52 Weeks of Peraonal Genealogy & History My Career

While writing a Series of Grateful post on Facebook I had one day were I was grateful for my career in nursing.  I realized this one was one worth of a post on my blog.  I am placing it in Personal Genealogy and History. 

I am grateful for my career choice and the path that I travel to get where I am today.  Nursing has been good to me.  The doors in my life opened just right for me to be a nurse with a degree.  It was a long road but well worth it. 

I have always wanted to be a nurse.  Of course I played nurse when I was a young girl.  After I watched the movie, The Nun Story I wanted to be a Nun Nurse in Africa.  My mother didn’t want me to be a nurse.  She would tell me it is hard work that I would not like it and not to do it.  I even thought of enlisting to be an Army Nurse, my Mom really didn’t like that idea at all.  She was an Army Nurse during WWII.  I did listen to her on that but I followed my heart and became a nurse.  She never saw me graduate because she died before I graduated from high school.  She was right it is hard work but it is honest and satisfying. 

My high school principle told me I was and I quote, “too stupid to be a nurse, compassionate enough but too stupid.”   Well I guess you can’t say that to me. 

After high school I went to a vocational school and received my LPN.  I went there because two different, three year hospital schools of nursing turned me down because my high school grades weren’t high enough.  It looks like a closed door doesn’t it, but waits and watch it was just a detour to a better path.  I graduated top of my class and as the Student of the Year for my class.  I even went to the national nursing convention as the Student of the Year.  Not stupid just a late bloomer.

Mary 1966 As LPN Student of the Year

I worked for a couple years as a LPN. I was able to get an apartment with a friend and live my own life.  I worked hard and even had an RN say to me once when are you going to become a Real Nurse.  So I decided to attend the Community College to earn my ASN (Associated Degree in Nursing).  During my interview with the Dean of Nursing when I applied to the School of Nursing, she was very dismissive.  She didn’t think I had the high school grades to enter the program.  I mentioned that I had done well in LPN school and her reply was, “That doesn’t count, vocational schools are only equivalent to a 11 grade education you have to give us a semester of college level work with a grade average of C.” Back in the days of A, B, C, D & F grades not grade point average.  I guess she shouldn’t have said that to me either.

So I started with my pre-requisite classes and handed her straight A’s.  Now here is the door marked entered.  The year I went back they changed the sciences for nurses and respiratory therapist to Integrated Sciences.  The same sciences classes but at a more practical level and user friendly level.  Just perfect for me, I like science but those higher levels would have been very hard for me to complete.  These more practical levels of classes allowed me to graduate with all A’s.  So two and a half years after entering Broward Community College I passed my Florida State Board of Nursing Exam and became an RN.  I had accomplished this while working as an LPN to support myself.  Mostly I worked part time but I also worked as a private duty nurse taking care of one patient for eight hours and finishing my homework.

Mary Feb 1971 RN Student

After working as an RN for a while several of my co-workers decided to go on and get their BSNs (Bachelors of Science in Nursing) I started with them but I was the only one who finished.  A new University had just opened and they were accepting all Community College credits across the board.  The other university I thought of attending wanted me to retake all the nursing 101 courses over again.  That was not a hard decision to make on which university I was going to go to.  Two and a half years later I graduated with my BSN, and I had worked 24 to 32 hours a week during those years.

1979 Nursing Instructor

Many a day I felt like I was eating, drinking, sleeping and working nursing 24 hours a day.  Between work, schoolwork and homework there was little time for anything else.  But it was worth it. 

Chemo Nurse

September of this year I celebrated my 45 anniversary as a nurse.  That is a lot of years of nursing.  I won’t say I loved every day of being a nurse, I didn’t.  There were many hard days of feeling there wasn’t enough time to do all that needed to be done for patients.  But on a whole I loved my life as a nurse.  He best part is nursing is versatile enough I did a lot of different things. 

