Jeannette Waddell Fournier, known to family and friends as Jeanie, was born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, United States, on 13 October 1955. She studied nursing at Kettering College of Medical Arts, Dayton, Ohio, qualifying as a registered nurse in 1975. It was the start of a lifelong commitment to nursing and public health. As a staff nurse at Kettering Memorial Hospital, Jeannette specialized in cardiac intensive care, completing a one-year residency for future nurse-managers in 1978. There then followed a two-year spell as head nurse of the intensive care unit at Sycamore Hospital, Miamisburg, Ohio.
In 1980 Jeannette volunteered as a nurse with the American Red Cross and was seconded to an ICRC mission in Thailand, working in the Nong Chan refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border. The following year, she switched to the Cambodian side of the border, working with the Order of Malta as a surgical ward nurse in the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp. She then returned to the ICRC and a mission as head nurse in a field hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, where she stayed until 1982. The first of her two children was born the same year; her second arrived two years later.
In 1983 Jeannette volunteered as an instructor at the Ahli Arab Hospital, Gaza Strip, teaching students the principles of intensive care nursing. She spent two years there before moving to Africa and the Zaire American Clinic in Kinshasa where she worked as a clinical nurse and surgical assistant from 1985 to 1987. Her years in Africa, Asia and the Middle East would instil in her a love of different cultures, great adaptability and constant curiosity.
In 1990 she returned to the ICRC as an administrative assistant, translator and copywriter-editor in the Harare delegation, Zimbabwe, where her husband Henry Fournier was head of delegation. Three years later Jeannette was posted to the regional delegation in Jakarta, Indonesia, where she continued working as a copy editor and translator. She was fluent in French, industrious, dedicated and diligent. Indeed, every place she went, every person she met, couldn’t help but benefit from her know-how and skills, whether in the field of health or her many other areas of expertise.
Five years in Indonesia were followed by a lengthy spell in Lebanon where she joined the American University of Beirut’s Choral Society and had two exhibitions of her watercolours. She then pursued further education, focusing on public health. In 2003 she gained a Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences, Clinical Leadership & Management from George Washington University; two years later she completed a Master of Public Health, with an emphasis on international health, from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Keen to put her new learning and skills into practice – and where they could most make a difference – Jeannette resumed her career with the ICRC. She applied to be a health delegate in Senegal, where her husband was head of the regional delegation. She was successful and was stationed in the Ziguinchor subdelegation, in Senegal’s southern Casamance region, in late 2005.
On 1 September the following year, she was travelling with three colleagues northwest of Ziguinchor, along a road frequently used by the ICRC, when their vehicle struck a mine. Jeannette, who was 50, was killed. Maxym Gutov, head of the Ziguinchor subdelegation, was badly wounded; driver Albert Batiga and field officer Aliou Djiba were also injured. At the time of the tragedy, the team had been on a field trip to assess the needs of people displaced by fighting in the region. Jeannette was in her element, out in the field, working closely with communities, once again sharing her knowledge and experience to save lives and relieve human suffering.
