Nov. 11--If medals went for visiting ill or injured veterans, Josie Toogood would outshine any five-star general.

As it is, she wears a small, plain nameplate, nothing that indicates she's spent nearly every Friday morning for 42 years providing spiritual care to Catholic patients at the VA Medical Center in southern Dallas.

Most have no idea she's a veteran too, having served in the British Women's Auxiliary Air Force in World War II. But they can hear from her accent she's from England, and they can remark on an angel of mercy named "Toogood."

"I wasn't too good before," she has learned to quip, and then she's back to handing out rosary beads, offering communion and listening patiently to whatever the veteran wants or needs to share.

Toogood, 85, is the hospital's longest-serving volunteer and a good argument for the Greatest Generation theory. Her fidelity as a hospital visitor stretches across the Vietnam, Gulf and Iraq wars, other military engagements and nine U.S. presidencies.

Her junior partner in Catholic chaplaincy at the VA is the Rev. Timothy Gollob, who began a mere 40 years ago. They started before the hospital was air-conditioned, and Toogood is not too sweet in describing what it was like on summer days.

"Hotter than the hinges of hell," she said.

The funny, fast-talking Toogood softens with veterans.

One recent Friday, she looked in on Tom Pardick, a 63-year-old Vietnam veteran who served in the Navy. He's been at the VA for 15 months, battling cancer of the rectum and a diabetic ulcer that cost him his left leg.

After so long, his room is well-decorated with model ships he's built and rosary beads. And after so many weekly visits, he and Toogood have become friends, sharing stories from their respective wars.

But that's not the main thing.

"We get together spiritually," he said. "I look forward to it. It reinforces my commitment to the Lord and gives me more of a purpose."

Toogood was born Mary Josephine Cowley in Wales. She grew up in Manchester, England, the youngest child of a grocer father and schoolteacher mother. She was 15 when England went to war with Germany and evacuated Manchester with the rest of her school, returning in time to endure bombing raids.

At 18, she joined the Women's Land Army, which provided labor to farmers whose male help was off soldiering. Toogood felt isolated in the country and didn't care for herding cows. She switched to the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.

There, she became a radar operator, tracking enemy and British aircraft. Her postings included the Isle of Wight, a good vantage point for D-Day's unfolding.

"I watched it with my own eyes," she said.

Toogood recalls rationing so severe it seems unimaginable.

"We were so young," she said. "We didn't think anything of the hardships."

After the war, she married an American serviceman, Chester Stanley, and followed him to the U.S. She wore a wool suit, hat and gloves for a May train trip from New York to Texas, arriving in a swelter and wondering what she'd gotten herself into.

They lived first in Dallas and then in West Texas, where Stanley died in a VA hospital at age 37. She returned to Dallas with their two children, worked in various jobs and attended St. Monica Catholic Church. She eventually married Ed Toogood, a Navy pilot who served in World War II.

For Toogood, life was full of veterans' connections, including vivid childhood memories of poppies handed out in honor of British soldiers who died in World War I. But Toogood said none of that influenced her in 1967 when she agreed to join fellow church member Betty Roberts in visiting Catholic patients at the Dallas VA hospital.

She liked Roberts and simply chose to join her in answering a need. Over time, Toogood has come to consider her volunteer work a calling.

"It's a ministry," Toogood, a cradle Catholic, said. "I'm doing what God wants me to do."

Allowing for one cancer surgery of her own and a few vacations, Toogood has made, by a conservative estimate, more than 2,000 visits to the VA.

She learned early not to ask "How are you?" A certain post-op patient nearly bit her head off for that.

"Now I always say, 'I hope you're having the best day you can have,' " she said.

There are other tricks of the trade. Many men, she said, will turn down a straightforward offer of rosary beads.

"I use a little psychology and say, 'Which color would you like?' " she said.

Most patients recover enough to be released. But Toogood has seen many to the end, and not just seniors.

"I've lost a lot of young friends," she said.

Besides visiting patients, Toogood helps Gollob with Mass at the hospital chapel, reading Scripture and ringing the bell that signals consecration of the elements in communion.

Of that task and every other, the priest said, "She doesn't miss a beat."

Long a U.S. citizen, Toogood likes her afternoon cup of tea. She keeps an image of Winston Churchill and a small British flag in her North Dallas home. A U.S. flag flies outside.

She's a great-grandmother who recently gave up tennis, still does Jazzercise and takes a big role in her church's Stephen Ministry, through which trained laypeople provide care to those in trouble.

Talk to Toogood for any length, and you'll hear surprises. Here's one: "I hate hospitals. I'm absolutely terrified of hospitals."

She'll be back at the VA on Friday.

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