Pearl Turner was the only Santa Cruz County woman, serving in the armed forces, to have died during World War I.

Mary Pearl Turner was born in California about 1892 to Harry and Sarah Turner. Sometime between 1900 and 1910 Pearl, along with her parents and sister Irene, moved to Santa Cruz and settled into a home in the Seabright district. Pearl attended Santa Cruz High School as a member of the class of 1910. While in school, her friends described her appearance as being "most attractive and winsome."

Following the completion of her high school education, Pearl moved into a residence on Union Street in San Francisco and enrolled as a "Nursing Apprentice" in the nursing program at St. Lukes Hospital. After graduating from the program, she joined the St. Lukes staff where she was said to have "gained the respect of the staff and physicians with whom she worked."

When the government put out a call for volunteer nurses prior to the US entry into World War I, Pearl Turner responded and joined the Naval Nurse Corps. During her service, she was assigned to the naval medical facility located at Mare Island near Vallejo California.

“With the diagnosis of influenza in the community, Navy authorities quickly responded. Liberty in the city was canceled and functions involving large groups of personnel were prohibited. On 5 October [1918] the emergency hospitals were opened. The peak of the epidemic among service people in the yard was around 13-15 October, and it was virtually ended by 30 October. There were 1,536 (1,600 predicted) service personnel treated for influenza. An emergency hospital for civilian employees of the yard opened on Navy yard grounds on 3 November and closed 30 November. Two hundred eighty-seven civilians received care.”

During this period, Pearl Turner contracted influenza. Her mother traveled to Vallejo to nurse her daughter and remained by her side until her death on October 21, 1918.

The 1919 Santa Cruz High School Trident, honoring Pearl and its other war dead, noted, "So hard did she work, and so devoted was she to her duties that she contracted influenza in the hospital in Mare Island and died." Pearl Turner's gravesite has not been located.

(USCR, 1910 US Census, CA, Santa Cruz; St. Lukes Hospital 1914- 1915, List of Graduates at the Training School 1890-1913; http:// www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/schools/stluke15.htm, (16 September 2008]); SCSn October 23, 1918 4:7; SCSf October 23, 1918 3:1;
SCEN May 10, 1924; Snyder, Thomas Naval Historical Center, Great Flu Epidemic at Mare Island Navy Yard and Vallejo, http://www.
history.navy.mil/library/online/influenza_mareis.htm [16 September
2008]; CDR)