Brigadier General Bettye Hill Simmons
20th Chief, Army Nurse Corps

© Mary T. Sarnecky

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Bettye Hill entered the world on Valentine’s Day 1950. She joined her immediate family that included four siblings; mother, Tena Mae Hill; and grandmother, Genoa Dickson. The family home was on the east side of San Antonio, TX. A discerning child, Bettye watched and admired the nurses who cared for her chronically ill grandmother. This influence eventually led Hill to pursue a career in nursing. While a student at San Antonio’s Incarnate Word College, Hill joined the Army Student Nurse Program. With typical candor, Simmons later recalled that her primary intent was not to pursue a full military career but simply to secure funding for her post-secondary education and serve her three-year obligatory commitment as an Army nurse. Contrary to these early expectations, Hill’s initial three years of service ultimately segued into a 30-year career. Directly following college graduation, Hill married Frankie Ball. Later this marriage would conclude in divorce.¹

As a newly-minted second lieutenant in 1971, Ball’s first assignment after attending the Officer Basic Course was the Hematology/Oncology ward at Brooke Army Medical Center, TX. While working permanent night duty for three years there, she resolutely spent her days attending the University of Texas where she eventually earned a masters degree in medical-surgical nursing. In 1974 Captain Ball became deputy director of the Clinical Specialist Course at Fort Sam Houston, one of the Army’s handful of academic institutions set up to educate practical nurses. A new challenge presented itself in 1975 when she began a two-year stint as nurse counselor with Recruiting Command in Columbus, OH. There she excelled in recruiting nurses for the Army in spite of the dismal countrywide anti-military attitude, a consequence of the unpopular Vietnam War. Ball’s subsequent two taskings from 1977 to 1980 were as head nurse/clinical coordinator at two installations. The first was the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Korea’s 121 Evacuation Hospital and the second, Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. After two years at Walter Reed, Major Ball attended the six-month Officer Advanced Course at Fort Sam Houston.

She next transferred to Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, CO, in 1981 as director of the Patient Care Specialist Course, another newly named generation of courses situated at various Army medical centers/hospitals whose mission was to train practical nurses for the Army Medical Department (AMEDD). However, the needs of the service dictated that this position be curtailed after a year. In 1982, the Army instead selected Ball to attend the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, KS. Her next assignment in 1983 involved functioning as assistant inspector general at Health Services Command, Fort Sam Houston. In 1987, she married Charles Simmons while serving as chief of the Officer Instructional Branch, Nursing Science Division, at the Academy of Health Sciences (the AMEDD school house). Later Lieutenant Colonel Simmons became deputy chief of that Division.² Simmons later affirmed that her San Antonio based positions served as “get smart jobs.” They developed her expansive view of the AMEDD and deepened her appreciation of its mission.³ Next in Colonel Simmons’ career progression was an assignment as chief, Department of Nursing at Fort Polk, LA, from 1991 to 1994. This busy period involved dealing on a grass root level with the Army’s introduction of managed care, case management, and the transition from predominantly inpatient to mostly outpatient services. In 1994, Simmons ascended to yet another rung on her career ladder and became chief nurse of Army Medical Command in San Antonio. During this period, the AMEDD structure was decentralizing into a regional management system. This assignment lasted one short albeit demanding year since at that juncture the Army selected Simmons to be the 20th chief of the Army Nurse Corps.⁴

Brigadier General Simmons’ tenure as chief commenced in December 1995. She prudently chose Colonel Susan McCall as assistant chief of the Corps, basing that decision on McCall’s unparalleled expertise and experience in the sphere of operational deployment. However, after two and a half years in office, McCall retired from active duty and the assistant chief position remained vacant for the remainder of Simmons’ tenure.⁵

General Simmons’s four-year term as chief of the Corps involved a litany of extramural command responsibilities in addition to those directly connected with the Army Nurse Corps. Initially she also served as deputy commander of the AMEDD Center and School in San Antonio. In 1997, she transferred to a new assignment as command surgeon of United States Army Forces Command at Fort McPherson, GA, and remained in that slot until 1999. Finally, she accepted a new charge in 1999 as commanding general of the United States Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. While demonstrating superb leadership in all of these sequential positions, she concurrently managed the everyday affairs of the Army Nurse Corps.

General Simmons achieved many accomplishments during her senior leadership years at the helm of the Corps. She managed a substantial downsizing in actual numbers of Army nurses while striving to mitigate the impact on mission accomplishment. She strengthened relationships and unified goals of the AMEDD nursing team—the medics, vocational, and professional nurses. She presided over a transformation of clinical specialties, creating an emergency nurse program and consolidating all nurse practitioners into a single, more utilitarian, generalist role—the family nurse practitioner. Additionally, she streamlined the provision of post-deployment healthcare services for reserve soldiers. Simmons retired from active duty in January 2000.⁶ However, her lifestyle remained anything but retiring.

In Simmons’ first position following her Army retirement, she founded and led the William R. Harvey Leadership Institute at Hampton University in Norfolk, VA. In her next endeavor she served as director of an agency that sheltered victims of child abuse and neglect, the Safe Haven in Hampton Roads, VA. At the same time, Simmons participated as a member of the Virginia Board of Veterans Services. Still later she trod a divergent path and sought additional graduate education. Simmons matriculated at Old Dominion University and earned a family nurse practitioner credential. Armed with new advanced practice knowledge and skills, she accepted a position in the Family Health Clinic at Fort Eustis, VA. There she took great pleasure in providing primary care to soldiers, their families, and retired military personnel. Simmons and her husband Charles, a retired Medical Service Corps officer, settled in Yorktown, Virginia.⁷