May 2017: Donor of the Month featuring Marie Wilson
BWSF Board of Director Member, John Maguire and Donor of the Month, Marie Wilson at the Medal of Honor Luncheon.
In May, we honor women on Mother’s Day. We thank them for the lifetime of nurturing their children, but there are some woman who nurture complete strangers and other people’s children 365 days a year, and yet they are never properly thanked. We call them teachers and nurses. I have had the pleasure of getting to know one such lady. Marie, the oldest of 7 children, who attended Villanova in the 1950’s to become a nurse. It was a time when Austin Hall had the only lounge for women and guys dropped water balloons on the nurses heads as they walked by the dorms just to get their attention. In the classroom the engineers were fiercely competitive in the chemistry and math classes she took. The curriculum was based on hospital training as required by state law. While interning at St. Agnes Hospital in Philadelphia, Marie helped with the delivery of 60 babies, which included the delivery itself, bathing the Mother and the baby, and cleaning the operating room after the delivery!
Marie told me about the different rotations to hospitals like Misericordia and the need to share / rent a room near the different hospitals since none of them owned a car to get to work. She had no time for make-up or flirting with the doctors. In fact, she refused any advances made. She believed that a doctor should be married to his profession and that’s rough for the family. She was blessed to have found a wonderful man, Bill, who was a salesperson in the locomotive industry. He affectionately would ask “ Are you off the rails?” if anything was amiss. It is a phrase still used by his two nieces who recently graduated from college. Bill was a tremendous husband and gave Marie the support and respect for her to advance in her profession. The result: Marie went on to have a distinguished career in Public health for 10 year and then worked for the Veteran’s Administration for 27 years. She pioneered the concept of quadriplegics leaving the hospital and getting into their own homes to live out their lives. She set up training for family members so they could perform the necessary tasks at home and figured out the logistics of transporting our soldiers who had lost their limbs. She tirelessly worked to set up plans with practical solutions to their special needs and created discharge orders so these men could go home to loved ones. We thank Marie for making so many Mother’s, wives and children happy that their guy could come home to family. We salute you and all nurses and teachers who give of self to others.
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