Bloggerlife.blog

05/22/2025

Today’s blog

Lynn Murphy Mark

1970

Today I am really blasting the past. This year, 1970, was a big one for me. I graduated from college without a clue what to do with my education. I had a Liberal Arts degree because I had changed majors about three times, so my diploma reflected a wide-ranged education – one that I have never regretted. I floated to the language department, the history department, and finally settled in the biology and other sciences realm.

Once the Director of Nurses of Boone County Hospital, where I worked as a nurse’s aide, asked me what I was going to do with my degree and I had to admit that I had no idea. She steered me to a diploma nursing school in Saint Louis. This was another decision that I have not regretted. At least I had a plan.

In August of 1970 I moved into the dorm at Deaconess Hospital as a student in the School of Nursing. (For the record, that was so long ago that there is no longer a hospital building or dormitory standing. The St Louis Zoo bought the property and tore down the buildings where so many people came for health care, and so many of us came for a stellar nursing education.) It was a three year Diploma program, which means that we learned in classrooms, but mostly learned by putting our knowledge into play on each of the hospital specialties. We were given responsibilities that used our brains and our bodies on all three shifts. Head Nurses counted on us to help staff their units. We had a healthy respect for those battle-hardened women who had so much responsibility for the welfare of patients and staff alike. I remember practically all of their personalities and their commitment to providing competent services to all.

So, after four years in college dorms, I was facing another three years in the building that overlooked the edge of Forest Park. I have to say I wasn’t especially enthused about that aspect. I would be living on the Freshman floor with girls who had just graduated from High School. But because I was “older” (21 to their 18) I was granted a private room. I think the Deaconess Sisters who ran the school thought they should isolate me from the young things since I was the first college graduate they had ever admitted. Perhaps they thought I would teach the innocents things that only a mature college graduate would know. Instead, the group of wild child’s that I got to know taught me a thing or two about what they had really learned in High School.

We weathered three years of rigorous training. Back in the day, a Diploma nurse was considered the cream of the crop. There weren’t many four year college nursing programs available, so the Diploma programs were the industry standard for most of the first half of the twentieth century. But because Saint Louis is rich in very good hospitals, Saint Louis University and the University of Missouri established four year programs, emphasizing more the study of the art rather than the practical experience of being a floor nurse. Anyway, we were completely absorbed in our studies, regardless of location.

We lived and worked together for three long years with very short breaks in the action. Since we worked in the trenches, we developed deep friendships and became each others’ support systems. We labored and studied hard, and had the kind of fun that only young women in close proximity to each other can get into. 

Fifty-five years from the start of our time together some of us are still friends. We get together periodically to share a meal. In the past we have actually gone on two road trips. Once when I was still living in Florida, seven of us met for a long weekend at the beach. We traveled to Nashville to see one of our companions who was having health challenges. We have met in Saint Louis, with the out-of-towners flying in for the occasion. We have lost two of our precious friends at a too-young-to-die age and have mourned them together. 

As proof of our long memories, one of us, Ruthie, will be celebrating her mother’s 100^th birthday in July. Her mom, Mrs. Pratt, was the Head Nurse on the OB/GYN floor at Deaconess. She is an unforgettable part of our training and we each spent three months on her floor under her kind direction. The plan is to send her birthday cards reminding her how much she meant to so many nurses over her years there. 

When we get together these days there is some talk of our own health challenges – it’s a requirement when one reaches one’s 70’s. We tell the same funny stories about our experiences as young puppies. Mostly though, when we get together we talk heavily about politics. Our little group happens to be of one mind where social issues are concerned. I love looking at our somewhat weathered faces and remembering the freshness of our youth.