As one of the leading women in the care of veterans and operations at VA institutions,
Dorothea Seaton Looney has seen her share of travel from small-town Chickasha to Europe
and points between. Looney is a 1942 graduate in Commence from Oklahoma College for
Women, and retired in 1978 as Director of the Veterans Administration Medical Center
in Salisbury, N.C. She set a number of firsts in her career at veterans' administration
hospitals throughout the United States. She was the first female management analyst
employed by the Department of Medicine and Surgery in the VA Hospital in Leavenworth,
Kansas. She was the first of two women to work in this field at the VA Central Office
Internal Audit Service in Washington, D.C., and the first woman appointed as Assistant
Hospital Director Trainee, Assistant Hospital Director, and Hospital Director. She
served as Assistant Director of the VA Hospitals in Muskogee and Salisbury, N.C.,
and as Director of VA Medical Centers in Iron Mountain, Michigan, and in Salisbury,
North Carolina. Looney began her career at Borden General Hospital in Chickasha in
1942. She left Borden General in 1946 to serve as a medical secretary in San Francisco.
Two years later, she moved to Tokyo to work in the Far East Command General Headquarters.
She served in a variety of administrative assistant positions there through 1953.
From 1953 through 1958, she was in France for two years. Her last assignment in France
was as the Civilian Manpower Control Officer at Headquarters, Base Section, US Army
Europe. Following a year as Chief of Manpower Control Branch at the US Army Artillery
and Missile Center, Comptroller Section in Ft. Sill, Looney worked in Karachi, Pakistan,
for the US Army Engineer District for one year. In 1960, she began her employment
with the VA Hospital System. She was a charter member of the Senior Executive Service
with a grade of SES-4, which is just two steps from the highest grade in the Federal
Competitive Service.