Aurel Baker, a Red Cross, army, and later public health nurse, was born in October 1886, in Eagle, Wisconsin, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Francis Duttin Baker. She was a graduate of Whitewater High School and of the Illinois Training School for Nurses, class of 1912. Miss Baker served as a Red Cross volunteer nurse in a Kiev, Russia, army hospital from April 1915 until October 1915 when the hospital was disbanded because of lack of Red Cross funds. She returned to the United States via the Trans-Siberian Railroad, China, Japan, and the Pacific. Miss Baker enlisted in the United States Army Nurses Corps in September 1917. She left the United States the following month and arrived at Vittel, France, in November. She was stationed at American Base Hospital 36 until March 1918, when she was reassigned to a hospital at Compeigne, France. There she experienced several air raids as the German 1918 spring offensive began. In 1919, she returned to Eagle, later married Harold Pardee, and became a public health nurse. Aurel Baker Pardee died in 1962.
