Zowitza “Zoe” Nicholas
Zoe Nicholas was the daughter of a Dawson barber who came to the Klondike during the gold rush.1)) Her mother was Jennie Nicholas of Dawson and later Mayo.2)
Zoe attended school in Dawson and moved to Seattle in 1913 when her parents divorced. She studied nursing and volunteered to be part of a nursing unit in France in 1918. She trained at Fort Riley army base in north-central Kansas where she also studied French. Overseas, Zoe was stationed at Base 50 Red Cross Hospital in Mesves, France. She later remembered that many soldiers died of influenza in the last weeks of the war. After the armistice, she was granted leave to travel in Germany, Belgium, and France. A ten-hour train trip from Brussels to Paris went through the battlefields of France and Belgium. Zoe was married twice, lived in Los Angeles, and worked as a nurse until 1979.3)