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Courtesy Marel (D'Orbessan) Rogers

Eleanor Hayden, M.D. parlayed a successful career as a 1920s Broadway actress into a pioneering role as one of the U.S. Army’s first women physicians and later as a health officer in New York City.

A native of Pelham Manor, NY, Eleanor was the daughter of John "Harold" and Elsie "Mit" (Vilas) Hayden Sr. She was a 1926 graduate of Mount Vernon Seminary in Washington, DC. After a friend encouraged her to pursue work as an actress, and to her family's chagrin, she spent three years doing stock performances in such far-flung places as Zanesville, OH, Binghamton, NY, Winnipeg, Canada, San Antonio, TX and Norfolk, VA. During these early years, said the Mount Vernon Argus, she "portrayed maids and all sorts of minor roles in which the lines were 'Yes," "No" and "Dinner is Served." In time she was "discovered" and landed her first Broadway engagement in the show Philadelphia. Her best-known role was opposite Walter Connolly in Your Uncle Dudley in 1929.

But in the iron grip of the Great Depression, there were fewer successful Broadway shows and quality roles to pursue. Faced with this reality, Eleanor gave way to a stronger call and stepped away from the stage to train as a nurse. She earned her pre-medical degree from New York University in 1936, and her medical degree in 1939 from NYU's College of Medicine. She served an internship at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady and then another in pediatrics at Bellevue Hospital. At the outbreak of World War II, she "asked the Red Cross what she could do," said the Brooklyn Eagle. "Since last February she has been physician in charge of the Red Cross Mobile Unit."

Reported the New York Times, she received her military commission in December 1942 as a first lieutenant in the Medical Corps." In departing for Fort Des Moines in Iowa, the Eagle said she was "believed to be the first woman doctor to join the Waacs" -- the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps.

Eleanor was married for some years and the mother of two. Tragically, her son Frederick D'Orbessan was diagnosed with leukemia and died at the age of 10 in 1956.

Eleanor went into postwar private medical practice and in 1949 became employed part-time with the New York City Health Department as a physician in the public schools. In 1952, she received a master's degree from the School of Public Health at Columbia University. She was assigned to the Health Department’s Williamsburg Health Center, where she served as director. Among the top challenges she and her staff faced were "a rise in the incidence of tuberculosis, deaths of mothers in childbirth and infants in their first year," said the Weekly Star.

She died in 1993 with burial next to her son at the Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale, NY.

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