Growing up in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, Bobbi Hovis spent most of her free time sailing and fishing. She was determined to do something unique with her life. Ms. Hovis graduated from nursing school in 1947 and was commissioned as an officer and nurse in the U.S. Navy. “I was the first Navy nurse to volunteer for Vietnam and the first Navy flight nurse to volunteer for Korea,” she says. At the age of 38, then-Lieutenant Commander Hovis volunteered to go to Vietnam. There were very few U.S. servicewomen there at the time. Bobbi Hovis was in Saigon during the tumultuous early 1960s and witnessed many of the historic events that eventually led the United States into war in Vietnam. Ms. Hovis describes what it was like to fulfill her duties to heal wounded and ill Americans and Vietnamese while witnessing incidents like the 1963 Buddhist Crisis, and the chaotic and violent coup that overthrew and killed President Ngo Dinh Diem. During the coup, she was almost shot by an insurgent and saved only by a balcony balustrade and a lucky ricochet. “Winston Churchill said one time, ‘There is nothing so exhilarating in life than to be shot at and missed.’ And that's what happened to me.” She still has the bullet—as well as several other distinctive artifacts acquired during her barrier-breaking Navy career.