Lenah H. Sutcliffe in Chatham, New Brunswick, Canada, on 18 May 1874.[2] She completed nurses' training at the New York Post-Graduate Hospital in 1899 and entered private practice soon thereafter. Lenah Higbee took postgraduate training at Fordham Hospital, New York in 1908.
In 1899, she married retired Marine CorpsLieutenant Colonel John H. Higbee.[3] His first wife Isabel Higbee had died in 1898. John Higbee had served as a Marine Corps officer from 1861 to 1898. He died in April 1908 and was interred at Arlington National Cemetery.[4]
In October 1908, she joined the newly established U.S. Navy Nurse Corps as one of its first twenty members. These nurses, who came to be called "The Sacred Twenty", were the first women to formally serve as members of the Navy.[5] The Navy required its first Nurse Corps candidates to be between 22 and 44 years old and also unmarried. As a 34-year-old widow, Higbee met these requirements.[3]
She was promoted to Chief Nurse in 1909. Lenah Higbee became Chief Nurse at Norfolk Naval Hospital in April 1909.[6]
In January 1911, Higbee became the second Superintendent of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps.[7] For her achievements in leading the Corps through the First World War, Chief Nurse Higbee was the first woman awarded the Navy Cross. Navy nurses Marie Louise Hidell, Lillian M. Murphy and Edna E. Place were also awarded the Navy Cross in 1920 for their World War I service, but these women all received the award posthumously after having succumbed to the Spanish flu, which they contracted while caring for hospital patients.[3][8][9]
Date of Action: 1918
The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Superintendent Lenah Sutcliff Higbee, United States Navy, for distinguished service in the line of her profession and unusual and conspicuous devotion to duty as Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps.[10]
United States Navy
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