BRENDA DIXON
Graduate, Germanna Community College

Brenda Dixon is devoted to helping others. Her devotion has carried this wife, mother, Germanna Community College graduate and nursing instructor, and U.S. Army Reserve lieutenant colonel halfway around the world and back.

After her sister-in-law graduated from GCC and became an ER nurse, Dixon pursued nursing at Germanna, eventually joining the school’s adjunct faculty and later becoming a full-time instructor.

Later inspired by Germanna’s nursing director, an army veteran who served in Korea, Dixon decided to join the army reserves. She was activated in 1991 during the first Gulf War, and later returned to teaching at Germanna.

She returned to active duty four years ago at Fort Eustis in Newport News, a two-hour drive from her home in the Fredericksburg area. The duty means she must leave her husband and 6-year-old daughter every Monday morning and not see them again until Friday evening.

Dixon says the sacrifice is worth it to care for those wounded in today’s war—up to 60 people at a time—and to train younger army nurses.

“I feel we do a good job with our soldiers,” she says. “If I was wounded in combat, I’d like to think I’d get medical care as good as the care we provide.”