Tuesday, March 26, 2002
By JON BAKER
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
When Florence Kissinger was a teen-ager working for the summer at the Overlook Sanitarium in New Wilmington, Pa., in 1917, she saw a woman in a beautiful starched white uniform. That sight determined her future -- she would become a nurse.
"Just the uniform sold me on nursing," recalls the 103-year-old resident of the Greenbriar Center in Boardman.
But nursing wasn't her only career. In the 1940s, her "perfectionist" husband, Clarence, was having trouble keeping office help at his business. Kissinger left nursing to help out as office manager, and spent the next 30 years there.
Kissinger was born March 20, 1899, and grew up on a farm outside of New Wilmington. "That's what I attribute my long life to -- growing up on the farm," she said.
No one else in her family has lived past 100, though her father, Jerod Lusk, made it to 92.
Education: After graduating from New Wilmington High School, she started nurses training at Southside Hospital in Youngstown in 1917.
The next year, the Spanish influenza epidemic hit the Mahoning Valley, killing hundreds and paralyzing the area. Kissinger recalled that South High School in Youngstown was turned into a hospital.
Kissinger had charge of a ward at Southside Hospital during the epidemic. One day, five pregnant women were brought in from the Florence Crittenden Home, a home for unwed mothers in Youngstown. All five had the flu, and all five died, she said.
She graduated from nurses training in 1920 and went to work as a private duty nurse. During that time, she did a great deal of work for Dr. Colin Clark, a prominent physician in Youngstown. "When his kids were sick, I had to take care of them," Kissinger said.
Runaway: She still recalls an incident from her early days as a nurse. One evening when she was on duty at the hospital, her supervisor called her to check on the condition of a female patient. Kissinger told her supervisor that the patient was doing fine. But her supervisor insisted she go check on the patient.
When Kissinger walked into the patient's room, she found nothing but an empty bed. She found out later that the woman had climbed out the window of her room, and rode away in a waiting car with her family.
Kissinger didn't recall what illness the woman had or why she decided to escape from the hospital.
Family: After working for a couple of years, Kissinger left nursing to marry Dr. William Skipp. They had two children, Bill and Peg, before eventually divorcing.
She then married Clarence Kissinger, a Youngstown architect who had gained fame for designing an underground house.
War nurse: When World War II began, Florence Kissinger returned to nursing because of a shortage of nurses at local hospitals.
After a tough refresher course, she went to work at St. Elizabeth Health Center. "Most of the doctors went overseas, and that left us without much help," she recalled.
Career change: She worked at St. Elizabeth for a couple of years, before she went to work for her husband as his office manager. Besides designing many homes locally, Clarence Kissinger owned the Overhead Door Co.
"He was such a perfectionist that I took over the office," Florence Kissinger said.
She had to teach herself to type and had to learn bookkeeping in her new job. Kissinger worked there for the next 30 years, until her husband died in 1977.
Backward glance: Today, looking back on her career as a nurse, Kissinger reflected on the changes in her profession.
It was a much more formal time. Nurses never called doctors by their first name. And all nurses wore white uniforms and white caps.
Her daughter, Peg, recalled, "She always had the whitest uniforms. And she would starch the caps so stiff."
Kissinger said nurses in her day would have never dreamed of belonging to a union. "We never had a strike, and we didn't make the wages that they make now," she said. "You just knew nothing about unions at that time."
But she said staffing levels were much higher than they are now, which is a complaint many nurses have today. Kissinger said she never worked any overtime during World War II. "We had a lot of nurses," she said.
In addition to her two children, Kissinger has five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. But none of them has followed her into nursing.