It is National Nurses Week, set aside to honor nurses for the work they do and to educate the public about nurses’ role in health care.

It’s only fitting that all nurses, those currently practicing and those who served for many years, receive recognition.

Goldfinch Estates in Fairmont is now home to eight retired nurses, all with unique stories.

Blanche Stover, originally from Canada, moved to the United States and received her schooling in North Dakota. She worked mostly in the operating room as a nurse anesthetist. She worked for many years at the Fairmont Hospital.

Carol Martens got her training at Miller Hospital in St. Paul, now United Hospital. She worked as an OB nurse while her husband was at veterinary school. After he graduated, they moved to Nicollet, where her husband started his practice. After her husband’s practice was established, Martens began working as his helper, though she admits she wished she would have stayed with nursing longer because she really liked it.

Peggy Holty is originally from La Crosse, Wis., and received her training at Grandview Hospital in La Crosse, where she worked in a lot of different departments. After getting married, she moved to Spring Grove. After her last child was in kindergarten, she worked in a nursing home as a head nurse. She also worked as a home health aide.

Elaine Hickcox is from the Fairmont area and worked as the director of nursing at Lakeview in Fairmont. Hickcox also took part in starting up a home health care agency.

Margaret Maschoff is originally from South St. Paul and completed a three-year training program at Bethesda School of Nursing, graduating as a registered nurse in 1946. Maschoff’s tuition was paid for by the government and she was in the Nurse Cadet Corps. After caring for wounded soldiers for a number of years, Maschoff married and moved to Ceylon. She worked at several hospitals in the area including Holy Family Hospital in Estherville and the Trimont Hospital. Maschoff retired from nursing in 1986.

Leola Brownlee grew up in the Fairmont area and received her training in Chicago. After graduating, she moved back to the area to begin her career as a nurse. She worked in the operating room in Fairmont for many years.

Rose Bancks was born in Idaho and graduated from a hospital in Spokane, Wash., in 1926. Bancks pointed out that she went into nursing during the Great Depression and it was a different time.

“I worked at the hospital a little while and decided I wanted to do more, so I went to Chicago and took a course in obstetrics and then I went back and taught obstetrics in Spokane,” Bancks said. “And then I decided I was tired of delivering babies so I joined the army when they let me. I met my husband in the service.”

Bancks worked as an Army nurse, stationed in California for two years.

Banks moved to Fairmont in 1948, when she began working general duties at the old hospital.

“I had two little kids and my husband was a dentist so he was home at night so that’s when I would work,” Bancks explained.

She also worked as the director of nursing at the hospital, and as the school nurse in Fairmont for one year.

Bancks ended her career after retiring from the new hospital in Fairmont.

“I guess I have a little bit of information about everything,” Bancks said of all the places and areas she has worked.

Shirley Larson grew up in Swea City, Iowa, and received her schooling from Hamline University in St. Paul. She began her career as an OB nurse in 1953.

“Between ’53 and ’65, I had different jobs,” she said. “I was head nurse of a surgical floor and I did private duty nursing.”

She went on to explain that this was a popular thing back then because there was no such thing as intensive care units, so the families would hire a nurse to stay with their loved one 24/7.

“I lived in Swea City so I worked between Algona Hospital, Fairmont Hospital and Estherville, all doing private duty nursing,” Larson explained.

Since Larson lived in Swea City, 30 miles from the nearest hospital, she would always get calls from people saying, “I don’t want to bother the doctor so I’m calling you.” She would go to help people, with no pay, and she remembers them as being wonderful years of giving.

Larson said all that time she was pretty much working part time because of her family. Then, in 1965, Larson began the school of nursing at Iowa Lakes Community College.

“My husband was in the hospital not too long ago and I was there and of course I always have to say, ‘What school of nursing did you graduate from?’ and it’s surprising how many of them are from Iowa Lakes and it really makes me feel good to know all the blood sweat and tears was worth it,” Larson said with a laugh.

After starting the nursing school, Larson had a lot left to her career. She worked as the director of nursing at Holy Family Hospital in Estherville for about 25 years. She then become director of an in-patient drug and alcohol treatment unit that was part of Holy Family. Next she came to Fairmont and worked as the director of the Sunrise Recovery Center and halfway house.

Larson ended her career as a part-time jail nurse in Fairmont, retiring in her mid-70s.

“I always tell people, ‘Yes I was a nurse and I ended up in jail,'” Larson said with a laugh.

A few of the retired nurses shed some light on what it was like back in their day, and offered some thoughts about nursing today.

“The difference in nursing then versus now,” Larson said. “Then we were into comfort measures. We knew how to make patients comfortable and feeling good but technology today saves lives and minimizes diseases. The ideal nurse today would be able to do both.”

“We saw the beginning of technology,” said Larson, going on to talk about penicillin.

“You drew it up in the nursing station and then you ran like heck into the patients room before it crystalized in the needle, and if it crystalized you had to start all over again,” she said. “IV therapy was not acceptable. You couldn’t give fluids by IVs; you had to give it by needles into the legs.”

“The charting was different then than it is now,” said Peggy Holty. “And, of course, the length of stay in the hospital is altogether different. Procedures are much different now than they were back then.”

It was also brought up that there were no male nurses back then, and no females who were doctors. Nurses wore caps and white socks and dresses as part of their uniform.

Some didn’t remember nursing being a popular profession that their friends went into, but others said they were limited in their choices.

“There were only three things to choose from: secretaries, teachers or nurses,” Bancks said.

“We started out with 60 and they told us only one out of three would graduate and we graduated with 22,” Larson recalls.

Many said they had to go to school for three years to receive a diploma, lived on the hospital campus and had a 10 p.m. curfew.

Martens recalled coming down with the measles while working as a nurse and being quarantined for a week on the top floor of the hospital where she worked.

As far as compensation goes, nurses were paid a significantly different amount in the past. Larson said that with a degree and working as a head nurse, she got $1.50 per hour while Bancks said she received just $75 per month.

While many things have changed over the years in the profession, it is clear that nurses have always done the best they can with what they have to care for others.

“It was a great career and I wouldn’t change it for a minute,” Larson said.