Bellevue Class of '59

People who know anything about nurses or nursing history recognize the Bellevue School of Nursing cap, or "organdy cupcake" as it's affectionately known.


I was presented with one nearly 52 years ago, during the capping ceremony that marked our classes' first year of training. How young we were. Most of us only a year out of high school. But how we matured in that year and over the next two. We took on serious responsibilites at an early age, not just for ourselves---away from home and on our own for the first time---but for the patients for whom we would learn to care.


Care, that was the byword then. And the people who came to Bellevue back then needed care in the worst way. They were mostly poor ---today they would be called "medically underserved"--- which usually meant they had not received much in the way of medical attention before they arrived at Bellevue. And what a place that was---the old Bellevue as everyone called it because its new replacement was talked about for years before it materialized.


A teaching hospital, renowned for it's many "firsts', Nobel prize-winners , leaders in medicine---and of course its psychiatric pavillion--- Bellevue is the nation's oldest public hospital. And for someone like me from the mid-west who had never experienced an institution of such giant size reputation and physical structure, Bellevue was also the scariest. With it's large medical and surgical wards and dim corridors, it seemed bathed in a gray cast really downright spooky. That is until you got to know your way around its many buildings. Though some parts of the hospital always appeared brighter to me than others---the pediatric wards, for instance and the OR.


Just as we learned the meaning of care as nursing students, our training at Bellevue also taught us to improvise. Being a city hospital, we were always running short of something, washclothes, pajamas, sheets--you name it.


If getting "capped" was the highlight of our academic experience at Bellevue, and a measure of our progress toward the goal of becoming RN's, then the low points, at least for me, were the times when I lost a patient--suddenly and unexpectedly, when the efforts of interns and residents and experienced nurses was not enough.


It was just such an experience one night working per diem in Bellevue's ER that became a turning point in my nursing career. A night that I witnessed the loss of life of a 20-something sister and brother, injured in a car accident, dying within minutes of each other. I realized I didn't have the right stuff for the kind of nurse I thought I should be.


Years later, I would realizewhat great preparation my nurses' training had been for my new work as a newscaster.


On May 16, I'll be joining about 90 former classmates to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our graduation, the class of '59. We'll be cruising on the Hudson, all the way west from our old stomping grounds at 440 East 26th Street. You can bet we'll have a lot to talk about.