Preserving Our Past, Capitalizing on the Present, Embracing the Future

Brigadier General William T. Bester
20th Chief, Army Nurse Corps

© Mary T. Sarnecky

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William T. “Bill” Bester, the eldest in a family of seven children, was born on 19 November 1950 to homemaker Lorraine Gellatly and William E. Bester. The latter was employed as a clerk/accountant with a railroad in Duluth, MN. After much youthful soul searching, Bill made a decision to study to become a nurse anesthetist. To achieve that goal, he matriculated at Duluth’s College of St. Scholastica earning a bachelor’s degree in nursing in 1974. While an undergraduate, he joined the Army Student Nurse Program to defray educational expenses.

Following his college commencement, First Lieutenant Bester attended the Army Medical Department (AMEDD) Officer Basic Course at Fort Sam Houston, TX. Six weeks later he began his first assignment at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, WA, in the post anesthesia care unit. A stint in that institution’s intensive care units followed. He next applied for anesthesia school. However, the Army had other plans for soon-to-be Captain Bester, instead sending him to Okinawa in 1976. There he again served as a clinical staff nurse until he embarked on the challenging didactic component of the anesthesiology course at Beaumont Army Medical Center, TX, in 1977. Following six months in the classroom, Captain Bester subsequently began clinical anesthesia training at Madigan Army Medical Center from 1977 to 1979. He later concluded that it was his rigorous grounding in anesthesia and intensive care nursing that taught him an important leadership skill that would serve him well in the future—the ability to rapidly gather facts and make crucial and prudent decisions. In 1979, he began an anesthesia assignment at Fort Sill, OK. It was during this tour of duty that the Army selected him for a temporary duty humanitarian mission, the Cuban Refugee Operation. He was the only nurse anesthetist on the deployment at Fort Chaffee, AR.1 Bester later recalled he “really loved” the experience.2 That seminal field assignment would have significant implications for his future.

After returning to Fort Sill, Captain Bester recognized that his interactive personality and pleasure in dealing with alert, responsive patients remained largely unfulfilled in the operating room. Faced with this personal epiphany, he decided to leave anesthesia and resign his Army commission. The intervention of a perspicacious chief nurse, Colonel Vera Nolfe, and another very supportive senior Army nurse, Colonel Charles Reddy, validated his decision but encouraged him to remain in the Army to pursue another specialty, field nursing. Accordingly in 1981, he became chief nurse of the 10th Combat Support Hospital at Fort Meade, MD, an assignment he clearly relished. Two years later, the Army selected him to study for a master’s degree in medical-surgical nursing at the Catholic University of America. After his 1985 graduation, Major Bester first became a nurse instructor and later AMEDD Regimental Adjutant at Fort Sam Houston, TX, a trailblazing assignment for an Army nurse. His next posting in 1988 placed him in recruiting, where he supervised recruiters in twelve mid-western states. He judged this an exciting, rewarding, and arduous challenge. By 1990, the Army ordered then-Lieutenant Colonel Bester to Alexandria, VA, to serve as a Personnel Management Officer, guiding the careers of Army nurse anesthetists, operating room, and community health nurses. By 1992 after serving many years in non-hospital jobs, Lieutenant Colonel Bester returned to the hospital setting. For one short year he was chief, Department of Nursing at Fort Benjamin Harrison, IN. Another brief assignment found Lieutenant Colonel Bester serving as deputy commander for nursing at Fort Leavenworth, KS, in 1993. His next move was to Europe where he donned two hats as deputy commander for nursing at Wurzburg’s Army hospital and its co-located 67th Combat Support Hospital in 1994. Colonel Bester soon deployed to the Balkans as the 67th’s advance party commander, efficiently setting up the hospital facility in a barren field riddled with rocks and mud. He concluded that successful deployment as medical task force commander.3 Upon returning to the states in 1997, Colonel Bester began studies at the Army War College. In 1998, he assumed command of the Army hospital at Fort Jackson, SC, the first Army nurse selected to command by a branch immaterial board.4 While serving in this position, Colonel Bester learned that he next would be promoted to brigadier general and become the 21st chief of the Army Nurse Corps in 2000. He was the first male officer to become chief.5 General Bester chose Colonel Deborah A. Gustke as his assistant Corps chief, basing his decision on her stellar professional attributes, exceptional organizational skills, and her integrity. He later acknowledged that her selection was the smartest decision he made as the Army Nurse Corps chief. Colonel Gustke was the first assistant Corps chief to be based at Fort Sam Houston.6

During his tenure, General Bester served in several roles in addition to that of chief, Army Nurse Corps. The first of these supplementary assignments began in 2000 and concluded in 2002; it involved serving as the assistant surgeon general for Force Projection. The second, commanding general, United States Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, spanned the period from 2002 to 2004.7

During his four-year tenure as chief, General Bester made an array of contributions. Among those were the enhancement of incentives that improved recruitment and retention, the large-scale provision of nursing assets for Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, the expansion of the gender and ethnic diversity of the Corps, the initiation of required changes to the Corps’ specialty skills mix and adjustments to the professional education matrix. His efforts also resulted in increased funding for military nursing research. Additionally, he worked to improve conditions and benefits for Department of Army civilian nurses. He also finalized efforts to make the baccalaureate degree mandatory for the reserve components.8 Retiring from the Army in 2004, General Bester expanded his horizons, taking on further challenges in a number of settings.

