By RUSTY DENNEN

She wasn't anything like fictional nurse Margaret "Hotlips" Houlihan in TV's hit series M*A*S*H.

That's because Dale Featherston, who died Monday at age 80, lived the part as a nurse at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War.

And after the war, the Fredericksburg native continued her training and went on to found a top-notch nursing program at Germanna Community College, from which she retired in 1992.

In an interview that year, Featherston said her stint as an operating-room nurse in Korea hardly resembled the popular TV show. The tension and exhaustion she felt after working endless hours within earshot of the fighting was real.

"The troops came in droves," recalled Featherston.

A 24-year-old lieutenant at the time, she oversaw an operating room where 100 major surgeries were done every 12 hours. The doctors and nurses worked in a bombed-out school auditorium.

According to the story, it was then that Featherston realized most of the patients were enemy soldiers. She questioned what she was doing and why she was there.

"And this is what I tell the [nursing students]: 'You're entering a critical ethical dilemma and not knowing it, not knowing what it does to you. And this isn't in the [text] book.'"

Featherston was featured in a story last year in the Arlington Catholic Herald, in which she reminisced on the 60th anniversary of the war.

She was moved to join the war effort, according to the story, after hearing then-radio broadcaster Walter Winchell's call to action: "Girls, your country needs you."

Featherston continued in nursing after the war. She received a bachelor's degree in nursing from Catholic University and later, a master's in psychiatric counseling. By the 1950s, she was working as a registered nurse at Mary Washington Hospital.

Her career took her across the country and abroad. She worked as a clinical instructor in Iowa, a director of nursing services at a hospital in Alaska and served as a nurse educator with Project Hope in Moscow.

From 1965 to 1968, she served as a papal volunteer for the Catholic Bishops Latin American Bureau in Brazil.

In July 1970, Featherston was hired by Germanna to start its nursing program.

"She was a force of nature and a loved presence. We at Germanna will miss her deeply and extend our deepest condolences to her family," GCC President David A. Sam said this week.

"She provided visionary and entrepreneurial leadership. Without her, Germanna's nursing program would not be the world-class program that it has become."

Sams added that Featherston "served not only as a great teacher and a powerful leader, but lived a life of service that is the model of the nurse who ministers to the body, the mind and the spirit."

She was also connected to early Virginia history. Her mother, Mary Middleton, was a direct descendant of Richard Featherston, who served on one of Capt. John Smith's first voyages from Jamestown.

A funeral Mass for Featherston will be held today at 10:30 a.m. at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Fredericksburg.

Rusty Dennen: 540/374-5431
Email: rdennen@freelancestar.com