By Deborah Larsen
Priscilla Joy Tripp
Priscilla Joy Tripp was born in Rochester on August 7, 1915, the daughter of Harry and Fael Springsted Tripp. After graduating from Rochester High School with the class of 1932, she took her nurse’s training at St. Joseph Hospital in Pontiac. She served as a nursing supervisor at St Joseph’s Hospital in Ann Arbor before moving on to nursing positions at hospitals in New York and Massachusetts.
Priscilla joined the Army Nurse Corps and sailed for overseas duty on February 8, 1943. She served with American forces in Casablanca and then with the 15th Evacuation Hospital on the Anzio beachhead. While working in Anzio, Priscilla became concerned with the lack of fresh vegetables available to her and the troops there. She wrote to her mother in Rochester, asking for vegetable seeds for quick-growing crops that might come to harvest within the time that she would be at Anzio. Avon Township’s own Ferry-Morse Seed Farm happily furnished the seeds to Priscilla in Italy.
While Priscilla spent three years near the front lines in Europe and returned home after the war, her brother Harry was not so fortunate. Harry was killed in action in Germany on November 16, 1944, while serving with one of the first patrols to cross the famed German defense known as the Siegfried Line.
After the war, Priscilla married Harold Johnson and the couple had two sons. Priscilla retired to Zephyrhills, Florida, and died there in 2003.