According to this Army Nurse, It Can Be Done!

Lieutenant Colonel Paula Kay Trivette U.S. Army (Ret.) has been written about often in numerous venues of numerous disciplines – appropriately so.

Most recently, she was the keynote speaker at the 2014 Veterans Day Ceremony at the Guilford County Veterans Memorial, Greensboro, NC, sponsored by the Steve Millikin Black Caps group.  With a general, several World War II colonels, and numerous Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War veterans in the audience, I wondered how a young lieutenant colonel would handle this assignment.

LtCol (retired) Trivette at the 2014 Veteran's Day Ceremony

I should not have wondered.  She won me over with the casual mention that she came from a Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin family of 19 children.

Later, I asked her about the huge house the family must have lived in, “Oh, the house my siblings and I grew up in was much, much smaller than the house my husband and I live in now.”  Afterwards, she mentioned her grandmother shared the family home as well.

For the record, there were three sets of twins.

Early in her Veterans Day presentation, it was obvious she would not need a DD-214 to establish her military credentials.  Her husband, Bill Trivette, is a well-known Greensboro attorney, West Point graduate, retired Army lieutenant colonel himself, and president of the West Point Society of the North Carolina Piedmont.

Then there are the Trivette sons.  Their older son, Evan, graduated from West Point in 2002.  After three years in the 82d Airborne Division as an Infantry Officer, he attended medical school and is now an active duty Army physician at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.  He and his wife, Lindsay, have gifted Paula and Bill with their three pride and joys, their grandchildren:  Isabella, William & Ronnie. 

Their younger son, Eric, graduated from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in 2006.  He and his wife are helicopter instructors at Fort Rucker, Alabama – Eric flies Apaches, Alicemary flies Blackhawks.

Militarily, we should not miss Paula Trivette’s siblings – three brothers were Army, a sister and brother were Air Force.

Now that even the general was paying close attention to the young lieutenant colonel, she spoke more intimately – like when she not only fell in love with intensive care nursing, but intensely fell in love with a young infantry officer turned Army lawyer (Judge Advocate General’s Corps) as well.

In the privacy of her home, she told my wife and me, “Bill and I first met through mutual Army Nurse Corps friends.  He later asked me out for a date.  On our first date, I knew he was the man I would marry.  He asked me to marry him two weeks later.  We married six months later -- 38 years ago.” 

Trivette’s career as an Army nurse included assignments in San Antonio, Texas, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Frankfurt, Germany and Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C. 

“After years of night shifts as a staff nurse and leadership positions in critical care, I told my supervisor I was ready for a less stressful position.  My supervisor asked if I would be interested in a nursing position at the White House.  With the support of my husband to “go for it,” my application was submitted.  I was selected as a White Nurse in 1987,” recalls Trivette.  She served over two years for Ronald Reagan, all four years for George H.W. Bush, and briefly in the Clinton administration, before retiring in 1993.       

With President Reagan in the White House

Trivette treasures her memories of President Reagan, “When he broke his hip after leaving the Presidency, Mrs. Reagan asked me to come to Bel Air to help.  I cared for him from eight p.m. until eight a.m. for a month, taking only one day off.”  That begged the question, what did you do on your day off?  “I visited the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.”

As a token of appreciation, Nancy Reagan gave Trivette a small plaque that had been on the President’s oval office desk the entire eight years of his Presidency, it read, “IT CAN BE DONE.  “If I ever write a book about my White House experiences, the title will be:  IT CAN BE DONE.” 

Nurses aren’t prone to exaggerate, but as for President George H. W. Bush, Trivette says, “There is no finer man in the world.  He often visited our medical unit, we thought because it was a place he could escape the pressures of the Presidency and just relax.  We loved him – he treated us like family.”

Paula Trivette has worked at Greensboro’s Moses Cone Hospital since 1993.  She currently serves as a flexible resource nurse and relief hospital-wide Rapid Response Nurse – on the night shift, no less.

God Bless - Ol'Harry