Emory Nursing, Autumn 1998

 
Class Notes 1930s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
Sue St. Clair, 98MN/MPH
Kelly Spooner, 98N
Deaths
Faculty News


1930s

Harriet Harper Williams McDonald, 32N, 51N, 57MN, and her husband, Jim, live in Cloncurry, Australia, but keep an apartment in Atlanta for the occasional foray back to Harriet's hometown. (Jim is a native Aussie who runs a large cattle ranch in Queensland.) On a trip Stateside in July, the McDonalds found time to sample cous-cous and take in a belly-dancing performance at The Casbah, a local Moroccan restaurant, with their friend Edith Honeycutt, 39N. All too soon for their Atlanta friends, the McDonalds left Atlanta and its 90+ degree days for the winter weather back home. This fall Harriet plans to do it in reverse: leave the warm weather Down Under for a cool, crisp Thanksgiving in Georgia.


1950s

Anne J. Davis, 55N, now resides in Komagane City, Japan, where she holds a post-retirement position as professor emerita and distinguished professor at Nagano College of Nursing. But for 34 years, she was professor of cross-cultural nursing and nursing ethics at the UC-San Francisco School of Nursing.
  In recognition of her many contributions to UCSF, that school's department of community health systems established the Anne J. Davis International Library. The facility will house scholarly materials for the school's World Health Organization Collaborating Center and will include a rare collection of resources related to global health. Contributions from UCSF alumni, friends, and colleagues are funding the remodeling and computer installation that will allow the library's unique holdings to be accessible on-line.


1960s

At age 51, with an 11-year-old at home in Greenville, S.C., Kathryn Jeanes Sauvain, 69N, is still going strong. She's in graduate school again, this time studying to become an FNP. She wrote about how she got here: "Thanks to Dr. Ada Fort, who believed in me, and my pediatric instructor, who noted in my papers - 'your ideas and creativity are great - I just wish you could write!' "
  So do we. Straining to make out her handwriting, we were able to cipher: "As the student body president, I didn't do such a good job. . . . We didn't even get in the annual that year - I'm so sorry for my friends. Now my job. . . is in a complex, multidisciplinary child advocacy arena . . . [dealing with] psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, lawyers, and, of course, parents!"


1970s

Ann Grant Strong, 74N, of Fort Worth, Tex., has been promoted to senior manager at Ernst & Young, where she manages health care engagements. In September 1997, she published "Achieving Outcomes through Organizational Redesign," in Nursing Clinics of North America.

Married: Sandra Segrest Van Sant, 75N, 78MN, and the Rev. Mark Van Sant, of Little Silver, N.J., on Nov. 27, 1997. She's a public health program manager at the Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey.

Jane Gilbert Boyers, 76Ox, 79N, 92MN, of Atlanta, is a full-time nurse practitioner at a busy Promina Health System family practice office.


1980s

Mary Gullate, 81MN, director of nursing for oncology and transplant services at Emory Hospitals, has been elected to the Oncology Nursing Society Board as director-at-large.

Marjorie G. Morgan, 82MN, of Myrtle Beach, S.C., conducts family planning clinics at her local public health department. Since finishing her PhD in nursing with a focus on anthropology, she's continued her research interests in African-American women and published on cultural issues in nursing.

Born: To Janie Plessett-Atlas, 82N, and Steven L. Atlas, of Ardmore, Pa., a son, Jason Benjamin, on June 18, 1997.

Alice Mason Poe, 82MN, of Jacksonville, Fla., has been elected president of the American College of Nurse-Midwives Foundation.

Alys Holt Bates, 83N, works as a home health physical therapist in Raleigh, N.C. She has two children.

Jane Watson, 83N, 88MN, is a clinical educator for Hewlett-Packard, an independent beauty consultant for Mary Kay Cosmetics, and a part-time RN at Emory University Hospital, working with the PACU and Heart Center Transfer Service.

Born: To Jo Ann Scott Walker, 84N, and A. Warner Walker, 85B, of Roswell, Ga., a third child, Hayden Scott Walker, on Aug. 29, 1997.

Born: To Karolyn Carr Diamond, 85N, 95PH, and David A. Diamond, twin boys, Harry Tobias and William Lev, on Dec. 22, 1997. Karolyn works in outpatient surgery at St. Joseph's Hospital in Atlanta.

Born: To Mary Scott Smith, 86N, and Gregory M. Smith, of Weaverville, N.C., a daughter, Lilly Catherine, on Jan. 25, 1997.

Born: To Karen Krull Hooten, 89N, and Dwain Hooten, their second child, Kristen Elyse, on April 5, 1998. Karen works part time on a medical dialysis unit at Cobb Hospital, in Marietta.


1990s

Born: To Allison Barr, 89Ox, 91N, and her husband, David, a son, Payton Nicholas, on April 14, 1998. Allison is a perinatal coordinator for West Georgia Home Care in LaGrange, Ga.

Suzanne Speed, 91N, works as an operating room RN in Albany, Ga.

