Just for fun

This isn't exactly literary, but since so many of us are nurses I thought I'd introduce Cherry Ames (Robin & Judy at least have heard me talk about her, not sure about Amy or the others).

Cherry Ames is the chief character in a girls' mystery series that is much like Nancy Drew. The first book follows her beginnings in a diploma program at her hometown hospital, the second and third follow her as she finishes nursing school and enters the Army in World War II. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Ames ) says the series was written to "encourage girls to enter the nursing profession" at that time, and boy did it work on me even 40 some years later!

I discovered her as a kid at the Sierra Vista library--but very few nurses I've worked with have ever heard of her. (exceptions-- Lisa Kiser and Alex on St. Joe's night shift[she of the tiniest script ever--somebody tell her I say hello], and an older nurse I worked with in Germany). My very favorite was always "Cherry Ames, Flight Nurse" --which is the fourth book. Here's an excerpt:

(contemplating her unknown future--she's in the Army Air Corps awaiting assignment)

"'To wherever our wounded soldiers need me,' Cherry thought soberly. 'To wherever I can keep a man from dying.'

Wherever people needed a girl with love in her heart and healing in her hands, that was where Cherry belonged. She wanted to serve, she had trained to serve. Sympathy or vague good intentions---these were not enough for her. Only a nurse, Cherry knew, could bring so much help and hope to others, who sorely needed her. Only a nurse could experience such broad human adventure, such profound inner reward. "

When I first read that I must've been about 11 or 12 yrs old. In high school I forgot all about nursing, but when the Air Force offered to pay for college to study nursing I abandoned my metallurgical engineering ideas and signed up. My mother warned me that sometimes our best beloved childhood books don't stand the test of time, but I still have love for these characters and their stories. Somehow Cherry's spirit of nursing, although it seems quaint, has never left me. I still wish I'd gotten to train in a diploma program!!

Olga