TACOMA — Janet Runbeck is 71 and working the same job she began at age 20. And she doesn’t get paid for it.
“Nursing, for a lot of us, is a passion,” the volunteer public health nurse said. “It’s almost a calling.”
Runbeck was paid until she retired from Tacoma General Hospital in 2014. Now, the 1976 graduate of the Tacoma General Hospital School of Nursing spends part of her time ensuring new generations of nurses get the schooling she had.
Runbeck’s work and that of her fellow alumni are no small feat given that the nursing school has been shuttered for 44 years. Its legacy lives on in a handful of mostly gray-haired nurses who hold an annual reunion and award scholarships to nursing students.
Cheryl Davis is president of the School of Nursing alumnae group. The 1969 graduate is 76. She was 18 when she first donned the starched, white uniform and cap of a student. She’s had a front-row seat to a practical revolution in care and attitudes in medicine.
“When I first went into nursing, women in general still did not have many rights,” Davis said. “Your husband could tell the doctor not to tell you that you had cancer.”
Nurses were forbidden to tell female patients what their blood-pressure readings were, she said.
Since then, nursing has made what Davis calls “major leaps and bounds.” Nurses, once tasked with helping radiology and physical therapy, have passed those duties on to specialists. Now, nurses can focus on patient care.
Davis worked in operating rooms for 24 years, joined the Army Reserve at age 39 and eventually became an educator. The ability to switch careers but still stay in nursing has kept her interested in nursing.
“If you get tired of something, you can go do something else,” she said.
Nursing’s early days
Paddock Memorial (later to become Tacoma General) was opened at its present location in 1889. The nursing school was opened six years later. Nursing, as a vocation, was itself only two decades old at the time.
The Tacoma school’s first student, George Smith, was a mill hand inspired by his stay as a patient in the hospital. He went on to work at the hospital until 1931 and would be the school’s only male graduate until 1973.
It wasn’t until 1935 when the first full-time instructor was hired. Until then, doctors and working nurses provided instruction. Dr. Charles McCutcheon was the “instructor, supervisor and counselor” at the school, according to Mildred Bates’ 1976 book, “A House of Mercy: A History of Tacoma General Hospital, The Fannie C. Paddock Memorial.”
McCutcheon’s wife acted as matron.
There were no books or manuals. On-the-job learning came from practical experience. The day began in the chapel at 7 a.m. and concluded at 7 p.m. on the ward. Students were given one afternoon a week off.
The first class of five students, including Smith, graduated in 1897. Nurses soon became a crucial link in all aspects of patient care. In 1906, five Fannie Paddock nurses were sent to San Francisco to care for patients from that city’s devastating earthquake.
Admission requirements evolved over time. At first, students need merely show an interest in nursing. Soon, minimum education levels, references and a physical exam were required. Married, widowed or divorced women were ineligible to become nurses.
Sometimes, the training period was lengthened due to misbehavior. Some students were kicked out of the school. Ledgers recorded the comings and goings:
“Dismissed Dec. 29, 1914 for very indiscreet actions.”
“A fairly good all around nurse if she can leave the men alone.”
“One month added to time for burning a patient (with) hot water bottle.”
Team effort
Runbeck said nurses were subservient to doctors in her early days of nursing.
“When a doctor walked in, you would have to stand up and give him your chair,” she said. Now, “It’s become more of a team. So the doctor respects and actually looks for the nurse’s opinion or assessment.”
Davis agreed.
“We’re a team,” she said. “They have their job. We have ours. And then there’s some overlap.”
Jackson Hall
By 1919, the training program was three years long. Topics included psychiatry, nursery, communicable diseases, tuberculosis and public health.
In 1947, the nursing school moved to the newly completed Jackson Hall, directly across Martin Luther King Jr. Way from Tacoma General’s main entrance.
The last class to graduate on May 23, 1980 probably went largely unnoticed by the public. The region was dealing with the devastation caused by the eruption of Mount St. Helens just five days prior. By that time, 2,216 nurses had been capped at the school.
Jackson Hall was converted to offices and meeting spaces. It was razed in 2023 and the site will become the new home of Mary Bridge Childrens Hospital in 2026.
Advances
Retired nurse Patricia Palms, 85, spent her career as an operating-room nurse. During her time, medicine underwent vast changes, from the most simple procedures to the complex. Disposable needles had yet to be invented when she started. Syringes and needles were sterilized and reused.
Palms, a 1959 graduate, and other students from her era spent three months working at Western State Hospital, three months at a pediatric hospital in Vancouver, B.C, and six weeks at Firland Sanitorium, a tuberculosis hospital in King County.
Classmate Marie Lennen, also 85, used to give her ulcer patients milk and Maalox. It was later learned that the bacteria H. Pylori caused ulcers. They are now treated with antibiotics.
Heart patients were thought to need weeks of bed rest. Now, movement is encouraged following surgery.
Early cataract surgery seemed downright medieval.
“They’d come out of (surgery) with the bed at 45 degrees,” Lennen said. “And we duct taped their head to a sandbag on either side, because they could not rotate (their heads). And they were that way for two or three days.”
Alumni
The Alumnae Association was founded in 1904 and has been active continuously since 1920.
The endowment which funds grants to senior year nurses now stands at $1.9 million.
The association once gave scholarships to nursing students at any local school. Now, due to legal reasons, Davis said, they can only give scholarships to MultiCare employees who are also nursing students.
“So you may have someone who’s a unit secretary who’s going to nursing school and just supplementing their income while they’re going to school,” Davis said.
Tacoma nursing school timeline
1882: Tacoma’s first hospital, Fannie C. Paddock Memorial Hospital opens. It is today known as MultiCare Tacoma General Hospital.
1895: The first nursing school in Washington opens at Paddock Memorial. Mill employee George Smith is first to apply.
1897: First class of six students, including Smith, graduates.
1935: School hires first full-time instructor.
1980: Last class of 32 nurses graduates. In all, 2,216 nurses trained at the school.
