Clara Barton Tour Underway

By Linda MacIntyre, PhD, RN, chief nurse of the American Red Cross

Tour group at Clara Barton Office of Missing Soldiers Museum, Washington, DC.

The Clara Barton Tour officially began last evening. Participants gathered for dinner and conversation. Annie Bartholomew, long a student of Clara Barton, gave a brief overview of Barton’s life, with teasers for her upcoming presentation on the bus. Annie has stories to tell that might best be revealed over a glass of wine.

Reasons given for coming on the tour included

  • not having heard of Clara Barton and thinking it was time to learn about her,
  • over 40 years of studying Clara’s life,
  • a birthday gift from a husband.

And many came because of their connection with Sue Hassmilller, long-time volunteer and board member. It is Sue’s vision and energy that made the Clara Barton Tour possible and we are saddened that she’s not able to participate due to a family emergency. Sue’s wish for us is to enjoy the tour and to send prayers. We’re committed to doing both. […]

2016-11-21T13:00:57-05:00September 29th, 2016|Clara Barton 2016, Nursing, nursing history, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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A 40-Year Red Cross Volunteer’s Ongoing Quest to Learn More

Sue Hassmiller, on left, as American Red Cross volunteer following 2011 Alabama tornado strikes.

By Susan B. Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) senior advisor for nursing, and director, Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, American Red Cross volunteer national ambassador. (Second post of ongoing Clara Barton Study Tour series.)

The ‘Red Cross lady’ on the phone.

Earthquake hits Mexico City! said the news flash on my television screen 40 years ago as I sat in my childhood home. I was a college student, house-sitting for my parents, who were in Mexico City for a long-deserved vacation.

I had no idea what to do. There were no cell phones in those days, no Internet. I hurried to the yellow rotary phone on the wall at the end of the kitchen cabinets and dialed 0 for the operator. I implored her help. She said she couldn’t help me, but would connect me to an organization that could. It was the American Red Cross. […]

2016-11-21T13:00:57-05:00September 23rd, 2016|Clara Barton 2016, nursing history, Public health|1 Comment
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Following in the Footsteps of Clara Barton

clara-barton-photographed-by-matthew-bradyAt Antietam: From government clerk to “Angel of the Battlefield”

This Saturday marks the 154th anniversary of the Civil War Battle of Antietam—what has been called “the single bloodiest day in American military history.” Confederate army and Union troops faced off in Sharpsburg, Maryland. They fought for almost two days and when the battle ended, there were over 22,000 casualties among both sides. In the middle of it all, Clara Barton, a former teacher and government clerk, drove wagons of supplies around battle lines and tended to wounded soldiers.

Antietam marked the beginning of the legacy of Clara Barton, who on that day earned the title “Angel of the Battlefield.” Today, a monument to her stands at one end of the battlefield.

Bringing the Red Cross to America

arc-logoWhen the war ended, Barton continued to work for the soldiers, founding the Bureau of Records of Missing Men of the Armies of the United States to identify the millions of missing and dead soldiers. After a visit to Geneva with the International Red Cross in 1880, she returned and established the American Red Cross and became its […]

2016-11-21T13:00:57-05:00September 16th, 2016|Clara Barton 2016, Nursing, nursing history|0 Comments
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Dispatch #3 from the Alabama Tornado Zone: A Tight-Knit Community, the Red Cross ‘CSI’ Unit, Public Health Nursing

Sue Hassmiller, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Senior Adviser for Nursing, has been blogging from the area in Alabama recently devastated by tornadoes, where she’s volunteering with the Red Cross. This and all previous posts in this series are being collected on a separate page for easy reference.—JM, senior editor/blog editor

Hackleburg Is Gone!
Picture yourself in your present surroundings; take a look around at the buildings, the houses—and now try to picture them completely gone, with you standing right in the middle of it. That is what Hackleburg went through on April 27. Ninety percent of the small town is gone. You can tell that people lived there by the personal items strewn about, but you can hardly tell where the houses once stood. They have all been flattened. This is very different from the aftermath of the flood following Hurricane Katrina, when the flood-soaked houses were pretty much left standing.

Standing there in the middle of the rubble with family members, it’s hard for me to imagine how anyone survived this. But they did . . . at least most of them. This is a close-knit, church-going town, and […]

2016-11-21T13:13:16-05:00May 9th, 2011|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Neither Dragons nor Angels — Just Imperfect, Like Everybody Else

By Gail Pfeifer, MA, RN, AJN news director

I’m not a history buff, but my husband is. So I nicely went along on a recent trip with him to Virginia, visiting historic sites like Montpelier, Jamestown, Yorktown, and Appomattox. It was more fun than I’d anticipated and it really did open a door for me, showing me how much, and how little, has changed, especially in political behavior: When Cornwallis had to surrender to Washington, for example, he feigned illness and sent his second in command, General O’Hara, to do so. Washington, in return, would not accept the sword from O’Hara, directing him to his own second in command. Tit for tat.

One of the things I least expected from the National Park Service was a specific acknowledgment of nurses or nursing (except for maybe Clara Barton, who established the American branch of the International Red Cross). Yet there it was at one of our Civil War site stops: a note that Dorothea Dix had visited to review care of the Union soldiers.

Although she is best known for her work improving care for the mentally ill, Dix became Superintendent of Female Nurses for the Union during the Civil War, serving for the entire duration without pay. At that time, biographers say (variably) that she was 59 or 60 years old, a strong, unmarried woman of her times. Dix was a social […]

2016-11-21T13:14:16-05:00January 21st, 2011|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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