At 90, former nurses ‘almost like sisters’

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This article was published 17/08/2024 (594 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Joy Stusek, Rose Evans and Zenny Burton met 72 years ago on their first day of nursing school in Brandon. At the time, they were 18 years old.

“Something clicked,” they say, and the three have been connected ever since.

“It’s closer than friendship — we’re almost like sisters. Not related, but closer than just friends,” Stusek said.

The three former classmates have kept in touch during the last seven decades and try to “get together every few years,” said Burton, who organized their most recent reunion in Brandon on Friday at Evans’ home in the city’s west end.

“How do I put it?” said Burton. “We aren’t young ladies, and we all hit the big nine-O, so all of a sudden I got the feeling that we should get together and do something, and it carried on from there.”

For the last two days, the three retired nurses have been going through photo albums and retelling and laughing at stories from their three years in training and living in the nurses’ residence before graduating in 1955.

“It was our second year,” said Burton. “I was in a room that was off the balcony and we had to sign in at 10 o’clock, but people were coming in late.

“They would come up the stairs, push their way in the window, and I got my face stepped on so many times by somebody sneaking in,” she recalled, as Stusek and Evans joined her in laughter.

Brandon General Hospital was a teaching hospital and at that time offered a three-year nursing diploma, room and board, and paid the students $6 a month the first year, $7 a month in the second year, and in their final year they received $8 a month.

“You bought your toothpaste, some personal items, and maybe had some money left over to go to a movie,” said Stusek.

Doctors and other nurses taught courses, including pediatrics, anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and communicable diseases.

All three said they had “good marks,” adding that one of the reasons they did well in nursing school was because they “had to.”

Burton came from a family of 12 in Melville, Sask., “so there was no money for anything.”

“And I think we were all nurses because, at that time, women did not go to university that much. That was for the males and the rich,” said Burton.

“So, I knew I had to complete this because if I didn’t, what was I going to do? I had to succeed at what I had signed up for, and that was that.”

Evans, who was born in Brandon, and Stusek, originally from Canora, Sask., said their stories are the same, growing up with very little, with parents who could not afford to send them to post-secondary school.

“After Grade 12,” said Evans, “I got a job at the hospital as a ward aid and I made beds, washed the floor, I washed everything. A Mrs. Griffin said to me, ‘Have you got your marks?’ And I said yes. ‘Bring them, because you’re going to be a nurse.’ So, on the fifth of September, 1952, I met these three — and that was the day we went in training.”

After graduation, Evans stayed in Brandon and before she retired, worked for 30 years in the Brandon Regional Health Centre in several areas, including the emergency department and intensive care unit.

Stusek said her nursing career was also 30 years. Her first job was in British Columbia, and then she moved back to Canora to do general nursing throughout the hospital, including the emergency department.

“To me, that was the most interesting,” said Stusek. “I don’t do well in one enclosed area. I have to have action, and when I can talk to people and go from one place to the other, that’s when I was happiest.”

Burton said her greatest experience in her “20 or 25 years of nursing” was her four years in Africa as a nurse for the Canadian Embassy, followed by positions in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

And when Burton got married in 1956, one year after graduation, “Joy Stusek was my bridesmaid, and Rose Evans came to the wedding,” she said.

As the three ladies looked at their graduation class photo of 12 students, they said they thought there might only be three or four others besides them who are “still around.”

“I think this bond we have is because we were all country kids, we grew up the same,” said Evans.

Stusek said she agreed, adding, “And because we’ve been through the mill, happiness and unhappiness is something each one of us can relate to. We each had three children, and we each lost one as an adult.”

Burton nodded and said, “There’s no question in my mind that I couldn’t phone either of these two and say, look I have an x, y, or z problem, and they’ll understand. No matter how much time has passed — months or years — we can just pick up where we left off.”

» mmcdougall@brandonsun.com

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