Cindy Mullenhoff, RN, recalls how she discovered a World War I-era nurse recruitment poster in an antique shop 25 years ago and saw a little bit of herself in that portrait. She purchased it for $300.
One poster became two, then three, and then four. Today, Mullenhoff is owner and CEO of Avail Home Nursing, and her 273-piece collection of nursing memorabilia graces the hallways of her corporate offices in Yakima, Washington, an inland valley city on the eastern slope of the Cascade Mountains.
Dating from the late 1800s to the 1960s, the majority of the collection comprises recruiting posters from the first two world wars. By World War II, each branch of the military had its own nursing service and developed its own recruitment posters. The result was a shift in the image of nursing.
"The Red Cross [images] are all saintly, save-the-world type pictures and portray the nurses in a very romantic fashion," Mullenhoff explains. "The military posters, on the other hand, portray them as intelligent, responsible women-their heads are held high, they're smartly dressed. They look like they could handle things."
In addition to the posters, Mullenhoff's collection also includes magazine covers, war movie posters, and advertisements featuring nurses selling cigarettes, orange juice, and even car wheels. The collection has been exhibited at the state capital facilities in Olympia, and Mullenhoff has also been invited to exhibit it at the Red Cross headquarters in Washington, D.C.
"It's very flattering to nurses when they see this [the collection]," says Mullenhoff. "It's very affirming, and I think right now nurses can use some affirmation. It's a very hard time to be a nurse."
Avail Home Nursing's gallery is located at 4706 W. Nob Hill Blvd., Yakima, WA; (509) 966-8000
Noteworthy
Sheila Burke, MPA, RN, deputy secretary and chief operating officer at the Smithsonian Institution, has been named chair of the Kaiser Family Foundation board of trustees. Burke, a nurse who built a career in health policy and government, has held posts at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and was the chief of staff for Robert Dole when he was U.S. Senate majority leader.
Lillee Smith Gelinas, MSN, RN, chief nursing officer at VHA Inc., has been appointed by Health and Human Services secretary Mike Leavitt as one of 16 commissioners to serve on a federal commission, the American Health Information Community, that will help develop an electronic health care record system. Gelinas is the only nurse to have been appointed.
Audrey L. Nelson, PhD, RN, FAAN, director of the patient safety research center at James A. Haley VA Hospital in Tampa, Florida, has received the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award for individual achievement. It is awarded annually by the National Quality Forum and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
Scrubs for Hurricane Relief
Kudos to nurses Marian Barry and Michelle Ripley at Banner Baywood Medical Center in Mesa, Arizona, who collected more than 1,100 "gently-used" and cleaned scrubs from coworkers for distribution to Louisiana nurses after Hurricane Katrina. Barry went to nursing school at Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans.
IN MEMORIAM 2005
Florence Downs died at age 80 on September 8 in New Jersey. Downs was an internationally respected scholar and researcher and was director of postgraduate and research programs at New York University and later an associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. She also was editor of Nursing Research for 17 years.
Cynthia Henderson Kelly died June 23 in Philadelphia. In 1969 Kelly worked with Grace Davidson at New York University Hospital to develop the "Cooperative Care" service, where hospitalized patients are accompanied by adult caregivers during their inpatient stay. She was later an editor at AJN and the founding editor of Geriatric Nursing; she was applauded as "editor, author, champion of improved health care for elders, and advocate for successful aging" by colleagues Thelma Schorr and Gretchen Gerds.
Mildred Montag died January 21 at age 95. A public health nurse and educator, Montag was known for developing the associate-degree program in nursing, an innovation that sparked controversy but nevertheless changed the nursing profession. She founded the first such program at Adelphi University (then Adelphi College) in 1943, during a critical nursing shortage.
Ena Morris died at age 92 on October 1 in New York City. A former World War II army nurse and public health nurse, she was an associate editor for AJN. After retirement, she learned to speak Latin and taught courses on James Joyce's Ulysses and Middle Eastern history. According to former AJN editor Mary Mallison, Morris "provided the exemplar of how one can continue to learn, grow, and stay physically and intellectually healthy in retirement."
Henrietta Villaescusa, age 84, died March 6 in Arcadia, California. A past president of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses, Villaescusa was a trailblazer: she was the first Hispanic supervisor in the Los Angeles Public Health department; the first Hispanic nurse health administrator in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; the first Mexican-American chief nurse in the office of maternal and child health in the Bureau of Community Health Services. She also served on the presidential commission on minority health under president Ronald Reagan.