Former Gulf War Nurse Wins 2008 Military Nurse of Year Award
Retired Nurse Corps Colonel Now Serves Military Members as TriWest Leader
PHOENIX (Aug. 25, 2008) — Marge Crowl of Phoenix, Ariz. can still feel the hard floor beneath her hands the first time she heard a scud missile explode.
The year was 1991, and at 48 years old, Lt. Col. Crowl was a nurse deployed halfway around the world in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. She spent nearly nine months deployed in the Rihyad, Saudi Arabia war zone and worked at the military hospital as part of the U.S. Army Reserve Nurse Corps, commanding three surgical units.
Today, Crowl — who works as the Director of Behavioral Health Operations at TriWest Healthcare Alliance — won the 2008 March of Dimes Arizona Chapter Military Nurse of the Year Award, at the Fifth Annual Nurses of the Year Awards Gala Saturday evening at the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa. Crowl was also a finalist for the 2008 Phoenix Business Journal Health Care Heroes award for Service Philanthropy.
Crowl’s experiences in the Reserve Nurse Corps became a driving force behind her work to support service members today, through her job at TriWest.
“We are so proud of Marge,” said TriWest President and CEO David J. McIntyre, Jr. “Her sense of responsibility to those who serve our nation runs deep in her blood and stems from her own experiences in Operation Desert Storm. She’s made a significant difference for thousands of service members and we’re very lucky to have her on the TriWest team.”
Some of Crowl’s accomplishments include:
- Instituting a 24-hour crisis line for service members which has since been certified by the American Association of Suicidology
- Launching an embedded behavioral health provider pilot in California, Minnesota and Montana, which has enabled more than 8,000 National Guardsmen to receive counseling
- Overseeing a project in which behavioral health providers work in military clinics. This program has since been adopted by the military health system in Hawaii
- Leading the “Help from Home” video project which has helped more than 200,000 service members and their families deal with the challenges of deployment and reintegration
- Managing TriWest’s sponsorship of Operation Purple Camps by providing counselors for children of a deployed parent at special summer camps throughout the country
- Crowl served for 21 years in the U.S. Army, 18 of those in the Army Reserve Nurse Corps, as well as 28 years with the Department of Veterans Affairs. She originally joined TriWest as a subcontractor in 1996 and became a permanent TriWest employee in October 2004.
Published Date:
08/25/2008
