YARMOUTH, N.S. –
When she was born in North Chegoggin, Nova Scotia, in 1872, no one would have
predicted Sarah* Corning would one day be presented as a hero to the King of
Greece. In 1922, Corning was instrumental in the evacuation of Armenian and
Greek orphans from the besieged city of Smyrna in what is now Turkey. Today,
the extent of the atrocities visited upon the Armenian community after the
First World War is acknowledged as an act of genocide.
Corning trained as a nurse in the United States and
joined the American Red Cross during the First World War.
In December 1917,
she was amongst the first to volunteer to tend the sick and suffering after the
Halifax Explosion.
RELATED: History is her story, too
Shortly after the First World War, as part of Near East
Relief – an American organization helping displaced people of the Balkans, Asia
Minor and the Middle East – Corning went overseas.
In 1921, working
for a relief agency, Corning arrived in a small village at the foot of Mount
Ararat in what is now Turkey to take charge of an orphanage. The following year
she was in the city of Smyrna, which the Turks were trying to take back from
Greece. Corning was part of a team that opened a clinic to help Smyrna’s sick
and wounded, but it was shut down by Turkish soldiers. A second clinic also was
shut down.
In 1922, as fighting and lawlessness escalated, Corning
became a central figure in the evacuation of the port city of Smyrna, helping
guide orphans in a home run by an American nurse, eventually guiding thousands
of children to the harbour, where U.S. sailors rowed them out to the safety of
naval vessels, the Vanguard reported this year.
After the rescue, she helped established an orphanage in
Greece for the stateless orphans.
She was summoned to Athens in June 1923, where King
George II of Greece awarded her and others involved in the rescue mission, the
Silver Cross Medal of the Order of the Saviour, an honour comparable to the
Order of Canada.
RELATED: More about Sarah Corning
Corning worked at
the orphanage until 1924, when she returned to Turkey to work in a residential
training school until 1930 when the Near East relief effort was disbanded.
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Upon retirement, she returned to Chegoggin, where she
lived until her death in 1969 at age 97.
The epitaph on her headstone in the Chegoggin Baptist
Church Cemetery reads: "She lived to serve others."
Writer/author Sandra Phinney told the Vanguard earlier in
2016 that Corning’s story pulled at her
“Imagine a rural teenager from Yarmouth in the late 1800s
going to the US to become a nurse, then helping out in the Halifax explosion,
then being a nurse in a foreign land and doing so much to help people, at great
personal risk,” Phinney said.
“Her courage was monumental at many levels, and Canadians
need to hear about Sara,” she added.”
Only recently has Corning’s work been recognized at home
in Yarmouth County. In September, a seniors’ care home named part of its
facility for the nurse from rural Nova Scotia.
“We were intrigued
and in awe of her heroic role in rescuing 5,000 Armenian and Greek orphans from
near-certain death,” Randy Saulnier, vice-chairman of the Villa Saint-Joseph
board said at a ceremony in September.
Corning is recognized elsewhere, too. There is a Sara
Corning Centre for Genocide Education in Toronto that supports research and
education on the topics of human rights and genocide.
*Corning’s name is spelled both Sarah and Sara in
different documents. However, her birth record uses Sarah.
Editor’s note: Material in this article originally
appeared on TheVanguard.ca in May 2016 in Local heroine Sara Corning subject of
talks at library and historical society, in April 2016 as People urged to vote
for Yarmouth First World War nurse Sara Corning to grace currency, by Carla
Allen and September 2016’s Sarah Corning remembered and honoured at Villa
Saint-Joseph, by Eric Bourque.
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