From Fellowship to Friendship
Friendships take root quickly and grow deeply when you live, work, worship and play together for two and a half years.
Fellowship students enjoyed a play and Christmas party in Rogers Hall.
Sally Brenner and Carol Purin discovered this in the mid-1960s when they enrolled in a unique program offered by the School of Nursing. In exchange for working three shifts a week at Firmin Desloge Hospital (now SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital) or another area hospital, SLU paid tuition, and room and board for registered nurses who wanted to earn their B.S.N. degrees. Brenner and Purin earned their degrees in 1967. They celebrate their 50th reunion this year.
“It was a mutually beneficial relationship,” said Brenner. “SLU granted us our degrees and we augmented the hospital staff. What I didn’t realize was how many friends I would meet through the program.”
Shared Space
The Fellowship Nursing program, which started in the early 1930s, attracted registered nurses who already had diplomas from hospital-based programs – the first source of training for R.N.s in the United States. Brenner was a medical-surgical nurse from Ohio. Purin was an Air Force flight nurse from Pennsylvania.
SLU’s program was one of only a handful of its kind in the country at the time and was considered progressive because it pre-dated the push to move nursing education into colleges and universities.
The fellowship nurses came from throughout the country and lived on two floors of Rogers Hall (now Jesuit Hall), a women’s dormitory on Lindell Boulevard across from St. Francis Xavier College Church. The students shared bedrooms and a large sitting room where they watched TV, held holiday parties, listened to music, played cards and ironed their white uniforms and navy blue ties that distinguished the SLU nurses from other nurses in the hospital. The students shared a phone at the end of a hallway.
In the morning, the nurses would cram into cars, catch a bus or hitchhike, as Brenner preferred, down Grand Boulevard to get to the medical center campus. The students attended class until 2 p.m. and worked the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift at the hospital. They had to be back in the dormitory by curfew (midnight during the week, 1 a.m. on weekends) or face expulsion.
All For One
Karen Hausfeld, B.S.N. (’65), then a 22-year-old fellowship nurse from Dayton, Ohio carried 19 credit hours a semester and worked 24 hours a week on the 8th floor of Firmin Desloge, the cardiac floor. Even though fellowship nurses were scattered throughout the hospital they found ways to work as a team. Hausfeld remembers sending the intermittent positive pressure breathing machine up and down the hospital elevator to her friends on other floors.
“This was before we had respiratory therapists at the bedside,” she said “If you needed the machine, which we had few of, you got on the phone and called a buddy who would put it on elevator and send it to you. This would go on all night long. If you were shorthanded all you had to do was call and another fellowship nurse would come running. We were a tight-knit bunch.”
Some of the students, including Hausfeld and Brenner, worked extra shifts to earn money to buy books, a movie ticket or fruit from the nearby market that students suspected was a front for a bookie joint.
“Those were lean times,” said Brenner, the first in her family to go to college. “We
worked extra hours to make ends meet. We were exhausted but we had great fun and
commiserated together.”
In their limited off time the students attended fraternity parties hosted by SLU medical students, went to dances and camped in the Ozarks.
After graduating from the fellowship program, Brenner, Purin and Hausfeld continued to pursue their educations. Hausfeld returned to SLU to earn her M.S.N. in 1978. She retired from SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in 2009 having worked in education and nursing administration. She gets together with her fellowship classmates, “the closest friends of my life,” every five years. She does volunteer nursing for the cloistered Carmelite sisters and other volunteer projects in her community.
Purin talked Brenner into joining the Air Force Reserve. They both moved to San Francisco, pursued M.S.N. degrees at San Jose State University and doctoral degrees at different universities. Purin was maid of honor in Brenner’s wedding. Both became nurse educators, both survived breast cancer and both volunteer as healing advocates.
“We were inspired by the Jesuit ideal of service to others.” said Brenner. “We are so grateful to SLU for our education but mostly for the friends that have enriched our lives.”
Though the fellowship program ended in the 1970s it’s clear the friendships it fostered continue to endure.
Founded in 1928, Saint Louis University School of Nursing has achieved a national reputation for its innovative and pioneering programs. Offering bachelor's, master's, and doctoral nursing programs, its faculty members are nationally recognized for their teaching, research and clinical expertise.