Veteran Profile: Harry Teare, WWII Hero and Retired ER Nurse
“He was probably no more than 120 pounds at the time, which made him a good size to drive a tank,” recalls Elaine of her WWII veteran father. “The thing was, he had never even driven a car before!”
The year was 1944 when Harry Teare was drafted into the Army right out of high school. One of five brothers—all of whom either enlisted or were drafted—Teare traveled from his home in Pennsylvania to California, where he and his cohorts expected to be deployed to Japan.
To his relief, his superiors soon noticed his discomfort with driving the tank, and Teare was reassigned to cooking for, and then supervising, his fellow soldiers. Elaine describes her father as a lifelong helper with a big servant heart. He would read and write letters for his fellow men who could not do so, and while he was a teetotaler, he would make sure to go pick up his cohorts who had drunk too much off base, so they would not get in trouble.
Their unit never did deploy to Japan. In 1946, Teare was discharged and married Elaine’s mother, with whom he had four children—two daughters and two sons. Teare remained in a service profession, becoming a nurse at a veterans’ hospital in the tuberculosis ward. He soon moved to the ER, where he specialized for the rest of his career. Elaine relates that nurses used to do more intensive work at the time, such as setting bones, and her father was excellent at his calling.
The family just celebrated Teare’s 98th birthday. Elaine lives five hours away, her brothers have passed, and her sister is undergoing medical treatment, so it means a lot to have access to reliable, home-based care for her father. Teare became a VetAssist client at the end of 2023. Having had negative experiences with home care in the past, he is now “very happy” with his care, says Elaine. “He is doing great now. He likes the people that come over. The house is clean, and they take great care of him.”
Commenting on her father and the other veterans in her family, Elaine says that “they keep quiet and don’t talk much” about their time in the service. “People don’t understand. It’s easy to forget what they went through.” She is glad to see him thriving and notes, “He deserves it. All veterans deserve it.”
Like so many, we are grateful to Harry Teare for his Army service and his decades serving in the healthcare field!
