Jeannette Henne's father threw a fit when she revealed her career plans. For starters, he didn't believe women should work outside the home. As for becoming a nurse, “That's too hard a job,” she remembers him saying.

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        Indeed, it was hard work. “You scrubbed the floor, you did everything,” Jeannette says of her first job at a small hospital in her hometown of Celina, Ohio. Each month she earned $75 and got only one day off — never on a weekend or holiday.

        It was 1938. With the Great Depression gripping America, Jeannette embarked on a career that would span nearly half a century. It would take her to hospitals and doctors' offices, a retirement community and patients' homes.

        “I loved nursing. I'd still do it today if I could,” says Jeannette, who is 84 and lives in a Mount Washington apartment building for senior citizens.

Jeannette Henne (Enquirer photo) | ZOOM |

        These days she receives care, instead of giving it. Two recent surgeries removed skin cancer from her face. Slowed by three strokes, she can walk with assistance but mostly relies on a wheelchair to get around.

        “That's very different, after being active my whole life,” she says.

        She was perhaps more active than most. She had three children and worked outside the home. When she divorced, she became, in the words of daughter Nancy Batchelor, “the original single parent.”

        Her children learned to be self-sufficient and successful. Of course, they didn't have to look far for inspiration.

        In her mother, Nancy says she saw “the epitome of a nurse. Her uniforms were always just so, and her shoes were shined and she always wore her cap. If you closed your eyes, this is what you would want a nurse to be if you were ill.”

        But there was more to it than merely looking the part.

        “She was organized. She knew what she was doing. She could think on her feet,” Nancy says. “She showed her patients she was concerned about them and actually cared about them.

        “She was a role model, and showed me that you can help people and be fulfilled in your own life.”

        When it came time for Nancy to choose a career, she told her mother she wanted to be a nurse.

        Unlike her father years earlier, Jeannette did not throw a fit. “I was kind of happy about it,” she says.

        Nancy has served as a Navy nurse, has worked in local hospitals and is now an assistant professor of nursing at Northern Kentucky University.

        Those young nurses that Nancy teaches probably won't ever wear their caps. A shame, Jeannette says. More important, she knows they'll need qualities that served her well for almost 50 years: a sense of duty, and hearty doses of compassion and patience.

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