NORTHAMPTON — After three years at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital School of Nursing, getting clinical training and working in the Intensive Care Unit before graduating with its last class in 1975, Wendy Brophy of North Adams recalls being ingrained with compassion as she started her nursing career.
“You had to be caring,” Brophy says.
It was a similar sentiment for classmate Helen Stefan of Southampton, learning that patients were a priority.
“Empathy for patients was needed,” Stefan said.
“It was very strict, but a good school,” Stefan said. “You had hands-on work and education to apply what you learned. It was a high standard, but you learned a lot.”
On the afternoon of Sept. 16, Brophy and Stefan were among about 20 members of the Cooley Dickinson School of Nursing Nurses Alumni Association who, following a fall banquet at the Bluebonnet Diner, were present at the hospital’s Healing Garden to unveil a commemorative stone honoring the legacy of the school, 50 years after its final graduating class bade farewell to the school.
The brick contains the emblem of the school, with the letters CDH, which were engraved on class rings and class pins, along with an inscription marking the name and dates of the school, and the phrase “healing with care.”
As it was placed on the walkway, there was both a celebratory feeling, with one member saying, “we finally did it, ladies,” as well as some emotion.
“We wanted to leave something behind of our nursing school,” said Jeanette Bailey of Westhampton, who spent 47 years working at Cooley Dickinson after her graduation in 1971, observing that the school has largely been forgotten by the larger community.
Darlene Cyr, a 1971 graduate and president of the Nurses Alumni Association, said the brick helps to “show how important this hospital has been to my community.”
Georgia Moore, part of the development team at the hospital that is now part of the Mass General Brigham system, said having the Nursing School alumni still be part of the community is important.
The Healing Garden was created when the Kittredge Surgery Center was built in front of the previous main entrance and is a place where bricks, benches and trees help to pay tribute to the hospital’s history and its people, and is a place for patients, families and staff to reflect and enjoy a quiet, contemplative space.
Beginning in 1901 and coming to an end in 1975, about 1,000 students were educated in the nursing program at the Cooley Dickinson campus. It began with six students and with two purposes: to train young women and to ensure a steady supply of nurses for the hospital.
A 1972 graduate, Dolores Conway of Easthampton is the treasurer of the alumni association.
“All I wanted to be was a bedside nurse,” Conway said. After graduating she went to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Worcester, a teaching hospital, and then came back to Northampton, spending 45 of her 47 years at Cooley Dickinson, retiring in 2019. Though she returned during the pandemic and is now continuing to volunteer, she notes that the place has become a home away from home for many of the nurses.
Conway sends out about 60 invitations to each event with about 30 usually able to attend who live close enough to make it. Roses are handed out to those members who are from milestone classes, as well as the member from the most distant class, which was 1954 this fall.
When the hospital’s School of Nursing closed in spring 1975, its class of 16 students included just the third male student. At the final graduation ceremony, held at Sage Hall at Smith College, the keynote speaker, longtime obstetrician Dr. Peter Merzbach, offered a prescription for the success of the graduates.
“One part of knowledge, one part of compassion and a healthy sense of humor,” he said. “With this in mind, you will not, in fact, you cannot fail.”
The School of Nursing was located in the McCallum Nurses Residence, a building next to the hospital’s main entrance and now used for offices. Many lived on site there and received their education at first year-round, but eventually shortened to traditional academic years. They would be used in wards, some worked on weekends as nursing aides and those who didn’t immediately land employment at the hospital went on to more advanced degrees.
Conway said most classes were in the same building where the students lived, bringing in nursing staff, college professors and people form affiliated programs in psychology and pediatrics, but for some other disciplines they might walk to the Smith College campus.
The school closed for financial reasons, finding that it never reached the full potential of having 100 students, with 97 the maximum enrollment during World War II. The hospital also had concerns because less than one in five graduates were working at the hospital, and it began competing with programs at community colleges and the University of Massachusetts.
Brophy, in that last class, said the campus was quiet that final year, though Stefan said this meant they didn’t have to fight over use of the kitchen.
Cyr thanked all the alumni who return each spring and fall to reminisce.
“It’s been my lifeline, my life support,” Cyr said. “I want to thank everybody from the bottom of my heart.”
Unlike today’s nursing programs, which are mostly book learning, Cyr said the Cooley Dickinson program was about hard work. “You were a worker bee from day one,” Cyr said.
“It’s a nice memory of the school closing,” said Lillian Morin of North Hatfield, sitting on a bench and observing the memorial brick. Morin graduated with the class of 1959, before spending 55 years in nursing, ranging from time at the Northampton State Hospital and the Franklin County Jail to working with nuns in Holyoke.
Gene Hill of Easthampton said she wouldn’t trade the experience of going to Cooley Dickinson’s School of Nursing for any other.
“I’m glad I went here, rather than to college,” Hill said. “This made me a better nurse.”