Kathy Spangler knew from a young age that she wanted to follow in her grandmother’s footsteps to become a nurse and enter a position in health care.

Her grandmother would tell her heroic stories growing up of sacrifice and caring for patients, while her father would tell her stories of his 30 years in the Air Force. In 1991, Reserve Officers’ Training Corps recruiters visited Spangler’s high school and presented her with the opportunity to serve for four years in exchange for nursing school tuition coverage. Spangler took this opportunity and completed her BSN at Bellarmine University in 1996.

Spangler started off her four years of active duty like many others, training at Army bases, specifically at hospitals in Colorado, Washington D.C., Louisiana and Germany. She deployed in 2010, with her husband also being deployed just months after; the couple left their children in the care of Spangler’s parents.

Overseas, Spangler was stationed at Camp Bastion, a British Base in Lashkar Gad in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. There, she served as a head nurse to treat urgent trauma victims in an active war zone. She recalls stories of mass casualties from a suicide bomber in January 2011, with helicopters flying in one after another with injured U.S. soldiers and Afghan citizens.

She learned flexibility and adaptability working in a war hospital, as often they did not have the exact materials needed to do some procedures. Spangler recounted several times that “you often [had] to ‘MacGyver’ equipment together to solve your problem.” Each instance, she said, taught her to be a better nurse and live up to her one mission to “take care of America’s sons and daughters.”

The Army became Spangler’s career and she continued to serve as an Army nurse back in the United States until 2014, when she began working as director of nursing of the Dilorenzo TRICARE Health Clinic in Washington D.C. Spangler worked in this position until June 2016 before accepting another leadership assignment operating as commander of the Andrew Rader Army Clinic in Fort Myer, Va. She maintained this position until assuming the command of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) Healthcare Facility in Belgium. Today, she works as the Director of Fort Belvoir Community Hospital after having retired from military work in 2021.

Spangler currently lives in Fort Belvoir, Va., with her husband and family.

We honor her service.