Mathilda Krueger Lamping

Mathilda Krueger was born in Neenah on August 21, 1869, the youngest daughter of A. H. F. (Fred) and Maria Krueger. She grew up on Forest Ave. across from the 3rd Ward School (currently Roosevelt School). She was a Neenah High School graduate from the class of 1885.

After attending and graduating from the Illinois Training School for Nurses in Chicago, she became a nurse at the Cook County Hospital. Later, she became the chief surgical nurse at Rush Medical School & Presbyterian Hospital with Dr. Nicholas Senn. She also was a nurse at the Lutheran Hospital in La Crosse, Ferrand Nurses Training School with Harper Hospital in Detroit, and a nurse on horseback in rural North Carolina. She graduated from Columbia University in 1913 with a degree in public health nursing.

When World War I came, she volunteered to lead the first contingent of American nurses to Europe. Arriving in Serbia in 1914, she tended to wounded soldiers in a filthy hospital converted from a tobacco factory. The only stove was used to sterilize instruments. She caught typhus while nursing the soldiers and eventually had to return to the United States to fully recover. She gave speeches and interviews encouraging people to support the Red Cross and become nurses. She received a medal for meritorious service to the Greek government and was asked to start a training school for nurses in Greece, but declined the offer.

She returned briefly to Neenah after the war to give speeches and taught some basic first aid classes through the Red Cross in Neenah. She was asked to be the head nurse at the Theda Clark Memorial Hospital in Neenah but declined this offer as well. She married a Chicago doctor, Tom Lamping in 1919, and served as his nurse. In 1933, she went to the World’s Fair in Chicago and was honored with the Red Cross nurses from World War I by the Roosevelt administration. By 1944, she and her husband moved back to Neenah to be closer to family. Mathilda died at age 78 in 1948.