Helen Maznio and Donna Clark lived across the street from each other in San Diego for nearly four decades. Helen, a retired Navy nurse, was a private person but she liked to garden, and Donna would often see her in the garden and stop by to chat. Helen was not married and had no children, so when she ran into health problems, she asked her neighbor Donna to take her to the doctor.
“I went with her to appointments when she had heart trouble, and when she had a hip replacement,” Donna recalled. Then Donna moved away from the neighborhood and saw less of Helen for a while. “Then I got a call from someone in the neurology department at Balboa [Navy Medical Center San Diego] saying Helen needed some help, so I went to visit her. She was at risk of falling, but she didn’t like people coming into her house to help, and she didn’t want to move. My husband and I convinced her to get a lifeline pendant in case of emergency. When she used it, we went over to help her up, but we knew from talking to social services at the hospital that she needed more care than we could provide.”
Helen wasn’t happy about the idea of moving into assisted living. She told Donna that she would move if Donna could help her find a place meeting specific criteria: a west-facing window in her room, her own thermostat, and access to Balboa Hospital.
“I was surprised by how hard it was to find a place that met her requirements,” Donna said. “Many assisted living facilities want you to see their own doctors, but the Navy was Helen’s family and she was very firm about wanting Navy doctors.”
When Helen had to move, she asked Donna to help her with the paperwork. “When I started going through her stuff, I asked who her attorney was and who her accountant was, but she didn’t have an attorney or an accountant or a will. She was 88 years old and I told her we needed to get her things in order. The Naval Medical Center gave me recommendations for an attorney and an accountant, and she made a will and created a trust.” Helen made Donna her legal representative. Donna explained. “I took over handling everything for her in 2015.”
Helen continued to share with Donna stories from her childhood and her career in the Navy. Helen was born in Chicago in 1927 to Polish parents. “She told me that she had been very poor,” Donna said. “Her mother worked hard and took care of Helen and her sister Sophia. The three of them lived in a cold-water flat with no heat. Her mother worked at any job she could get. One time her mother came home with her knees bleeding because she had been on her hands and knees so long cleaning the floor of a department store. Her mother taught her being a moral person, working hard, and getting an education were the most important things there were.” As soon as they could, Helen and Sophia got jobs to contribute to the household finances.
Poverty played a key part in Helen’s educational path as well.
“Helen told me about the time her mother tried to get her and Sophia baptized. She went to the local Polish Catholic Church, but the priest wouldn’t do the baptism without payment.
Then her mother took her to a religious order—the Sisters of Providence—where they baptized them and enrolled them in school. Helen told me that when she was in her third year of high school, she decided to quit so she could work and help her mother. Many of her friends didn’t even go to high school. For six months she worked in factory making Dixie cups. Helen realized she didn’t want to work in a factory for the rest of her life, but she did want to become a nurse.”
Helen returned to school and graduated but continued to work part-time to help her family. She also wanted some money of her own because she wanted to buy a watch. “She knew all nurses had to have a watch with a secondhand,” Donna said. “She bought herself a watch and kept it her entire life. Helen was very frugal. She only bought what she needed.” Helen managed to put herself through nursing school although she only had one outfit and had to wash it every night.
Both Helen and Sophia joined the Navy as nurses. Helen was commissioned on April 30, 1954 and served for 24 years. Donna recalled another story Helen shared. “Helen was most grateful to the Marines because she and another nurse were the first two nurses to go into South Korea. She was assigned to U.S. Naval Advisory Group Chinhae, Korea in 1960. There were no medical facilities there. They set up a clinic and had to go out from the ship and come back to the ship at night. There was still a lot of fighting happening. Helen said she always knew the Navy SEALS and the Marines were keeping them safe.” Helen served on the USS SANCTUARY during the Vietnam War.
Helen’s final duty station in the Navy was at Balboa Hospital. She was still on active duty when she and Donna met. “She was a role model to me,” Donna said. “She was smart and very much a strong woman, and always with a pleasant smile for everyone.
“I took her to her last cardiology appointment on a Wednesday,” Donna said,” and the doctor immediately sent her to the emergency room at Balboa. From there she went to the ICU. During that time, she was never left alone. I have a friend who is a civilian doctor at the hospital and a Navy retiree, and she checked on her frequently. Volunteers from the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society went to visit. When they knew she was not going to make it, they made sure a Naval officer was with her at all times. The hospital gave her a beautiful quilt with a big Navy emblem on it. It happened to be National Nurses Week. I said she probably planned that because she researched everything. Helen died that Sunday.”
Although Donna had heard Helen say many times that the Navy was her family, Donna did not realize quite what that meant to Helen until Helen died in May 2019. Helen left a $5 million gift to the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, the largest bequest in the Society’s history. “Her life was very much about struggle,” Donna said. “The Navy was her family and she wanted to do something so Sailors and Marines and their families would not have to struggle like she did.”
The Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society is humbled by Helen Maznio’s commitment to take care of our own. While we didn’t have the chance to thank her directly, we are incredibly grateful for her generous gift.