Linda K. Meirs
American Red Cross and Army nurse during World War I
Melinda Konover Meirs (June 5, 1884 — November 27, 1972), known as Linda K. Meirs, was an American Red Cross and Army nurse during World War I. She was one of the first six American recipients of the Florence Nightingale Medal, awarded by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1920.
Early life
Linda K. Meirs was born in the Cream Ridge section of Upper Freehold Township, New Jersey, the daughter of Charles Robbins Meirs and Ida Konover Meirs. She grew up in Allentown, New Jersey. She attended the Philadelphia General Hospital Training School for Nurses.
Career
Early in her career, Meirs worked in hospitals in Illinois, Colorado, Minnesota, and Mexico. During World War I, Meirs went to Kiev with the American Red Cross in 1914, but joined the United States Army Nurse Corps in 1916. She worked in field hospitals near the battlefront, as head of nurses at Jouy-sur-Morin, Château-Thierry, Toul, and Fleury-sur-Aire. In 1917, she was part of an American Red Cross mission to Romania. In 1918 she was relieved from active duty in the Army Nurse Corps, and assigned to be Chief Nurse at a Boston hospital by the U. S. Public Health Service. While waiting in Paris for transport home, she baked 176 apple pies for her patients to enjoy on Christmas Eve after the Armistice.
“Linda K. Meirs” enters the record as american Red Cross and Army nurse during World War I. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Linda, Meirs and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60646253. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1884, 1972, 1920 and 1914.
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This entry incorporates text from “Linda K. Meirs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.