Harriet Parker Hankins was born in 1884 and grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia. She enrolled at Farmville Normal College (now Longwood University) and became a member of the Alpha chapter of Sigma Sigma Sigma.
Hankins was the sorority’s first National Treasurer. It is her drawing on the cover of the first edition of The Triangle of Sigma Sigma Sigma.
After graduation, she enrolled in a nursing program at Garfield Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. During World War I she made at least two transatlantic crossings to serve as an American Red Cross Nurse. Early in the war, she was in Germany. When diplomatic relations with the country ended, she returned home. The Daily Press reported on April 29, 1915, that her parents were anxious for her return.
Hankins sailed out of Rotterdam on May 29 and arrived in New York on June 11, 1915.
She then served with the Army on the Mexican border. In May 1916, Hankins was in Washington, D.C. teaching “diet tent cooking” to new nursing recruits. When the United States entered the war, she served in France and Belgium.
On January 11, 1920, it was reported the Hankins visited her parents for a long rest after spend two years in Europe. Hankins, “saw much of the suffering in Belgium and other belligerent countries and her experience has been an unusual one,” according to the Daily Press.
At some point she transitioned from an American Red Cross Nurse to a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Nursing Corps. Hankins was assigned to several posts including one at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. During World War II, she served in the Philippines.
She retired in 1954 and shortly afterwards she moved back to Williamsburg. Hankins was active in the Daughters of the American Revolution. She died on August 25, 1967, at 82 years old and is interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
