Profile: Lorraine Rudowski
WASHINGTON, April 09–Having tap danced in a million-dollar ballroom of New Bedford to waltzing with a King in a foreign country, Lorraine Rudowski is putting on her dancing shoes one more time as she prepares to return for her 55th high school reunion.
With a Coast Guard station in New Bedford and another in Newport, R.I., right across the state line, New Bedford in the 1940s hosted young servicemen from all over the country and boasted the million-dollar ballroom for USOs.
“Wartime in New Bedford was absolutely fabulous,” remembers Millie Arena, a former resident of New Bedford and a lifelong friend of Mrs. Rudowski. “There was dancing all around us. Lorraine and I danced and singed and entertained; we were even offered jobs as roller-skaters in the Rollercapades. But, Lorraine had a different agenda.”
At the age of 18, Mrs. Rudowski left her cheerleading and choir days at New Bedford High School and embarked on a journey of different cultures, religions and many different countries. Although she hasn’t lived here since then, New Bedford, she said, always remained her home.
The wife of a foreign service officer who traveled the globe with her husband for more than a dozen years, Mrs. Rudowski raised her five children in while traveling to different countries. When her children were almost grown, at the age of 47, Mrs. Rudowski launched a career as a nurse and nursing instructor and then at the age of 60 she joined the Army as a reserve nurse.
At the beginning of the Gulf War in 1989, Mrs. Rudowski was teaching nursing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and when she saw the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marine Corps recruiting her students she decided to sign her name on the dotted line and join up.
Because military nurses were in short supply, Congress had lifted the age limitation and Mrs. Rudowski “filled out all the paperwork, did the physical and the drug testing and signed up for three years.”
Mrs. Rudowski began her once-a-month rotations in the OBGYN department of Walter Reed Hospital, then located in Fairfax, VA. “I would wake up at four in the morning and put on my camouflage and boots and head to the hospital,” she said.
At the end of her three-year stint in the Army reserve, Mrs. Rudowski retired from the military after contracting pneumonia on a trip to Russia.
But she continued her teaching of international health courses and global health to international graduate students studying world health and policy at George Mason University.
It was while she was working in a local Fairfax hospital in 1984 that Mrs. Rudowski was offered a job in the international nursing program at George Mason and began training nursing students from the university.
“Lorraine has been invaluable – she is the individual where all the knowledge really resides,” said Rita Carty, dean of the George Mason University School of Nursing. “She knows about languages, religions, customs within the countries and the cultures around the worldáshe is probably the secret to the success of the international nursing program. Our secret weapon has been Lorraine.”
“She’s one sexy old broad,” said Dean Carty. “I’ve seen her charm diplomats and ambassadors all over the world.”
Decked out in a red suede jacket with matching lipstick and silver nail polish, it’s not hard to imagine why. And at 73, Mrs. Rudowski shows no sign of stopping.
During a nursing conference in Botswana a few years ago, Mrs. Rudowski and Dean Carty attended the wedding of the king’s son, where they were escorted “in buses with guards and AK47’sáand we were told to act accordingly,” Dean Carty remembers.
Standing in the receiving line, Mrs. Rudowski decided she needed a greeting for the king in his native tongue so she asked the man standing in line next to her.
“Lorraine greeted the ruling family in their language, and to this day we don’t know what she said to the king, but he bent over laughing with the biggest smile,” Dean Carty said. “After that, the party went to hell in a hand basket. The music started, and Lorraine must have danced with the entire ruling party of Botswana. The only thing she wasn’t able to pull off was a trip to the diamond mines.”
Mrs. Rudowski learned those diplomatic skills during the many years she spent overseas with her husband Daniel Rudowski who she married at the age of 19.
In 1961, at the beginning of the Vietnam War, Mr. Rudowski joined the U.S. Agency for International Development, which landed the Rudowski’s and their children (five of them by then) in Laos, South Vietnam, Taiwan, Turkey, Thailand and finally Kenya from 1963 to 1976.
“The minute I got off the airplane on a Sunday in Laos, I was teaching school and started a swimming program,” said Mrs. Rudowski, who had worked for the Red Cross before leaving the United States. “When I left Laos it was probably the most emotional thing, because I saw what I created, and people would just come up to me on the street and say ‘thanks.’ ”
Wherever she went, Mrs. Rudowski made an impact. In Taiwan and Turkey, she continued to teach swimming and water safety to local and American children and received a medal from the American Red Cross for her work in developing swimming programs internationally.
In Bangkok, Mrs. Rudowski was the assistant director of the teen club and started the swimming program with the Red Cross before the family was moved to Kenya, where she also established a student following.
“During the time when we were in the Foreign Service, women weren’t supposed to work,” said Mrs. Rudowski. “We were to support our husbands and support our directors. And that was fine, but I always started something on my own.”
By now, her children were growing up and Mrs. Rudowski decided they needed to come home.
“My kids were afraid to come back to the United States because they were afraid of the system and they didn’t know the rules,” she said. “Finally I told my husband, ‘That’s it. These kids have got to go back and learn about their own culture.’ And that’s when we came home.”
Mr. Rudowski is retired from the State Department and his wife says “He makes dinner now. He’d better make dinner!” The couple is getting ready to celebrate their 54th wedding anniversary.
Mrs. Rudowski still works five days a week and drives there in her new gold Chrysler LeBaron, listening to rock and roll on a Washington, radio station. As she pulls up to the George Mason campus Mrs. Rudowski points and waves at people on the street who she studied nursing with more than 30 years ago.
“I know everyone,” she said as she drove into the parking lot and asked the ticket attendant how she liked the new car.
Once inside, she walks down the corridor of the school to her office, hugging her foreign students and making a point of telling them, “I’m proud of you.”
“My responsibility is to educate and share my knowledge on different cultures. I want my grandchildren to think like I do,” Mrs. Rudowski said. “I want them to be colorblind – I don’t want them to see black, yellow, and Chinese. I don’t care who you are, what you are, or where you came fromá. Everyone has something to offer.”
Two years ago, Mrs. Rudowski suffered a heart attack while teaching a class. When she woke, she found that her students had gathered in the Intensive Care Unit, telling the nurses in the department that they were Mrs. Rudowski’s children.
“They made straight A’s after that,” she said.
After her heart attack, Mrs. Rudowski’s five children, who are all teachers, decided it was time for her to retire. But Mrs. Rudowski didn’t agree.
“I’m not quitting my job – I’m going to keep working,” she said. “My kids threw me a big going away party last year, and I continued to work every day after that party. And I kept the gifts.”
Now, she’s looking forward to her New Bedford High School 55th high school reunion in June. She’s attended a number of them, but is especially looking forward to this one.
“When I go back to Massachusetts and I see my sisters, I’m very cognizant of what they are doing. I can’t wait to go back to Massachusetts and talk to my cousinsá I love hearing their stories,” she said. “But New England is very conservative, and after three days visiting, I’m just like them!”
When asked if she would do anything different in her life, Mrs. Rudowski replied, “I take it one day at a time, and I’m not ready to look at that question.”
Written for The New Bedford Standard-Times in New Bedford, Mass.
