By Pat Hadler and Gregor Gilliom
Capital University Magazine

As much as we hate to admit it, the further we get from graduation, the harder it is to stay in touch with friends from college. Interests change. People move. Kids are born. In other words, life happens. Which is what makes the story of nine 1958 Capital nursing school graduates all the more remarkable.

More than a half-century after leaving Capital, these women remain close friends thanks to a simple round-robin letter that’s still going strong. Bonded by the shared highs and lows of the then-nascent nursing program, they vowed to remain close — despite the marriages and jobs that would take them far from one another.

“I don’t remember who actually started the letter, but we decided we were going to stay connected,” recalls Yvonne Rogers Knauff. “This letter was our binding element.”

A living document

Every month or so, one of the women receives an envelope crammed with letters and photos. After reading the updates, she replaces the last letter she wrote with a new one and mails the packet to the next classmate on the list. Handwriting and manual typing has mostly given way to PC keyboards — but the round-robin tradition endures.

Like typical Facebook posts today, the early letters were primarily cheery updates about weddings and jobs, babies and career changes. Because they were nurses they wrote frankly about health issues. But, by and large, everyone’s lives and children “were absolutely perfect,” Knauff recalls — until she decided to break the ice. “I told them about the problems one of my children was having,” she says. “Then everybody seemed free to say, ‘Hey I’ve had challenges with my kids, too.’”

The letters’ content gradually changed, reflecting different chapters of life the women were going through: kids growing up and leaving home, the ups and downs of marriage. The closeness and support extended beyond the page; several women were in each other’s weddings, and one later cared for another following the rough delivery of a baby.

In recent years the letters have focused on more serious issues faced by the classmates, all now in their late 70s, such as retirement, illness and the death of a spouse. “When I see that packet in the mail, I make sure I have plenty of time when I can sit down and really read it,” says Jean Springer Hein. “I don’t want to read it hastily. We’ve always confided in and supported each other, and the girls were a big help when [my husband] passed away.”

Trials by fire

It’s easy to understand why the women bonded so tightly during their college days. The nursing program was grueling, requiring the student nurses to work and study virtually year round for four years, including a 10-week summer rotation after graduation. Their first year was spent on Capital’s campus, learning the basics of anatomy, physiology and microbiology. Then they moved into the nurse’s dormitory at the original Mt. Carmel Hospital, and later at the old Grant Hospital, where they began their two-year clinical experience.

“At Grant you had to carry water in a pitcher to the patient’s room to give them a bath, then carry it back to dump it,” remembers Marlene Schmidt Martin. “And we always seemed to get the rooms at the end of the hall. It was like the dark ages. But we weren’t in it alone and I think that’s why we’re so close.”

The students also gained experience working pediatrics at Children’s Hospital, psychiatry at the Columbus State Hospital, and caring for TB patients at the Ohio Tuberculosis Hospital. Summer and Christmas vacations were abbreviated, and they commuted by bus back to campus for additional classes.

The student nurses sacrificed many typical college experiences for their vocation. There was little time in their schedules for extracurricular activities, and when the women lived at Mt. Carmel, they had to be back to their quarters by 8 p.m. The program was so academically rigorous that many students simply dropped out. The class of 1958 began its freshman year with 24 students and ended it with only 10. An 11th classmate joined mid-program.

The women speak fondly of the purple uniforms and white aprons they wore every day, particularly after they received their caps. Knauff recalls some gentle teasing they endured from fellow students: “One time we walked onto campus in our uniforms, and a guy I knew leaned out of his dormitory window yelling, ‘Here come the panhandlers!’ Referring, of course, to bedpans,” she laughs. “But we were really proud to wear it.”

Friends for life

By the time the women were seniors and living back on Capital’s campus, lifelong friendships had taken root, creating a sisterhood of shared experiences. “Our class was just a bulwark of strength and connectedness,” says Pat Winters Goodyear. “There have been some pretty difficult times in my life. My son had a diving accident and became a quadriplegic at 17, and to have my sisters in nursing to share with and support me helped get me through it.”

Another common theme that connects the women is their spirituality. All are Lutheran and four married pastors, some of whom attended Trinity Lutheran Seminary on Capital’s campus. “There isn’t anyone in our group who is marginal in belief or in practice,” Goodyear says. “We had grand role models with the professors. And, of course, going to chapel had a big influence on us.”

Virtually all the women credit Capital for giving them the thorough preparation they needed to excel at nursing. It was almost expected that the students continue their education and strive toward greater things, says Knouff. “Capital was the best choice I could have made,” she recalls. “I introduced my fiancé to one of my favorite instructors and she said to him, ‘You do know she’s going on to graduate school?’”

While many of the classmates have lost the letters they wrote over the years, some have held on to the writings that chronicled their experiences since Capital. “If we had everything we ever wrote over the last 55 years, it would be an incredible volume and a working history of nine lives,” says Goodyear. “We think it’s a miracle that there are so many of us left. We’ve had an incredibly interesting journey in this life and we’re not afraid to talk to each other about it, both the good and the bad.”

