Family Creates a Lasting Legacy in Nursing

88 years young, Shirley Marie Turner has her eye on the future and making a difference in nursing. After more than three decades of retirement she and her daughter Janis Boyd have found a way to make that happen. At the USF College of Nursing, Janis is creating a scholarship fund in her mother’s name.

“I just love nursing,” says Shirley, now a retired nurse in Delray Beach. “…love it because you’re helping people. I know sometimes it can be difficult. It was difficult for me when I was young to be able to afford nursing school, so I can understand those young people who want to go and don’t have the finances to. Thank goodness my father was able to get funding for me to go.”

Janis, a USF graduate, Class of ‘73, says it’s the kind of legacy that certainly “fits” her mom, a petite 4’5” woman with a Herculean passion for nursing and kids. “My late husband Jack and I have been involved with USF scholarships for years. I thought it would be good to create a nursing scholarship in mom’s name. At first she said ‘I’m so not worthy!’” laughs Janis. “I said ‘Mom, you raised three teenaged daughters at one time! I think that counts for something!’ After it sunk in, mom thought it was really cool.”

Cool indeed.

“I think what the USF College of Nursing is doing is so great, so I went for it,” says Shirley. “It’s always a great thing when you’re able to give back,” says Janis.

Looking back, it’s clear that nursing allowed this family to have the best of both worlds. For the kids, it was quality time with mom at home. For Shirley, it was a rewarding career.

William Robert Turner and Shirley Marie Foreman were married on April 25, 1941.

A 1942 graduate of the Springfield City Hospital Nursing School in Ohio, then Shirley Marie Foreman, began her nursing career ‘working the floor’ of Springfield City Hospital. Two years later and married, Shirley faced the question new moms have struggled with for generations – whether or not to become a stay at home mom. She made the choice to put her nursing career on hold until her girls, Lois, Janis and Sara were in high school and college. “It was very fulfilling to be able to do that,” says Shirley of her return after years of child rearing. “At the same time, Florida was having nursing shortages, and I wanted to help.”

Speaking from her home in Homosassa, daughter Janis is quick to point out that Shirley was as devoted to her colleagues as she was to her patients. “Mom often worked weekends and holidays to give nurses who were still raising kids time to spend with their families,” says Janis beaming with pride. “Helping people has always been mom’s first priority.”

“I just did what the Lord wanted me to do. I felt a calling and followed my heart,” says Shirley. “I’d work my own weekends and then help other nurses if they wanted a day off for a special reason. We were a team.”

Daughter Sara, who lives in Palm Coast, Florida, notes that her mother first felt a calling for nursing since childhood. “Mom knew she wanted to be a nurse when she was just 10 or 11 years old. We always felt that mom had a gift. When ever one of us was sick, one of the first things mom did was to touch us. She could tell, just by touching us, what was going on,” says Sara, who also attended USF. “We could NEVER fake being sick because mom could tell right away!” adds Janis. “We never got to stay home faking we were sick. Believe me, we tried!”

As one might expect, Shirley’s nursing memories are many and varied – stretching from Ohio to Florida. “Too many to remember in great detail,” she says with a laugh. Her daughter’s personal favorite is one from Ohio. “In the early days, they had large hospital rooms with 4 to 6 patients to a room. Mom was taking care of a group of men one day when one of them told her he needed something, but he was having a hard time telling her what that was. He was an older man, shy and in a roomful of other men. Maybe he wasn’t comfortable telling my mom, a tiny, pretty 22 year-old, what he needed,” says Janis with a chuckle. “Finally he said to her ‘I need…you know…one of those vases.’ And my mom said ‘Oh, okay. How big is your bouquet?’ Well, as it turned out, what he wanted was a urinal.”

True story.

“Oh my, yes!” says Shirley, almost blushing.

Focusing on today, Shirley marvels at the increased choices nursing students have. “Back in 1942, you hit the books and from then on it was ‘learn and do’” says Shirley. “And back then, you were either an operating room nurse, an emergency room nurse, or a floor nurse…and even those were limited,” she recalls. “Now? My goodness, it’s wide open! Unbelievable!” Re-energized by the opportunity to give back to the profession she loves, Shirley’s golden years of retirement are filled with a renewed sense of optimism and hope.

“There just never seems to be enough qualified nurses around and this is our way of doing our part to help,” says Janis.

“The College of Nursing is honored to have a scholarship memorializing Shirley Turner,” says Patricia Burns, PhD, RN, Dean of nursing and Senior Associate Vice President, USF Health. “She is truly a role model for the nursing profession and her passion for nursing is infectious.”

Shirley has this advice for nursing students of today. “Number one, you really have to love it. You have to know in your heart that you want to do this. It may be tough sometimes, as any job would be, but if you really want to do it, hang in there! It will work out.”

Shirley Turner is living proof of that.

Story by Lissette Campos, USF Health Communications

Other Links:

PHOTO GALLERY

Nursing Life Magazine Spring 2008 Edition

USF College of Nursing