She was an Air Force nurse

When Newark, N. J. Judith Schnall (nee Miko) entered the Air Force, she was an inch shy of the 5-foot height requirement, but she became a nurse at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, in 1963 anyway. At the beginning of the Vietnam War, she worked in the newborn intensive care and the obstetric intensive care units. “I was already a nurse for three years, so I guess I got a special dispensation, and I was made a 1st lieutenant,” she said.

A conversation with a teacher friend convinced her to enlist. “We were talking about it, and she thought she was going to go in, too,” Schnall, 78, recounted. “I was never overseas, never saw fighting, but we were at war, and I figured they needed nurses.” She had worked in a hospital for disabled children and adults in Newark before joining the Air Force.

At the beginning of the Vietnam War, there were few injured returning servicemen, so when she wasn’t delivering babies at Wright Patterson, she saw mostly servicemen who had broken arms or legs.

Schnall left the service in 1965, and worked in the pediatric and newborn ICU at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City for 10 years. A doctor set her up on a blind date with his friend and now, 44 years later, she and her husband Michael are still together, and living in Oceanside.

She said she was never contacted by any veterans’ organizations. No American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars called her. “Until I joined the Jewish War Veterans in Oceanside, I never heard from any of them, and never did much with them,” she said. “The Oceanside group was very helpful. I lost all my papers in Hurricane Sandy, and they helped me replace them.” These days she regularly attends the group’s meetings and social gatherings.

Brooklyn-born Caryn Deik served as an Army reservist and an active duty member — a staff sergeant — from 1989 to 2004. “I joined the military at age 18,” Deik said. “I did the reserves first. You could say I wanted to follow in my brother and sister’s footsteps. My sister, Judy, did regular Army and my brother did the Marines. … After the reserves I went [Active Guard Reserve], which is active duty. Out of all of them I stayed in the longest, and my dad was in the Navy from ’55 to ’57.”

Deik was stationed in New York throughout her military career. “I hated the field,” she said when asked what she disliked about it. “We had to go into the woods and live in tents for the weekend, and at annual training for two weeks in the field.”

She served as a patient administrative specialist, a clerk/typist and a personnel administrative specialist. “I liked helping the soldiers,” she recalled. “Fixing their administrative and pay problems. It wasn’t always their fault. Sometimes you were clearing up the prior person’s mess. I continue to this day to help people however I can. But I’m not sure if that’s from the military or just me.”

Deik has saved many of her evaluations from her time of service. One supervisor wrote that she performed well in stressful situations, sharing training knowledge with others, instilling in subordinates loyalty, drive and the desire to succeed, and routinely going out of her way to help others.

She left the Army as a staff sergeant, honorably discharged after serving in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom.

Caryn and her husband, Frank, now live in Island Park, where she has been active in various community organizations and is also a member of the American Legion.