Lorreta Holcomb didn’t know this was how it would go.
She started working for Vancouver Memorial Hospital on Main Street on Sept. 30, 1968, and somehow made it through all of the changes since.
She stuck around through the Vancouver Memorial and St. Joseph Hospital merger in 1977, forming Southwest Washington Hospital. She was there when the name changed to Southwest Washington Medical Center in 1989, and when the affiliation with PeaceHealth began about seven years ago.
It may not be completely accurate to say Holcomb worked 50 years for PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center, the name the hospital goes by today, but in essence, she’s spent 50 years working for some variation of what the hospital is today. That’s why PeaceHealth held a celebration Friday afternoon in the Health Education Center for Holcomb’s 50 years of work. It’s not a retirement party, though; it’s more of a milestone party.
“Starting out, I had no idea I’d be here that long. Nobody does,” said Holcomb, 70, who works as a sterile-processing technician in the Gastro Endo Lab. “But I enjoyed it. … Not once did I ever say to myself, ‘I don’t want to get up and go to work.’ ”
Holcomb’s career in medicine actually spans a little more than 50 years. She really began her career in 1966, when she started work for Physicians and Surgeons Hospital in Portland, as a senior at Fort Vancouver High School. She spent weekdays pulling a 5 to 11 p.m. shift, with a 3 to 11 p.m. Saturday shift.
“I would get out of school on Friday, take the bus down, take a transfer, work from 5 to 11 (p.m.) and then I’d do the same thing, bus back down to my mom’s house,” Holcomb said.
After that, she followed her husband, Jerry, to Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, and worked for a hospital there. Then, she returned to the Pacific Northwest and the Portland hospital, before deciding she didn’t want to commute from Vancouver to Portland. That’s what led her to netting a job in central supply with Memorial and putting her on the path for where she is today.
Her career has spanned nine presidents, from Lyndon B. Johnson’s final years to the current administration.
But there have been job changes along the way.
Holcomb doesn’t work in central supply anymore. She’s in charge of cleaning scopes now and ordering supplies. Her hands can get pretty dry washing all day, and the high-level disinfectant process is a repetitive motion that caused her to undergo surgery for carpal tunnel. She added a dishwasher to her kitchen for the first time five years ago, and it has been a blessing, she said.
“Everything goes in there,” Holcomb joked. “It might get a little washing in between, but everything goes in the dishwasher.”
Holcomb didn’t go to school for the job but underwent training and keeps up her certification.
Medicine runs in her family. She has two sisters who are certified nursing assistants.
Holcomb said her first day and early years working are still vivid. She claims she can recall the names of nearly everyone she’s worked with.
There’s a possibility Holcomb could retire next year, she said, but there aren’t definitive plans yet. She lives with her husband in Vancouver, and they have a son, Joseph, and two grandchildren, Olivia and Emma. She likes to preach to them about how important loving your job is.
“I have a heartwarming enthusiasm for what I do,” Holcomb said. “I know I’m helping in that I’m doing the best I can, and I know that when that scope leaves and goes and is used on a person, it’s the best. There will be nothing (bad) that happens to that patient with that scope.”
