To celebrate the 196th birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, several former nurses donned old uniforms and enjoyed each other’s stories Monday at Buffalo Hill Terrace.

Gloria Wiberg, who got into the nursing field during World War II as part of the Cadet Nurse Corps, organized the event. 

The Corps was formed in 1943 to bolster the ranks of America’s nurses during wartime. The process was so fast that many of the nurses were running hospital wards while still in school.

“I was running the women’s ward and another classmate was running the men’s,” Wiberg said. “We didn’t have time to be stressed out.”

Nearly a dozen retired nurses, who got into the discipline from the late 1930s to the 1950s, wore the famous white winged hats (designed by milliner Lilly Dache) that became synonymous with nursing.

Not all of the women were part of Franklin Roosevelt’s Cadet Nursing Corps, but others such as Betty Powell all were hurried through schooling to fill a massive need for nursing. 

Powell, a native Scot, went to school in Massachusetts as one of the first community college nursing graduates.

Others at Monday’s lunch gathering came from Butte, Spokane and Chicago.

Lauretta Milne, a Spokane native who was rushed through Whitworth College, said those days were rough.

“The day after we graduated, we were in the hospital,” she said. “They needed us so badly. We had to do every job in the hospital.”

With many men and women overseas fighting the war, staffing at home was hard to come by.

Milne said she remembers when her hospital first received penicillin. The brand-new nurses had to mix the chunky, yellowed substance with saline before injecting it into patients.

It wasn’t a time for nurses to be squeamish, although Wiberg admits the smell of disinfectant was so overpowering she might start shifts by losing her lunch in the utility closet’s sink. Her fellow former nurses remembered it with an honest sense of nostalgia.

“Oh, the smell was bad,” Powell said. “But you’ll get used to anything over time.”

Milne said after leaving the hospital for a few weeks, she was looking forward to the overly clean aroma.

Along with the meal and the nursing hats, many of the women Monday brought old uniforms or photos of themselves in younger days. The Cadet Nurse Corps ended in 1948, but most of the women remained in the field for most of their professional careers.

Wiberg organized the lunch for her compatriots to share stories and honor Nightingale, who was an angel of mercy to British soldiers wounded in the Crimean War. 

That spirit of care and kindness sticks with the women of Buffalo Hill Terrace today, as their stories can attest.  

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.