Wisconsin Veterans Museum Research Center
30 W. Mifflin St.
Madison, WI 53703
The Wisconsin Veterans Museum collects materials from the brave men and women from Wisconsin who served in the military. Some of the scrapbooks at the Research Center give a glimpse in to the lives of these men and women before they entered service. Helen Bulovsky was a Madison native who served in the Army Nurse Corps during World War I and provided medical care to injured soldiers in field and evacuation hospitals that were often very near the front lines. Her letters home and diary entries described the horrendous conditions she faced and the intense nature of life near the front lines.
Before she treated doughboys in France, Bulovsky helped the men, women and children of Dane County at Madison General Hospital (now known as Meriter Hospital). Helen trained at and was graduated from Madison General’s nursing program. Bulovsky used a method still popular with scrapbooking today: cutting words and phrases out of newspapers and magazines, using them to caption her photographs. 
This resulted in some very humorous pages, but also relied on inside jokes that leave current readers feeling a little out of the loop. Photographs show the nurses and doctors of Madison General in serious and silly poses, babies from the relatively new obstetrics wing, and some candid shots of the nurses having fun outside of the hospital. Aside from providing some insight into Bulovsky’s pre-military life, this scrapbook is a great source for images from Madison General Hospital, which was less than two decades old at this time.
Entry compiled by Emily Johnson
Great thanks to Russell Horton, Reference Archivist, Wisconsin Veterans Museum
Citation: Helen C. Bulovsky Papers and Photographs, 1914-2001. WVM Mss 536.
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