Returning to St. Luke’s School of Nursing 50 years later

MATTAPOISETT — When Susan Bonnar of Rochester was a young woman in the late 1960s, the most common career paths for women were to become a teacher, secretary or nurse.

Knowing that she didn’t want to be a teacher and since her mother was a legal secretary, Bonnar felt that nursing was “the only choice.”

“I always wanted to be a nurse because my aunt was a nurse,” she said.

So Bonnar, who grew up in Fairhaven, applied to three nursing schools: St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing, Newton-Wellesley Hospital School of Nursing and the New England Baptist Hospital School of Nursing.

Bonnar settled on St. Luke’s, a diploma-based, three-year school in New Bedford that opened in 1885.

“It was inexpensive, and I liked their nursing cap,” she said, explaining that the caps were more lightweight compared to caps students wore at other nursing schools.

Bonnar called St. Luke’s “ahead of its time, as far as training nurses go.”

She noted that the hospital had one of the first radiological departments and a strong stroke program.

“When we went to school, we did 10 weeks of every speciality,” she said.

Specialities included psych surgery, medical-surgical nursing and working in the stroke unit. Students also spent 10 weeks at the Brockton Veterans Affairs Medical Center psych ward where they worked with veterans from World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

Unlike the degree programs of today, St. Luke’s followed a three-year continuous course, with students attending year round, except for two weeks at Christmas and two weeks during the summer.

“We went to school longer than the kids do now to get a nursing degree,” Bonnar said.

Bonnar said that diploma schools were more hands-on, with the students often working with actual patients at St. Luke’s Hospital.

“We learned how to do it. We went to the hospital and did it ‘til we perfected it, and [you] didn’t pass until you perfected it,” said Madalena Jezierski of Dartmouth.

She said the program had labs where the students practiced with Bunsen burners, taking temperatures, putting in an IV and more.

“We would go to the hospital, and all we did was go from patient to patient, doing that one task,” she said.

By the time they were seniors, the student nurses were already working in St. Luke’s Hospital.

The school was also not without its fun.

The students all lived in what they referred to as “the white home,” where they had house mothers who kept a tight curfew and a porch above the entryway where they would sunbathe, which they called Pebble Beach.

“We used to take album covers, line them with tin foil to use as reflectors, and we used to use baby oil and iodine never knowing [the] damage,” Jezierski said.

In 1972, talks began on whether to close the school as four-year degree programs at universities were growing more popular.

According to Bonnar, the four-year bachelor’s programs offered less hands-on experience than the diploma program at St. Luke’s, though bachelor’s programs continued to rise in popularity.

And in 1975, 90 years after opening its doors, St. Luke’s School of Nursing shut down.

Across the state, other diploma nursing programs were also closing, including the Newton-Wellesley and New England Baptist programs Bonnar had applied for.

“I think it was just the trend at the time,” Bonnar said. “A lot of schools had already started closing.”

Fifty years later, alumni will be holding their final reunion, which will also serve as “the final hurrah,” Jezierski said.

“This event is really to celebrate the school and to close the door,” she said.

The reunion is being held at Venus De Milo in Swansea, which coincidentally was where a lot of the large events that St. Luke’s hosted were held, including Christmas parties and banquets.

Bonnar said of the upcoming event, “I’m hoping that some people will connect that haven’t seen each other since they graduated.”

Alumni can register for the reunion, scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 11 from 5:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., by selecting a meal option and sending a check payable to Susan Bonnar.

Meals include baked stuffed scrod with butter crumbs ($37), baked stuffed chicken ($37) or an 8 ounce filet mignon ($55).

Checks should be mailed to Bonnar at 56 Hathaway Pond Circle, Rochester, MA 02770.

For more information, contact Bonnar at s.bonnar@comcast.net.