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.”