My Favourite Bill Mosienko Story

This was one of my favourite stories that came out from writing the biography on Bill Mosienko a few years back.

A mysterious letter from Carlsbad, California, reached the Mosienko family in 2003, nearly 10 years after Bill had passed. Enclosed in the letter was a personal story written by Rosalie “Lee” Chereskin, who had once met Bill in Chicago back in 1946.

It turned out to be a very fascinating and endearing story that I thought should be in the book, so I included it.

Here is Rosalie Chereskin telling her story:

It was the fall of 1946. I was a student nurse at the Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing and was sent to affiliate at the Illinois Neuro-Psychiatric Institute on Wood Street and Taylor Street in Chicago. I was 19. My father had died in September at age 51 from a heart condition discovered five months earlier, and my mother was a patient at the Chicago State Hospital for the mentally ill. Needless to say, I felt very old. 

In addition to being a student nurse, I was also a "Cadet Nurse." During World War II, the nurse shortage was so acute, with many of the RNs going overseas and to service-related installations, the civilian hospitals were left grossly understaffed. Therefore, the government came up with a plan to attract young women into nursing. Billboards depicting a beautiful young girl in a Cadet Nurse uniform of gray and red with her gentle healing hand on the brow of a handsome young wounded soldier, plus ads in the newspapers and radio that advertised free tuition, books and uniforms if one qualified, did the trick. Of course, the applicant had to sign a contract stating that if the war was still in progress, she would either work in a military installation or join the service.