Randy Evans and Gary Shrumm, special to The Sarnia Journal

(2016) By 1907, at the age of 24, Emma Wood must have had enough of Sarnia.

For the daughter of Elgin and Mary Anne (nee Rowe) Wood – prosperous fruit and vegetable wholesalers – it was time to close up her art studio and say goodbye to the family cottage at Woodrowe Beach, on the shores of Lake Huron.

Over the next eight years Miss Wood would complete her registered nursing training at Baltimore’s prestigious Johns Hopkins Hospital and move on to pursuits in Dallas, New York City and Chicago.

But then, the First World War impacted her in a most meaningful way.

Peace didn’t arrive in Eastern Europe with the November 1918 Armistice. The consequences of the Great War continued to resonate in armed conflict and political revolutions.  Hundreds of thousands of Russian and Armenian refugees and orphans were streaming into the region.  Serious instability, human need and danger persisted.

As a measure of the woman, Nurse Emma Wood left in 1918 for a region under the auspices of the American Red Cross and Near East Relief Organization.

Her first postings were in Palestine. Initially, she directed a small hospital for refugees in Ramleh before moving to the Red Cross Hospital in Jerusalem, where she was in charge of the surgical unit for seven months.

From Jerusalem, Ms. Woods was posted to Baku, Azerbaijan.  This relief effort came to an end in April, 1920 when the Sarnia nurse found herself fleeing an invasion of Russian Bolshevik troops intent on seizing ground for the new Communist revolution.

Her successful escape led Miss Wood to Constantinople where, for the next three years and under the protection of Allied occupying forces, she acted as supervisor of nurses for the Near East Relief Group. Additionally she directed that city’s Canadian Relief hospital for tubercular children.

In September of 1922 about 2,000 orphans were saved from a Turkish-led slaughter of residents in Smyrna, Greece.  The children were taken to the Near East Relief facilities on the undefended island of Corfu, Greece. 

Wood was placed in charge of the orphanage and a related infirmary.  Ironically, the orphanage was set up in The Archilleon, the summer palace of the now infamous First World War Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

It was also in Corfu that she became engaged to Stephen Lowe, a Colonel in the U.S. Army seconded to assist non-militarily in the relief efforts. But the nuptials set for Aug. 31, 1923 had to be cancelled when the Italian Navy of Benito Mussolini bombarded the island and the orphanage. 

Among the victims, 16 orphaned children died from Italian shellfire, shrapnel and machine gun projectiles.

For the next month the orphanage and medical stations operated under an uneasy truce arranged by Colonel Lowe with the occupying Italian forces.

When freedom was gained, Colonel Lowe and Nurse Wood left Corfu, got married, and moved on to work in Athens, Greece, before heading to the U.S. in the mid 1920’s.

A 1924 newspaper article out of Toronto described her Greek relief work in heroic terms, saying she “vies with Florence Nightingale in devotion to duty.”

The couple lived in St. Louis.  Lowe remained in the Army, rising to the lofty rank of Brigadier General.

Around 1941, however, Emma Wood Lowe returned to Sarnia with her husband. The General died in June of 1945 and Emma remained in Sarnia until her death in 1969, at the age of 86.

According to her obituary, she was awarded the prestigious Croix de Guerre in honour of her humanitarian work following the First World War.

Stephen and Emma Lowe are buried in Sarnia’s Lakeview Cemetery.