A Memorial Day celebration at Dunwoody’s Brook Run Park featured a poignant moment as officials honored special guest Doris Guzman, a 103-year-old former U.S. Navy nurse and Sandy Springs resident.
Guzman, and her daughter, Chuck White, were given seats of honor at the 10 a.m. ceremony Monday, which featured Maj. General William B. Dyer III, a Dunwoody resident who serves as the commanding general of the U.S. Army Reserve 108th Training Command, as the event’s keynote speaker.
Guzman “arrived in splendor” to the event, said White, with a banner and flags adorning White’s car. “It was a glorious moment and one I will treasure for my whole life.”
During the ceremony, Dyer mentioned Guzman and her service, and afterward, had a private conversation with the centenarian. Dyer presented her with a challenge coin, a military tradition used to recognize outstanding achievements.
“He knelt down next to her and talked to her in such a comforting tone for three or four minutes,” White said. “He pressed that coin into her hand, and she held onto it until we got home. It was a profoundly moving moment.”
According to White, Guzman was the fifth of eight children born to a Louisiana cotton farmer who didn’t believe that children should be educated beyond sixth grade. Despite the opposition, Guzman’s mother persuaded Doris’ sister, Katie, to complete high school and go onto college, which the rest of her sisters did as well.
Guzman graduated from college with a bachelor of science degree in nursing in 1941 and joined the Navy as a lieutenant.
“She was stationed at the Marine hospital in Quantico when President Franklin Roosevelt died and she and the other medical staff wore their dress uniforms to walk in his funeral procession,” White said. “We believe that she is most likely the last living person who marched in FDR’s funeral procession.”
“Marching in a presidential funeral procession during a World War would be an extraordinary event in anyone’s life but for this little country girl, it was even more remarkable,” White continued. “Only five short years earlier, she was picking cotton on a farm with no electricity, running water or indoor bathrooms, and thought that was how everyone lived,”
Guzman, who was a single mother to three young daughters, obtained a master’s degree from Case Western Reserve and then went to work for the next 40 years as the Associate Chief of Nursing Service for Education for the Veteran’s Administration.
In retirement, Guzman remained active into her tenth decade, White said.
“When she was 100, she told me that she had, on one hot day in July, changed her linens, walked to Publix, fixed her lunch, walked to CVS for a flu shot, then to the library for a book on Golda Meir and had already read several pages,” White said. “She lived independently doing her own laundry, housekeeping, and cooking.”
Even after suffering a broken vertebrae at 101, Guzman was determined to return to health and worked her way from being completely bedridden to walking again.
Further health challenges have followed taken their toll on her mental and physical condition, but White said she is constantly amazed at how her mother still relishes life.
“She always said that happiness is in the quality of one’s life and not in the quantity of it,” White said. “She richly deserves both and thankfully she has been blessed with both.”
During the ceremony, Joe Seconder, retired U.S. Army Major, led the Pledge of Allegiance. Dunwoody Police Deputy Chief Michael Carlson, retired Georgia National Guard Captain, introduced a moment of silence. The invocation and benediction was presented by Rabbi Brian Glusman of the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta.