Marcia Ebert of Kingston, left, and Sandy Platsky of Wilkes-Barre reminisce as they look over photographs and yearbooks from decades past. They are members of the class of 1962.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
W-B General’s final class graduated in 1974
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Friends Carol Jones Wolosz of Edwardsville and Ann Nuss of Bloomsburg were glad to see each other at the reunion. They both graduated from Wilkes-Barre General Hospital School of Nursing in 1953.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
From left are nursing grad Alice Lent of Shickshinny, guest Samantha Tanski of Exeter; nursing grads Sandra Knouse and Barbara Tretheway McAfee.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Lois Stevens of Wilkes-Barre, at right, chaired the Nurses’ Homecoming event. She is shown with committee members Mary Ann Baran of Nanticoke and Marcia Antonik of Wilkes-Barre.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Maureen Cech, archivist for the Center for Nursing History at Misercordia University, attended the nurses’ homecoming at the Mary Stegmaier Mansion in Wilkes-Barre, where she displayed a traditional nurse’s cap, uniform and white shoes at the along with vintage photographs and other memorabilia.
“I just liked helping people,” Lois Stevens of Wilkes-Barre said, explaining her decision to become a nurse.
“I couldn’t imagine being anything else,” said Sandy Platsky of Wilkes-Barre.
“I think you’ll find nurses in general are caregivers,” said Marcia Miller Antolik of Wilkes-Barre, noting she’ll still “take care of neighbors, whomever,” even though she’s retired now.
Stevens, Platsky and Antolik were three of close to 120 nurses who gathered at the Mary Stegmaier Mansion in Wilkes-Barre on Sunday afternoon for a homecoming celebration for graduates of the former Wilkes-Barre General Hospital School of Nursing.
It will be the last such gathering, said Stevens, who chaired the event.
The school of nursing, which had opened in the 1890s, closed in 1974, Stevens said, so the youngest graduates are close to 70 years old now.
Every year the nurses typically held a celebration to honor the class that had graduated 50 years earlier. Because of the COVID epidemic, the last homecoming was held in 2019, honoring the class of 1969.
While the recent homecoming was designated to honor the classes of 1970 through 1974, most of the alumni who attended seemed to be earlier graduates.
Some had become school nurses, or teachers of nursing students. Some had worked in emergency rooms, operating rooms, on cardiac arrest teams and in doctors’ offices.
For Marcia Ebert of Kingston, class of 1962, becoming a nurse was her ticket to the excitement of living in New York City, where she started her career at Columbia-Presbyterian and lived in an apartment owned by the hospital with two other roommates.
Her friend Sandra Platsky, in contrast, wanted to stay local, and had no trouble finding a position here.
And for Barbara Trethaway McAfee of Wesley Village, entering the nursing profession was a way to continue the legacy of her mother, a nurse who passed away at age 33.
“I was 9 years old,” McAfee said, recalling the sudden loss, and how she was separated from her 8-year-old twin sisters when they went to live with different grandparents. As she was growing up she decided on a career plan: “My mother was a nurse, so I became a nurse, in her honor.”
As nursing alums milled about the Mary Stegmaier Mansion, many stopped by a display set up by archivist Maureen Cech from Misericordia University’s Center for Nursing History.
Photographs, yearbooks, a nurse’s traditional cap, shoes and uniform were part of the exhibit.
“I tell (current nursing students) that nurses would starch their uniforms,” Cech remarked. “And they say, ‘Starch? What’s starch?”
Uniforms may have changed, and schools of nursing have given way to college classes, but nurses remain dedicated to helping people through some of the most vulnerable times of their lives.
“People will say, ‘I remember you. You were my nurse,’ ” said Lois Stevens, who has been retired for years. “I still get that.”