Chemo Nurse

·        Med/Surg nurse that means I worked on Medical or Surgical patient floors for both adults and children
·        NICU
·        PICU = Pediatrics Intensive Care
·        Clinical Instructor at a Community College for an LPN transitional program to RN (part time because I didn’t have a Master’s Degree)
·        Home Health Care Nurse or Visiting Nurse, I went from home to home to visit patients after they are discharged from the hospital (this was a real fun job, I was the only American who spoke Spanish and I saw many Spanish speaking patients.)
·        Oncology floor nurse
·        Home Health IV team, I started and maintained IV’s at home to give antibiotics and chemotherapy
·        Outpatient Chemotherapy nurse at private office groups, giving chemotherapy, supporting, educating and symptom management of chemo patients, I did this the longest, over twenty years
·        Case Manager helped instruct patients over the phone on how to manage their chronic disease such as diabetes, Congestive Heart Failure for an insurance company
·        Clinical Informatics train and support physicians and nurses on the Electronic Medical Record, my current job

Sharing Memories: Mom's Work

Lorine at Olive Tree Genealogy suggested a blogging topic of Parents and Grandparents Occupations.

Here is a previous story I wrote about my Mom's work as a nurse. Lots of memories of this also. We use to meet her at the bus stop in Whitestone when she came home from work. My Mom didn't learn to drive until after we moved to Florida in 1959 at the age of 40. She never needed to drive in New York but she sure needed to in Florida.

When she first became a nurse she couldn't even take Vital Signs only physicians could do that. Nursing sure has come a long way, nurses now do very complex evaluations of patients when they are in ICU.

She use to come home from work, and take her uniform off, sit in the chair and role her stockings off down to the ankles in sit in the arm chair in her slip exhausted. I know the feeling. Her nursing cap was an oval shaped upside down cupcake cup, with a black ribbon. I wish now I had taken that from home when I left home. I don't have her school pin either. I'm not sure what school of nursing she graduated from but it was in Boston.   This picture of a nursing cap is very similar to my Mom's.

Mom was also an army nurse during World War II, again I have no stories about this or pictures.  When I asked questions when I saw some of her pictures when I was 11 she told me, I will tell you about it when you are older.  Well I never heard the stories.  I had her old army footlocker for years, that I used as a coffee talbe when I first left home and had my own appartment.
The only thing I know about my Mother, Edith is she worked as a secretary.  Maybe when the 1940 census comes out I will know more, she was only 13 on the the 1930 census and she was a student at that time.

Fearless Females Working Women

This is the picture of my grandmother Minnie Elizabeth Spahn in May 1905. This was her nursing school graduation from New York Metropolitan Hospital on Blackwells Island, New York. She was not quite 20 yrs old, she would be 20 on Oct. 6th. I never heard stories of her working as a nurse, but she must have because later in life she was a widow and still had children at home.
Nursing sure has changed in 105 years.



My Mom (second-mom) worked as a nurse also. She was an army nurse during World War II and she was the nurse who took care of my mother when she died of breast cancer. I can remember her working in a hospital in Flushing, Booth Memorial Hospital. This is a picture of the charm bracket her co-workers gave her in 3-6-59 from the OBS staff. This is just before we moved to Florida. She obviously was well liked by her co-workers. She also worked at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale Florida when we moved there. I do not have a picture of her in her uniform, just the ones in my mind of her coming home and sitting like a rag doll in a chair.


This is me on graduation day from LPN school, Sept of 1966 age 18.
I was also a nurse at the same hospital while I was an LPN and going to school to earn my RN. Big mistake to work were your mother had worked. Plus Mom was a very nice person. If there was a nice way to say something she had a nicer way. I on the other hand have a tendency to say it like I see it. I frequently have hoof and mouth disease. I do have to admit I have learned to calm it down a lot since I was in my late teens. I have been a nurse since I was 18, enter nursing school at 17.


This is a picture of me as a RN student, Feb of 1971 I was 23. Mom never wanted me to be a nurse, she said it was hard work. Boy was she right. I have never regretted my decision to be a nurse.

I think this counts as three generations of nurses! Spanning 105 years.