Colorado Inducts Pharmacist into Hall of Fame

When Navy CAPT Katherine "Kay" Keating, MSN, USN (Ret.), then a lieutenant, boarded the USS Haven during the Korean War she reportedly became the first woman pharmacist to go to sea. When she later replaced LT Thomas Summerour on board, she became the first woman to relieve a male officer at sea. It was her pioneering service as well as her accomplishments as a Navy pharmacist that prompted the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame to choose CAPT Keating as one of its 2008 inductees earlier this year.

CAPT Keating began her military service as a WAVE radio operator during World War II, following the call to serve of her mother who was a Red Cross ambulance driver in Washington, DC, during World War I. CAPT Keating joined the Navy Reserve after World War II ended and was later appointed to the Navy's Medical Service Corps. According to her profile in the book "The History of Pharmacy in the United States Navy," CAPT Keating was the second woman to be in the Navy pharmacy service, the second to become an officer and the first to move from enlisted ranks to the officers' rank of captain. During a Navy career that spanned three decades, she also served as Chief of Pharmacy Services at the Naval Hospital, Great Lakes, IL.

(September 2008)