Military Nurse and Scholar, Diana Kupchella, JD, MEd, MS, RN

by Melissa Weber

“I knew my whole life I wanted to be a nurse,” said retired Colonel Diana Kupchella (’84 MS), whose career in the Air Force spanned 26 years.

She faced some opposition to that plan in the beginning because her mother – a nurse herself – advised her not to follow in her footsteps, citing hard work and low pay. Undeterred, Kupchella joined the Future Nurses Society in high school and didn’t tell her mom until a cousin spilled the beans. Then her mother encouraged her to get a bachelor’s degree in nursing, which had always been her plan. 

“I let mom think it was her idea,” she said. 

At St. John’s College in Cleveland, the school’s dean of nursing encouraged students to consider the military. Kupchella lightheartedly explained her choice to join the Air Force: “The movie M*A*S*H had just come out and I didn’t like mud, so I didn’t want the Army, and I was afraid of getting seasick, so the Navy was out.” 

Kupchella joined the Air Force in July 1971, after a year working at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital. She went to California for her first assignment and was sent to Brooks AFB for a flight nurse course.

Her second assignment was at Scott Air Force Base, near St. Louis, the center of the domestic air evacuation system. She flew in a C-9 built specifically for that purpose. “We had regular ambulatory seats,” she explained, “but it was a flying hospital. We even had an ICU section.”

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As the Vietnam War was ending, she received an alert for a special mission. “I knew immediately what it was,” Kupchella said. “Operation Homecoming.”

American military members held prisoner by the North Vietnamese Army were being released, thanks to the Paris Peace Accord, signed in January 1973. POWs who had been released by their captors in Vietnam were flown to the Philippines for medical examinations, then to California. Kupchella flew on a C-9 again from St. Louis to California to accompany former prisoners to their requested destinations in the U.S.

“The first two POWs included a naval officer who stayed in California,” she said. “We flew the other one to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.” She flew on assignments across the country over the next few weeks as the ex-POWs returned home.

“They were so happy to be back on American soil,” Kupchella said. “It was heartwarming to be part of that.”

During her career as a military nurse, Kupchella moved 13 times to different assignments. She spent five years at Sheppard Air Force Base in north-central Texas. While teaching military protocol to medical professionals, she learned why that area is called tornado alley.

“What’s good about military life is you take care of each other.”
– Diana Kupchella

“I will always remember April 10, 1979,” she said. A local newscaster interrupted a regular segment to say, “A tornado just touched down – take immediate cover.” Kupchella looked out the window at a black wall swirling with debris, covered her head with a blanket and headed to an interior hallway. The tornado was a mile and a half wide, traveled for nearly 60 miles, destroyed a large portion of Wichita Falls and killed 42 people. 

“When the noise stopped, I took the afghan off my head,” Kupchella remembered. “It was covered in insulation. Doors were ripped from frames and wedged above my head. The second floor [of her apartment building] was ripped away. I only had a few bruises, but wind freaked me out for years.”

The day after the storm, a colleague came to her apartment to find her. “He looked at the mess and said, ‘Diana, you’re a terrible housekeeper.’ ” Kupchella was touched by the way her Air Force team helped each other out and looked after her in this crisis. “What’s good about military life is you take care of each other,” she said. 

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While in Texas, Kupchella got a master’s degree in education, and then applied for an advanced degree in nursing. She was thrilled when the Air Force agreed to support her, and she was accepted at Ohio State in 1982. 

“At that time, it was still the School of Nursing,” she said. As a graduate student, Kupchella served as a representative on the university senate and was able to vote for the upgrade to the College of Nursing. 

“Ohio State was progressive about what nursing should be,” she said. “They were training nurse practitioners and specialists in areas I never would have dreamed of. They were thinking about what nurses can do and how education should be funded.”

During her career, Kupchella moved up to director of medical inquiries and information in the Office of the Air Force Surgeon General. 

Kupchella attended law school after retiring from the military. When she took a gap year, she met her husband and married at age 58. Now a widow, she lives in a retirement community in Virginia.

“I encourage people to go back to school to broaden their horizons and learn what they can do for their country and the world,” she said.