Born: To Lis Pawly Wright, 91MN, and Dr. David K. Wright, 87C, of Rock Hill, S.C., twin sons, John Harrison and Kenneth Chandler, on Feb. 26, 1998.

Born: To Marilyn Kontrafouris Eleftheriou, 92MN, and Dr. Sam Eleftheriou, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a second daughter, Athena, who joins her 2-year-old sister, Barbara.

Jodi McGill, 93MN, has been honored by the Medical Benevolence Foundation. The foundation, a partner of the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s international medical mission arm, has established the Jodi McGill Nursing Scholarship to make it possible to train more nurses for Embangweni Hospital in Malawi and to recognize McGill for her tireless work at that hospital as head nurse, nurse practitioner, and primary health care educator.

Born: To Anne Feltman Holthaus, 94N, 94PH, and her husband, Brian, of Lenexa, Kan., a son, Drew James, on Oct. 28, 1997.

Penny Louise Flavin, 95MN, of Burnsville, Minn., is a partner and family nurse practitioner with a Christian-focused family practice clinic, Soteria Family Health Center.

Married: Kathryn Rogers Gibbs, 95N, and David Mason Gibbs, on Oct. 11, 1997. They live in Kennesaw, Ga.

Heidi Tervo Rivera, 94Ox, 96N, of Marietta, Ga., is an RN in Northside Hospital's neonatal intensive care unit.

Married: Catherine Franks, 97N, and Michael Seth Baron, 95C, on Jan. 3, 1998. The couple make their home in Marina Del Rey, Calif.

Roxanne Rush-Bryant, 98MN, completed her master's program at Emory magna cum laude. Unfortunately, Emory Nursing has learned, this accomplishment was not listed in the graduation program. We wanted everyone to know about it - Roxanne, we are proud of you! Roxanne also completed the family nurse practitioner program.




Sue St. Clair, 98MN/MPH, of Jacksonville, Fla., working with a Graduate Innovative Project award from the School of Nursing, has set up the first community-based mental health program in Malawi, in East Africa. In a post-project essay, she explained the genesis of her work:
  "In 1996, Embangweni Mission Hospital in the Southwest Mzimba district of Malawi began a primary health care department, which set the stage to incorporate mental health into its primary health care activities at the village level."
  St. Clair learned that Malawi did not have a community mental health program and that Embangweni Hospital was interested in hosting a nursing graduate student from Emory to do hospital or community-based research and training. She applied for and received a Graduate Innovative Project award to do a Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP) community survey in Malawi and to initiate a process that would lead to the creation of a community-based mental health program. In October 1997, she went to Malawi.
  "The theoretical model of Paulo Friere, based upon the importance of communities making their own decisions about their needs, guided my research. Therefore, before any program could be developed, time had to be spent in the targeted communities to determine community interest in, and level of cooperation for, a mental health program. Meetings were held with village leaders and village health committees. Both were very concerned about mental disorders in their villages, but they thought nothing could be done beyond the care provided by the traditional healers. Nevertheless, the problem of how to care for people who are mentally disturbed weighed heavily upon their minds; therefore, their interest in any efforts to improve mental health care for their people was both enthusiastic and heartwarming. . . . Through discussions with village leaders it was possible to develop a survey that would help the Embangweni primary health care department understand the communities' attitudes and beliefs about the mentally disturbed."
  Following a series of such surveys and meetings, a program development plan was approved and a work plan established that identified those responsible for running the clinic.
  "Before leaving Malawi," St. Clair writes, "a proposal for funding was completed and submitted to UNICEF for the 1998 development activities. I returned to Emory on Jan. 22, 1998, with a warm glow in my heart, put there by the people of Malawi, and with confidence that I had left something behind that would benefit the targeted communities of Malawi."
 'With a warm glow in my heart'




Kelly Spooner, 98N, was intrigued to find that the sick infants who visited the pediatrician's office in which she worked one summer were formula-fed, while those making "well-baby" visits were breast-fed. "I am passionate about the importance of breast-feeding," says Spooner, who transferred that passion, along with fellow 1998 graduates Kate Brown and Emily Young, into a Senior Innovative Project that targeted expectant and new adolescent mothers at Atlanta's Booker T. Washington High School.
  "What is lacking for a lot of moms is education about breast-feeding - enough information to make an educated decision," Spooner says. Many of the moms-to-be who attended one or both sessions eventually changed their minds about breast-feeding, Spooner reports.
  Spooner, who plans to work for a year before returning to school to become a nurse practitioner, has long been interested in pediatrics. Her tiny hometown of Sneads, Fla., is 50 miles from Tallahassee, the location of the nearest pediatric hospital. "My goal is to go back home and provide care we don't now have," she says. "Doctors and nurse practitioners come but don't seem to stay." Spooner herself remembers having to travel miles to see a pediatrician.
  Spooner once planned to become a doctor but was prodded into nursing by a friend who thought the profession better suited Spooner's disposition. She soon agreed. "Nursing felt at home," she says. "It's giving the type of care I'd always been interested in - preventive care."
Making an educated decision



 

Sisters Irene Layfield Darden, 24N, and Lucy Layfield Ryan, 24N, died within six months of each other in 1997, with Irene passing away in June and Lucy in December. Both were born in Harris County Georgia - Lucy on Oct. 1, 1900, and Irene on Oct. 26, 1902 - to W.D. and Sallie Lou Smith Layfield. Lucy's daughter, Mrs. Diane Cole, wrote us that her mother "was always proud of her Emory degree." After retirement, Lucy had traveled with her daughter's family to Pennsylvania, then to Florida, and finally to Dollar Bay, Mich., where she was when she died.

