GOOD MEDICINE NURSING SCHOOL'S REUNION BRINGS OLD FRIENDS TOGETHER.

Byline: Susan Abram Staff Writer

GLENDALE - Nostalgia proved infectious inside the old cafeteria.

Leather-bound yearbooks came out. Yellowed pages opened to favorite photographs. And in a paparazzi kind of enthusiasm, disposable cameras clicked in haphazard rhythms splashing flashes across smiling faces.

For the more than 30 women and men who reunited at Glendale Adventist Medical Center on Saturday - some for the first time since graduating from its former nursing school in the 1950s - their reunion seemed to heal the ache of curiosity.

Now in their 70s, many said it was their first chance to see what happened to old friends.

``I don't recognize anyone,'' a tidy-looking woman said before turning around and falling into the embrace of an old roommate who remembered her.

``We all lived together at the school for three years,'' said Ruth Rich Norman, who graduated from the nursing school in 1953.

Nursing ran in her blood. Her mother was a nurse; her father helped build the medical center. She was born at Glendale Adventist and went on to teach nursing. ``We were like sisters,'' she recalled, clutching a yearbook. ``We worked all day and went to school at night.''

For some of the women who graduated from the school, which closed in 1967, nursing was a cure for poverty, or a chance to follow in the footsteps of a mother, or an opportunity to travel out of small hometowns.

Back in the '50s, they sported paper nursing hats, ``which we didn't like, but at least back then the patients could tell us apart,'' said Marjorie Hunter Rosburg, who helped organize the event.

They dined at the old Bob's Big Boy on Colorado Boulevard, took in a movie on Brand Boulevard and made long-lasting friends. But nowadays the nursing profession is facing problems.

The California Nurses Association has said the average age of nurses in the state is 47. As they retire, fewer young people are taking their place.

The retired nurses can pinpoint why.

``They are overwhelmed with administrative work, and they burn out faster,'' Norman said.

Helen Butner, a graduate of the class of 1954, agreed. ``They just don't want to take all the baggage anymore,'' she said. ``Our studies were more clinical back then.''

And they had fun too, said Fall Hall, known as the ``shy one'' in her class of 1953.

Hall remembers piling into a 1929 Ford with seven other girls and taking road trips during the one summer month when they were out of school.

``We didn't have money to stay overnight in hotels, so we took turns sleeping and driving all the way to the East Coast,'' she said. ``We'd drop off girls to visit families for the month, then come back again. We made it in just days.''

Michael Miller, the only male from the class of 1953, said he became interested in the nursing profession after working as an orderly in his native Canada. He went on to become a physical therapist.

``I asked the girls why they never dated me,'' he said, smiling and offering a dramatic pause before continuing. ``They told me it was because I didn't have a car.''

Valeda DaWitt Blokolsky, a graduate of the class of 1955, traveled from Palmers, Alaska, for the reunion.

Susan Abram, [phone]

susan.abram(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Ruth Rich Norman of Lindsay, left, embraces Myrna Huenegardt of Redlands during a reunion of nursing school graduates at Glendale Adventist Medical Center on Saturday.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer