The following was written by Len Kimball, former VP of Public Relations, for the June 1972 Tigereview
There aren’t too many around FTL now who remember Nurse Duke, whose full name was Reinette de Harven Duke, but those of us who knew her never will forget her. On April 28, 1972, “Duke completed her journey. She was 86.
Seventeen of those years she spent with the airline. FTL became her life.
“Duke” came to the airline at the start of 1947, just after Tigers landed their first big contract – the airlift of supplies across the Pacific to Japan for the occupation forces.
One of the contract requirements, besides hiring hundreds of flying and maintenance personnel, was the establishment at Tiger’s main base, then Lockheed Air Terminal, Burbank, of a first aid station.
“Duke,” then working at Lockheed as an industrial nurse, answered an ad and got the job. She had come west some years before from Grand Forks, N.D., where she received her training.
Within less then two years, she had lost her husband and her son, FTL now coming her life for the next seventeen years.
In 1947, operations for the struggling airline was a 24-hour a day job. Nowhere was the scene busier than at the Burbank hangar, where maintenance, operations, flight, executive, sales and accounting offices were all jammed under a single roof. And “Duke” was one of the busiest there, supplying shots for overseas flights and maintenance crews, caring for injuries that ranged from scratches to serious wounds, running a blood bank, conducting a safety campaign in the hangar and even treating such routine sufferings as indigestion and hangovers.
She was a one-woman band until retirement forced her to the sidelines June, 1964
Still she made it to every Tiget occasion she could. Toward the end she had to come in a wheelchair, and while her husky voice was softened by the years, her blue ese never dimmed.
Two of Tigers’ most senior man maintenance crew, “Colly Coquette and Ernie Larralde, recall that she never failed to call on her hospital patients and those who just needed help. No one will ever know how much money she lent, or how many groceries she took to airline families in need. When tragedy struck a Tiger family, Duke was there to help
Her last appearance was at the Tigers’ summer picnic in 1971. She came in her wheelchair, down to 68 pounds, but with a heart as big as ever.