Rita Brock/1

Rita Brock-Perini was born on Oct. 17, 1938, in Phoenix, Arizona. She graduated from St. Mary’s High School in 1956 and at 17 entered St. Joseph’s School of Nursing in Phoenix. She worked for 10 years as a nurse and then enlisted in the U.S. Air Force where she was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. As the Vietnam War intensified, she was assigned to the Wilford Hall Medical Center, the largest Air Force hospital in the nation at the time.