Junction City ? LaVerne Allen can’t help but smile when she talks about her past.

She speaks of her memories, the good ones and the bad. At age 84, she’s expertly played the role of wife, mother, daughter and nurse, and she’s got some stories to tell.

Allen recalls attending nursing school and being terrified of the first sponge bath she ever gave for a blind man who couldn’t see how embarrassed the 18-year-old farm girl attending to him was.

Allen also recalls how taking care of her father who was sick with rheumatoid arthritis as a teenager inadvertently opened the door to 63 years in nursing.

“He told me, ‘You should be a nurse,'” Allen said. “And I did what my parents told me to do.”

And in a brave voice, Allen speaks of the day her husband of 43 years, Jimmy, died of a sudden heart attack. She remembers coming home that October day in 1989 and knowing that her husband was sick.

“I walked in the back door and I just thought, ‘My God, Jimmy’s sick,'” Allen said.

After Jimmy, a former Junction City fire chief, died, Allen said she didn’t know what else to do but continue working. She’d served as a nurse at Geary Community Hospital for 46 years and nursing was a part of her life.

“I just stayed right here and worked,” she said.

Fourteen years later, Allen recently was honored for 60 years of service to Geary Community Hospital. Although she’s been a nurse for 63 years, she worked for three years in Norton and then Hays before coming to Junction City.

LaVerne Allen, 84, who has been a nurse at Geary Commu-nity Hospital in Junction City for 60 years, recently marked her 63rd year in the profession.

Evolving career

Allen sometimes still feels like the young girl from Dwight who was terrified of leaving her mother and attending nursing school at Christ Hospital in Topeka, now Stormont-Vail.

“It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been 60 years,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like it. Nursing school doesn’t seem that long ago.”

Allen’s held a variety of positions during her tenure including being a school nurse for the Geary County Unified School District 475 for 32 years. It’s hard for her to pick her favorite one though. She claims she’s loved them all. Allen’s held jobs ranging from operating room nurse to supervisor to her current position as patient representative.

She doesn’t perform regular nursing duties anymore with the part-time position, but to Allen, her job of making sure patients are comfortable and don’t have any complaints is just as important as administering medication.

“I comfort the patients and their families,” she said. “I understand what they’re going through. I’ve lost a brother, and a husband.”

Allen became Geary Community Hospital’s first patient representative in 1993, and it’s a job that her colleagues agree is perfect for her. Director of Patient Services Pat Benson said there isn’t a better person for the position.

“She knows everyone here,” Benson said. “She’s been everyone’s nurse, or mother’s nurse or grandmother’s nurse.”

Allen said she’s happy with her job now because in a way she feels like she hasn’t evolved as quickly as medicine and health care have. She’s glad she doesn’t administer medication or hook up IV tubes anymore.

“Medication and treatments have changed so drastically. I’d be scared I’d make a mistake,” Allen said.

Allen recalls sterilizing the hospital equipment, including operating room tools and tubing, and patching rubber gloves, which were called “seconds” when she first began as a nurse. Now, she said, everything is disposable. The largest change in health care Allen has noticed is the progression of medication. She remembers when penicillin was introduced.

“Penicillin was given to anyone with an infection,” she said. “Now there are specific medications for this and that. It’s wonderful that it’s gotten to this point.”

Retirement plans

Nursing, Allen says, was her calling and still is. After 60 years at Geary Community Hospital and 63 years in one profession, Allen is still sure there is nothing that she would have rather done with her life.

“I just never had any desire to do anything else,” she said.

But she’s not ready to stop yet. Even after years of duty and reaching an age where most would have considered retirement many years ago, Allen laughs when the topic is mentioned.

“When I retire, I’m just going to not come in one day,” she said. “I’ll call in and say, ‘Why, I retired yesterday.'”