For two years following active military retirement, General Bester served as professor of clinical nursing at the University of Texas-Austin. During that period, he also functioned as chief nurse of a civilian humanitarian team in Indonesia while aboard the US Navy Hospital Ship Mercy. From 2006 until 2012, he filled a number of senior academic positions at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD. General Bester and his wife Cheryl subsequently moved to Palm Desert, CA, where he now works part-time with the Jonas Center for Nursing and Veterans Healthcare. In California, the Besters enjoy a relaxed lifestyle, spending time with their children and grandchildren.9 General William Bester remains today as a prime example of a life well lived.


  1. William Bester, Interview by Major Richard Prior, Session 1, 4 June 2007, U.S. Army Medical Department Office of Medical History, 1-40. Colonel Evelyn Hayes, “William T. Bester,” in Heritage of Leadership, Army Nurse Corps Biographies, ed. Brigadier General Dorothy B. Pocklington, (Ellicot City, MD: Aldot, 2004), 127-131. William T. Bester. “Army Nursing: A Personal Biography,” in Men in Nursing, History, Challenges, and Opportunities, ed. Chad E. O’Lynn and Russell E. Tranbarger (New York: Springer, 2007), 83-98. “Brigadier General William T. Bester,” General Officer Management Office (GOMO) resume, 21 August 2008, U.S. Army Medical Department Office of Medical History. Mary T. Sarnecky, A Contemporary History of the Army Nurse Corps (Washington DC: Office of the Surgeon General, Borden Institute), 287-290. Henry Biemann, “A Lieutenant Interviews BG (Retired) William Bester,” The Connection, 39 (September 2014): 12-13.
  2. William Bester, Interview by Major Richard Prior, Session 1, 4 June 2007, U.S. Army Medical Department Office of Medical History, 39.
  3. William Bester, Interview by Major Richard Prior, Session 1, 4 June 2007, U.S. Army Medical Department Office of Medical History, 40-118. Mary T. Sarnecky, A Contemporary History of the Army Nurse Corps (Washington DC: Office of the Surgeon General, Borden Institute), 512-515.
  4. William Bester, Interview by Major Richard Prior, Session 1, 4 June 2007, U.S. Army Medical Department Office of Medical History, 40-118. William Bester, Interview by Major Richard Prior, Session 2, 11 June 2007, U.S. Army Medical Department Office of Medical History, 1-42. Colonel Evelyn Hayes, “William T. Bester,” in Heritage of Leadership, Army Nurse Corps Biographies, ed. Brigadier General Dorothy B. Pocklington, (Ellicot City, MD: Aldot, 2004), 128.
  5. William Bester, Interview by Major Richard Prior, Session 2, 11 June 2007, U.S. Army Medical Department Office of Medical History, 1-41.
  6. William Bester, Interview by Major Richard Prior, Session 2, 11 June 2007, U.S. Army Medical Department Office of Medical History, 43-46. William T. Bester. “Army Nursing: A Personal Biography,” in Men in Nursing, History, Challenges, and Opportunities, ed. Chad E. O’Lynn and Russell E. Tranbarger (New York: Springer, 2007), 94.
  7. “Brigadier General William T. Bester,” General Officer Management Office (GOMO) resume, 21 August 2008, U.S. Army Medical Department Office of Medical History. William Bester, Interview by Major Richard Prior, Session 2, 11 June 2007, U.S. Army Medical Department Office of Medical History, 46, 61-92. William T. Bester. “Army Nursing: A Personal Biography,” in Men in Nursing, History, Challenges, and Opportunities, ed. Chad E. O’Lynn and Russell E. Tranbarger (New York: Springer, 2007), 96.
  8. William Bester, Interview by Major Richard Prior, Session 3, 17 July 2007, U.S. Army Medical Department Office of Medical History, 9-81. William T. Bester. “Army Nursing: A Personal Biography,” in Men in Nursing, History, Challenges, and Opportunities, ed. Chad E. O’Lynn and Russell E. Tranbarger (New York: Springer, 2007), 95. Colonel Evelyn Hayes, “William T. Bester,” in Heritage of Leadership, Army Nurse Corps Biographies, ed. Brigadier General Dorothy B. Pocklington, (Ellicot City, MD: Aldot, 2004), 129-130.
  9. William Bester to Mary Sarnecky, e-mail message, 2 July 2014.