5 Decades of Fond Memories
Celebrating 50 years at Virginia Baptist Hospital School of Nursing.
By Cynthia T. Pegram / Media General News Service

CLASS OF 1956

They were girls from the bobby socks generation, growing up with Frank Sinatra on the radio and hearing their parents talk about The Great Depression and World War II.

Those were the days when the approved non-homemaker careers for young women were teacher, secretary, and nurse. "The first two didn't interest me," said Ann Wilkinson Johnston, Class of 1956, Virginia Baptist Hospital School of Nursing.

"I always wanted to be a nurse."

Johnston, of Little Rock, Ark., will be among the out-of-towners soon celebrating the 50th anniversary of the nursing class of '56. Nineteen women graduated. In the intervening years, three have died, and the hope is that all 16 remaining will be at the reunion September 9.

The group also hopes that some of the instructors who worked with the Class of '56 will attend, but has not been able to contact them all.

Virginia Baptist Hospital School of Nursing was in operation from 1924 through 1982, said Kim Price, RN and president of the school's alumnae association. The school has more than 1,000 graduates.

The Class of '56 created the "White Caps" yearbook and formed a Baptist Student Union. They wore blue-and white-striped dresses with white collar and cuffs, and white apron. As graduates, they entered the professional world during the era when nurses wore white uniforms, caps and school pins, white hose and white shoes.

Graduation day was September 10, 1956.

Joan Collins of Scottsville is helping organize the 50th anniversary event. Collins went to Mary Washington College before she attended nursing school at Virginia Baptist.

Her reason was simple - she had always wanted to be a nurse, and felt called to missionary work. But the Baptist Foreign Mission recommended that missionaries have a college education.

Nursing student life began in 1953, with Collins and her classmates studying the nursing arts, nursing science, chemis-try, obstetrics, and medical-surgical nursing.

"We had to pay for uniforms and books. We worked for the hospital and they gave us an education," said Collins.

Above: Joan Collins Below: Ann Wilkinson Johnston

They lived in the nurses' dormitory at the hospital and worked split eight-hour shifts, usually 7 to 11 a.m. and 3 to 7 p.m. Their daily lives were enfolded by their work.

As an educational format, "it was a very excellent way. None of us have had any difficulty moving on," said Collins.

On graduation, Collins worked for a few years then left for what was then Tanganyika in East Africa, where she spent four years supervising and working in a missionary hospital there.

Collins was the only trained nurse in a staff of 40 in the 120-bed tuberculosis hospital, but she was prepared for it.

"Virginia Baptist Hospital taught you to do just about everything nurses do, in those days," said Collins. "I took my notes and textbooks."

Collins was to return to the U.S., get a master's degree and teach nursing in Pennsylvania. She also worked as a public health nurse and drew on her earlier education.

"I used some of the things taught at Virginia Baptist Hospital in home care," she said.

Ann Wilkinson Johnston also used her nursing skills across her lifetime.

She had grown up in Arlington, where her family was very active in a Baptist church, and Virginia Baptist Hospital seemed a natural choice.

When Johnston saw the Lynchburg setting, "I thought it was a beautiful place, exactly where I wanted to be."

First-year students lived in the oldest part of the building for a year, and then moved to the newer dormitory.

After six months, students got their caps.

Twenty-three girls had entered the class, said Johnston. One left after a year, but the others, within a matter of months.

The students had a good rapport with the faculty, she said. "There was natural fear, and admiration... some had some quirks, but we dealt with it."

Their education was "good hands-on patient care. There were only RNs and students," she said. "We were paid a small stipend because we were a hospital staff."

The students had a three-month rotation to a pediatric hospital in Philadelphia. For psychiatric nursing training, they could go to a hospital in Wilmington, DE or Washington, D.C.

Johnston recalled being part of a group of about six students who trained at a children's hospital in Philadelphia, where they lived and worked. A month after graduation, they had to take the State Board of Nursing exam to become a registered nurse.

Johnston was just about 21 years old when she graduated from Virginia Baptist.

She had gained "the confidence to make decisions, to assess a situation, to know when you could handle it and when you needed additional help."

She married and moved to Little Rock, where she worked in outpatient orthopedics and urology at The University of Arkansas Medical Science Campus.

Later, her nursing training gave her great confidence as a parent, said Johnston.

The mother of three grown children - one is a family practice physician - Johnston now works part time in a doctor's office.

Collins retired about 10 years ago. Nursing has changed in many ways, she said, but most of all in the bedside care. Now other attendants do many of the bedside nurse's former patient care duties.

In 1956, "there was nobody but us," said Collins.