Lini M. De Vries (July 25, 1905—March 27, 1982), born Lena Moerkerk in Prospect Park, New Jersey, was a Dutch–American author, public health nurse, and teacher.
She worked as chief of American Hospital Number 3 on the Madrid-Valencia Road during the Spanish Civil War and later organized health clinics in New Mexico, California, and Puerto Rico.
In Mexico, De Vries taught medicine and public health to indigenous villagers in the Papaloapan River Basin in Oaxaca; taught anthropology and public health at the University of Veracruz; was a founder of CIDOC, a religious, educational and cultural school; and helped found Cemanahuac, an educational community in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
Dutch was the language of her childhood home, and De Vries did not learn English until she attended grammar school.
[2] In 1921, De Vries' left the silk mills to work for a telephone company in Paterson, New Jersey.
Recounting her efforts to sustain the running of the hospital, De Vries managed to convince the male soldiers to participate in the chores needed to free nursing hands, including dish-washing, scrubbing, washing, digging latrines.
Moreover, she writes of the concerns of farmers and soldiers to their own futures, which led to the opening of new clinics and even new trenches that included special sections for classroom work.