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Former Navy commander who was fixture in Naperville parade dies

Friends and family are remembering Margaret Ruppert, who served as a nurse in World War II and ultimately rose to the rank of naval commander.

A native of Pinckneyville in southern Illinois, she died Feb. 20 in Lisle, where she had lived independently for the past nine years at Villa St. Benedict. She was 101.

"The family was very proud of her military service and how she rose through the ranks," says her great nephew, Steve Grobl of Naperville. "We thought of her as a pioneer."

Ruppert was a fixture in the Memorial Day parade every year in Naperville, where she proudly wore her dress uniform and waved to the crowd from her seat in a 1946 convertible.

As one of the oldest veterans in the parade, she represented a rare branch of the military, the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps.

Ruppert attended St. Bruno's School and Pinckneyville High School before earning her registered nursing degree in 1943 at St. John's Nursing College in St. Louis. She worked her first two years at Marshall Browning Hospital in Du Quoin before enlisting in the Nurse Corps in 1945.

She trained at Great Lakes Naval Station during World War II, but she would go on to serve in active duty in the Korean conflict and in the Vietnam War, as well as multiple Navy hospitals and air stations.

Many of her experiences were dangerous. Grobl recalls her telling of serving aboard a troop carrier that traveled unescorted - and across mined waters - into North Korea to rescue wounded Marines.

During the Vietnam War, Ruppert was sent to an aircraft carrier, where a catapult had blown up and left Navy corpsmen severely burned.

Ruppert served 30 years in the Navy. Her career would take her across the country to assignments in Oakland, California; Bainbridge, Maryland; Newport, Rhode Island; Guantanamo, Cuba; Chelsea, Massachusetts; Jacksonville, Florida; Beaufort, South Carolina; Long Beach, California; Adak, Alaska; and on the USNS General Aultman and USNS General Wm. H. Gordon.

During her career, Ruppert also earned her bachelor of science degree in nursing service administration at Indiana University, which advanced her rank as an officer and into administrating some of the Naval hospitals and air stations.

Ruppert retired from the Navy in 1975, while serving at the Naval Hospital attached to the Pensacola Naval Air Station. In 2008 she moved to Lisle to be closer to family.

The Navy, however, kept in touch with Ruppert. In 1999, officials invited her to the commencement ceremony at Great Lakes, where they honored her 30 years of service. Ruppert dressed in her uniform and stood to salute every officer.

Services were held for Ruppert in Naperville and in Pinckneyville, where at her interment at St. Bruno's Cemetery, a Naval officer and corpsmen were on hand to perform a 21-gun salute and the ceremonial playing of taps.

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