Meet the Letter Writers

In 1958, 11 women graduated from the Capital University School of Nursing program. Nine of them made a commitment to stay in touch, a bond that’s lasted nearly 56 years. While many of them pursued nursing, and others took different paths, their friendships have endured through life’s many adventures, triumphs and heartaches. Here are their stories.

While her husband was in graduate school at Ohio University, Norma Powers Anderson worked as a nurse at the state psychiatric hospital in Athens. Later she was a clinical instructor at St. Elizabeth’s School of Nursing in Dayton, and worked in St. Louis and Raleigh. She earned her master’s degree at the University of North Carolina and worked as a nurse practitioner. After she and her husband James returned to St. Louis, she earned a PhD. in higher education and taught at St. Louis University School of Nursing for 36 years.

After graduation in 1958, Virginia Roth Cronenberger worked at Children’s Hospital in Columbus for about a year. But soon after, she and her husband Ken began their family as they moved around the country for his job, and she never returned to nursing. Fifty-five years and six kids later, Ginnie lives in Petroleum, West Virginia, and is proud of the fact that four of her offspring have followed in her footsteps and work in medicine, with two as nurses.

Once she left Capital, Pat Winters Goodyear didn’t turn her back on education. She went on to earn a master’s in counseling and a Ph.D. in human development, and spent 25 years teaching nursing at Union Memorial Hospital School of Nursing and at Johns Hopkins, both in Baltimore, Maryland. Later she became a clinical hypnotherapist and picked up a certification in biofeedback. She was an adjunct professor at Loyola, and had a counseling practice. Now retired, Pat volunteers at a homeless shelter in their hometown of Baltimore. Having cared for her husband, Jim, as he recovered from cancer, she hopes to start a cancer support group for others facing the battle.

Three days after she finished her last summer nursing rotation, Jean Springer Hein married her college sweetheart Norm, a pastor, and over the years called many places home: South Dakota, Minnesota, Long Island and finally, Austin, Texas. While she enjoyed nursing, by the mid-80s she was ready for a change. She earned a degree in accounting, and worked in that field for many years. Her nursing skills were called back into action as she cared for Norm who passed away from liver cancer in 2005.

Lynn Mueller Hueter and her husband Richard, a Lutheran pastor and Capital alum, served as missionaries for 19 years in Papua, New Guinea, beginning in 1960. While posted out in the bush, Lynn taught herself how to start an IV by administering anti-venom for a snakebite victim, a skill not taught in nursing schools at that time, let alone in a dark hut by Coleman lantern. She now lives in the less exotic locale of Cooks, Michigan. All three of her children, two of whom were born in New Guinea, are Capital graduates.

Following graduation, Yvonne Rogers Knauff worked as a public health nurse while her husband attended Trinity Lutheran Seminary. Later the mother of three earned a Masters of Public Health degree (University of North Carolina), then a Primary Care Nurse Practitioner degree (University of Pittsburgh) while teaching at Duquesne University. After serving as a consultant for the West Virginia Department of Health she joined a private infectious diseases practice, with 40% of her patients diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Additionally Yvonne spent more than seven years doing international travel medicine, including three mission trips to Namibia, Africa. She and her husband Lowell, a retired pastor, live in Winchester, Virginia.

Capital University is not only Charlene Myers Long’s alma mater but a former employer as well. After working part-time and getting her master’s from Ohio State when her kids were young, she taught at Capital for six years as an assistant professor of nursing. But after attending a conference she was lured away to the University of South Florida, where she taught nursing and later received her PhD. in education. Today she and her husband John, a retired engineer, live in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Women didn’t have much choice when it came to degree programs in 1954 when Marlene Schmidt Martin was applying to Capital. “You were either a secretary, a teacher or a nurse, and I didn’t think I’d like teaching,” she recalls. Nursing turned out to be a good choice as she worked as visiting nurse before teaching nursing at two hospitals in the Youngstown, Ohio area, where she still lives with her husband Jerry. She was active in her field until about 15 years ago when a health condition made it difficult to work.

Charlene Hohm Renshaw worked as a surgical and pediatric nurse following graduation, and later taught clinical psychiatric nursing. But the arrival of two children slowed her pace to part-time, and later she left paid employment to care for her aging parents, an aunt and an uncle, helping them through various health problems. She and her husband Ken live in Valparaiso, Indiana, and have successfully competed in ballroom dance competitions.

Two additional women made up the full class roster from 1958. Ruthann Schiller Stahl lost her battle with cancer in the mid-1980s. And the group lost touch with Dorothy Stirm Blackburn, once a surgical nurse for renowned cardiovascular surgeon, Dr. Michael DeBakey. “We all were almost closer than sisters,” says Charlene Myers Long. “And we have missed her.”