I once heard that soccer is a
gentlemen’s game played by ruffians and that Rugby is a ruffian’s game played
by gentlemen. Whoever came up with this
had not met Hannah Liesau, 2ND
Lieutenant, United States Army, Army Nurse Corps, who can be found playing
Rugby for The Furious Furies, on any given late winter or early spring day, on
her off time this past year.
As
the weather warmed into the steaminess of Georgia hot summers, she moved from
the Rugby fields to the gentle meandering of the Savannah River. There, she would be found kayaking with her
friends. On a blue kayak, she would stop
and say hello to donkeys as they stood near the river. Other times, they would stop for breaks near
the dam and picnic. Sometimes they would
just put their feet up. Always, she
would be smiling and laughing as the river took them past green, dense, wooded
areas.
Hannah
is not from Georgia though. A graduate
of Boyertown High School, Class of 2008, she played trumpet under the now
retired and well known & admired Mr. Glen A. Brumbach. Upon graduating, she was accepted to and
attended Widener University on a United States Army ROTC scholarship, where she
studied Nursing.
At
the end of her sophomore year of 2010, Hannah attended LDAC (Leadership
Development and Assessment Course), at Fort Lewis Washington. LDAC is a program where all Army cadets, from ROTC
to West Point, go for evaluation and placement. In 2011, she went to work for the Army for 1
month in Hawaii during her junior year at Widener.
Two
weeks after graduating from Widener in 2012, Hannah took and passed her nursing
state boards. While waiting to go to Fort
Sam Houston, Texas, she did hometown recruiting in the summer of 2012. She arrived at Fort Sam Houston, that July, for
BOLC (Basic Officer Leader Course). BOLC
training at Fort Sam prepares an officer to function within their capacity as a
nurse, doctor, medical service corps officer, etcetera. She again excelled, explaining that her time
in ROTC and attending LDAC better prepared her as a soldier.
On
a more personal level, Hannah sites her mother, an RN, as her motivation to
become a nurse. Hannah is from Pine
Forge, and has an older sister & a twin sister. She stressed the importance of family to her
and misses them. Hannah calls her Grandmom
every Friday. She is considering
returning here to Boyertown for Thanksgiving and her five year class reunion.
Presently,
she lives off post with a roommate who is also an Army Nurse. She has been working telemetry at Dwight D.
Eisenhower Army Medical Center, Fort Gordon, Georgia, since September of 2012. She loves the hospital she works at and her
job. Many of her patients are veterans,
the oldest being 98 years old.
Before
we depart, Hannah would like to say hello to Shannon, her family and to her Grandmom.
As
we leave here, we leave the warm fall and the calmness of the meandering
Savannah River and we leave Hannah with Georgia on her mind.