Bessie Wood Watkins, 29N, on March 28, 1998, at age 90, of complications from a stroke and pneumonia. She died in Monahans, Texas, at the home of her daughter, Laura Spearman.
  Mrs. Watkins was an anesthetist in Atlanta for 33 years, spending the bulk of her life working to relieve people's pain. After graduating from Emory, she enrolled at the Western Reserve University School of Anesthesia in Cleveland to pursue training in anesthesia. Afterward, she returned to Atlanta and worked at Crawford Long Hospital for eight years.
  In 1937, she married Earl B. Watkins, now deceased, and left her career in 1939 to have children. She returned to nursing in 1947, joining the Atlanta oral surgery office of Drs. James Harpole, Thomas Conner Sr., and Thomas Conner Jr. As Dr. Conner Jr. has observed: "She was easy-going and never lost her cool."
  Mrs. Watkins worked in that office for the next 25 years, retiring to Covington in 1972 to do needlework, care for her mother, and grow vegetables. "They farmed for several years and owned cows," said her other daughter, Sara Wallace. "She was a caregiver. That was her life."
  Other survivors include a stepdaughter, Jean Benson, of Rockledge, Fla., six grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.

Eva Shook, 33N, of Stanley, N.C., on Dec. 17, 1997. Miss Shook had first completed nurse's training at Gastonia, N.C., Orthopaedic Hospital. She then completed her bachelor's degree at Emory. She is survived by a sister, Kathryn S. Allen.

Sarah Eaton Russell, 34N, of Winder, Ga., on April 15, 1998.

Frances Riley Bailey, 38N, of Atlanta, on Sept. 6, 1998. Mrs. Bailey had been a head nurse on the urology floor of Emory University Hospital. According to Professor Emerita Elizabeth Mabry, "she was a wonderful person who did wonderful work throughout the community."

Sara Reed Easley, 42N, of Terre Haute, Ind., on May 3, 1998. She is survived by her husband, John Easley.

Jacquelyn Lewis MacClements, 45N, of Charlotte, N.C., on June 13, 1998. According to her husband, John E. MacClements, "Jackie never forgot Emory."

Nathalie Titus Furniss, 47N, of San Rafael, Calif., on Oct. 20, 1997.

Lora Cope Marshall, 55MN, of Atlanta, on Dec. 21, 1997. She was a member of the first master's of nursing class at Emory.
  During her career, Mrs. Marshall served as associate director of nursing at the VA hospital in Dublin, Ga., and as president of the Georgia State Nurse's Association. She also served as director of nursing education at the Candler School of Nursing and helped organize the Memorial Hospital School of Nursing.
  She is survived by her husband, Clair A. Marshall, and two sons, Harry O. Johnson Jr., of Atlanta, and William A. Johnson, of Mt. Pleasant, S.C.

Julie Buck Lambert, 58N, of Stone Mountain, Ga., at age 62.

Linda Margulis, 88N, of New York, NY, of complications from cancer. Margulis' former roommate at Emory, Betsy Schechter, 88B, now a filmmaker living in Venice, Calif., is collecting gifts in her friend's memory to establish a scholarship in her honor at the School of Nursing. For more information or to contribute to this scholarship, please contact Anne Bavier at the School of Nursing, at (404) 727-6917.

Mattie Lewis Shelley, 94N, of Stone Mountain, Ga., on May 11, 1998. She is survived by her husband, Larry E. Shelley, and three sons.

Deaths


Former Dean Dies

Ada Fort, of Atlanta, Dean Emerita of the School of Nursing, died of heart failure on April 28, 1998. She was 83 years old.
  Dr. Fort led the nursing school from 1950 to 1976, years during which she oversaw the school's growth from a hospital-based training program to a comprehensive academic program offering both the baccalaureate and the master's degree. In 1972, she founded a public health organization, International Nursing Services Association, now called Global Health Action.
  At the time of her death, Dr. Fort had been retired from Emory for more than 20 years, but she never stopped working, producing educational videos on Alzheimer's disease and brochures on breast cancer for older women and helping found a wellness center at a local seniors community.
  Dr. Fort donated her body to the Emory University School of Medicine. Survivors include a sister, Josephine Ormond, of Pine Bluff, Ark. See related article.

Faculty News


 


From the Dean | Letters to the Editor | Nursing Newsbriefs | 'Forever the Teacher'
Nursing Research | Lynn Lotas | Kathy Parker | Peggy Moloney | Joyce King | Christi Deaton
Donor Report | Alumni News | Class Notes
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Last Updated: December 31, 1998