Southside Pride

Swedish Hospital was a landmark institution in Minneapolis until it closed in 1976. People remember it fondly. My neighbor told me her oldest daughter was born there.

It was formed in 1898 when a group of citizens formed the Swedish Hospital Association. Their goal was to create an interdenominational general hospital with patients, staff and students of all national backgrounds. At the same time, of paramount concern was to provide a healing atmosphere for people of Swedish ancestry, where patients could be surrounded by people who spoke their own language.

The following year the Swedish Hospital Nursing School began instruction in a remodeled house at 1419 9th Street in downtown Minneapolis. The two-year course graduated three nurses (oddly, all named Marie) in 1901. The Concordia Society, a women’s auxiliary to help people who couldn’t afford care, was formed around the same time.

The institution grew by leaps and bounds. In 1906, the nursing program had become a three-year course. Seventy graduates served in World War I (two were cited for bravery under fire). In 1915, Swedish Hospital had 250 beds. In 1929 a $650,000, 325-bed building was constructed on the west side of 10th Avenue South at 8th Street. By 1936, the student body had 109 students. After World War II there were 60 to 80 students in incoming freshman classes. A new maternity ward was added in 1947 and a pediatric facility in 1962.

Stories of interest that made the news were: 1930—a fire scare in which 100 “flame fighters” came to the rescue and no one was hurt; 1960—an Italian art student who paid his wife’s $1,000 medical bill with 35 paintings (I wonder what happened to those paintings); 1965—the tragic death of a patient involving errors on many levels that led to increased regulations for hospital procedures; and 1974—the Vietnamese war orphans who received heart surgery.

The beginning of the end came in 1970 when Swedish Hospital merged with St. Barnabas Hospital to become Metropolitan Medical Center. The last nursing class graduated in 1973. And, in 1976, the building at 8th and 10th, along with a nursing school dormitory, were razed to build a parking lot. On the east side of 10th Avenue South, at 8th Street, still stands an original Swedish Hospital building next to a former dormitory to the north where alumni offices are housed.

50th Reunion: Class of ‘52

Although Swedish Hospital School of Nursing no longer exists, it lives on in the work of hundreds of nurses who received their training there. On Pentecost weekend, May 17 - 19, graduates gathered at Augustana Lutheran Church, 7th Street and 11th Avenue South, for the annual all-school alumni party. On Sunday, the class of 1952 celebrated its 50th anniversary reunion. Someone mentioned how sentimental they felt about Augustana since that’s where their capping ceremony took place. (That was back in the days when nurses still wore starched white caps perched on immaculate hair—and white everything else from starched uniforms to shoes and stockings.)

When Barbara Inman from Augustana Lutheran Church called me with the idea for this story, I wrote in my notes that she wanted me to cover the reunion of the FIRST graduating class. Once I discovered that the first class graduated in 1901, I was confused and really curious—they would be 120 years old by now. When I was recounting my confusion to Sylvia Hasse, co-chair of the event, she said, “We look pretty good for 120 don’t we.” Actually, they all looked pretty good for 71. (Then again, as I get older and older, 70-ish seems younger and younger.) All women, the nurses were a trim, exuberant, healthy-looking lot. Forty of the original 51 in the class attended the reunion.

In spite of their natural reticence (given the nature of people attracted to the nursing profession) to talk about themselves, I got a strong sense of the committed lives they continue to live. Hasse and co-chair Betty Johnson introduced me to Vivian Evenson as the recipient of the “extinguished” alumni award. Following laughter all around I learned that Evenson had taught nursing at Montana State University (Northern) after earning a doctorate in education.

Two of the graduates are still working. Dorta Schreiber Loftstrom works in the coronary and intensive care units in Brainerd, Minn. Every year for the past seven years, through an interdenominational relief organization, she has spent a week in Guatemala helping with health care in rural areas. Helen Krohn Duncan is director of the Dialysis Unit at Methodist Hospital in the Twin Cities. She said she “tried retirement but flunked.”

A couple of interesting career paths were those of Alpha Jacques, who was a missionary nurse in Tanzania for 17 years and in Kenya for 13, and Helen Marshall, who was a career Salvation Army nurse before retiring to the mountains of Colorado. I could picture her receiving patients and questioning them kindly about their lives.

June Hanson Drake has gone a long way since she left northern Minnesota for Minneapolis. After graduation she moved with a classmate to Colorado where she got a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Then, she continued west to San Francisco where she got a master’s degree in nursing.. She said that now, like almost all retired R.N.s, she is automatically designated the interpreter and advocate for relatives and friends with medical conditions. Anyone attracted to nursing in the first place will be a person sensitive to vulnerability. People naturally rely on nurses they know personally to help them through the maze of complicated technology that medicine is today.

Some of the nurses said they were glad they weren’t working anymore because of advanced technology—and because the names of the medications are always new. The expectations of patients are higher now—nurses are expected to offer the same old-fashioned tender loving care as they did years ago and at the same time know lots more about science and technology.

I can’t remember who said that their training 50 years ago prepared them more for the TLC side of nursing. “Fifty years ago, the majority of what we could offer was tender loving care. It’s different now. Every area of nursing is a specialty.”
Somebody said that while technology has improved, TLC [training] has gone backwards.

In 1931, a woman named Hannah F. Swenson described the ideals of Swedish Hospital in the following way: “[The hospital] is not controlled by any religious denomination, yet its founders believed that loyal, unselfish service to the sick can be rendered only where the influence of the christian spirit prevails.”

Krohn Duncan reflected this ideal. “[When you care for the sick you have to remember that] when people are ill they become hyper sensitive.” In other words, you just have to have patience and try to see the world through their eyes at that point.

She said that nurses, actually, are known for being “bad” patients. But when she had a bout with cancer 10 years ago, she thinks she “did well.”

A few husbands cheerfully braved the reunion. Ron Evenson said he met his wife, Vivian, when he was a patient and she was a nurse at the Fosston 12-bed hospital in northern Minnesota many years ago. The first time they saw each other, he was in traction. Ron’s leg had been crushed between the horse’s ribs and the frozen ground when the horse he was riding slipped on a patch of ice and fell on top of him. He called it “his lucky break.”

A Personal Note

My childhood revolved around hospital life and I suppose that’s one reason this story appealed to me so much. My mother finished nurses’ training in 1938. When I was growing up in a small town in southern Minnesota, we lived two doors from the local hospital. My mother worked as a scrub nurse for surgery instead of working regular eight-hour shifts so she wouldn’t have to be gone for such long periods of time—her four children needed her at home. Her most interesting job was as a special nurse in around -the-clock bedside care for a man who amazingly recovered from tetanus, commonly known as lockjaw.

Between the hospital and our house was a two-story brick building where single nurses employed by the hospital lived. They were a lively, lovely bunch of people and when they had time off were always happy to see the children from next door. They told us silly stories, played practical jokes, enjoyed us and even talked about their romances with us, probably skipping a few details.

We children were likewise welcome to the one-story hospital laundry situated in the middle of the block. In the summertime we used to sneak through the wide open doors and “scare” the crew. We had a similar rapport with the cooks in hospital basement kitchen and would spend hours talking with them through the ground level windows.

Kindness to children (or to anyone) is never wasted. Kindness, and the memory of kindness, is what takes most of us through our darkest hours.