Janet Fern Hanneman McNulty (January 17, 1936 â June 9, 2019) was an American nurse who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Lahore, Pakistan, from 1962 to 1964.
Hanneman was born on a farm in Lincoln County, Kansas, and raised in Junction City, the daughter of Frank William Hanneman and Lydia Ellen Vonada Hanneman. She earned a bachelor's degree in nursing at the University of Kansas in 1958. She pursued further training in psychiatric nursing at Maudsley Hospital in England, and studying psychology on a Rotary Foundation fellowship in New Zealand.
In 1961, Hanneman was one of the first nurses to volunteer for the Peace Corps. She trained in Puerto Rico, studied Urdu, and was assigned to a state-run mental hospital in Lahore, where she worked from 1962 to 1964. One of the patients she worked with at the hospital was American writer Maryam Jameelah. "When I arrived in Pakistan in January 1962, a new hospital administration was taking charge," Hanneman recalled in 1964. "Now each person has a bed and bedding. Food and clothing also have improved. Sections of the hospital once locked are now unlocked." During her service in Lahore she survived three bicycle accidents and a concussion, and contracted malaria and hepatitis.
Hanneman, a photogenic, college-educated nurse from Kansas, became an exemplar of the Peace Corps ideal. She was mentioned in a Sargent Shriver speech about the Peace Corps, appeared in a Peace Corps publicity film, and featured in a Life magazine article in 1965, about the culture shock returning volunteers faced. She was a recruiter for the Peace Corps after her field service ended, and gave interviews and lectures on the Corps' work, including television appearances and international tours.
Hanneman married businessman James McNulty in 1965. She died in 2019, at the age of 66, in Laguna Woods, California. Her widower established a nursing scholarship in her memory.