The summer of 1970 was a heady time with many different meanings for different groups of people. It was post-Woodstock and post-Summer of Love; it was not long after back-to-back assassinations tore this country apart; it was pre-Watergate; and the unpopular Vietnam war was raging — the Kent State massacre had occurred just six weeks previously.
I had just finished seventh grade and was too young at the time to fully appreciate the activism taking place or to understand the historical significance of many of the events of that era. For me, the first summer of the 1970s was significant because that's when I became a teenager and when I spent the entire break between seventh and eighth grades at what was then called Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Without divulging too much personal information or dragging out old baggage, it was a dark, difficult time of my life. I was hospitalized more than 60 miles from home and as a result, had no visitors for the duration of the stay. My mother couldn’t be bothered to visit and I didn’t find out until I was discharged and returned home that none of my friends or neighbors were even aware that I was sick, let alone hospitalized for such a long time.
Thankfully, observant, caring hospital staffers figured out I was alone. Many of them made efforts to spend extra time with me and found ways to keep me engaged in activities when I was able. But one nurse in particular went above and beyond the call of duty and took me under her wing. She was young and bright and fun and funny and sassy in an era when a deployment to Vietnam hung like a cloud over the heads of all military members.
This nurse, who I now know was only 21 at the time, came to the hospital on her days off to hang out with me and take me on outings. The simple act of treating me to lunch at Arby’s, taking me to her apartment so I could hang for a little while in a more home-like setting or buying peanuts and going out to the hospital’s park-like front lawn to feed the squirrels went a long way in normalizing a routine and making an abandoned, neglected, sick kid feel loved and cared about.
As we all know, time marches on. I went home and started eighth grade and a couple of months after that, my guardian angel nurse went to Vietnam.
As the years flew by, I never forgot her and the impact she had on my life. The altruistic effort she made to make a difference in a kid’s life, when she was at an age when socializing with peers and dating and all the other trappings of young adult life would have been more important, stuck with me my entire life.
When technology put the world at our fingertips, she was one of the first people from my past that I tried to find. Life is a little unfair to women, because most change their last names when they marry. That makes finding women a little more difficult than men.
My first few searches were unfruitful and then I hit upon just the right phrases for a search engine to find her. I was so excited that I responded with involuntary, spontaneous tears. But I didn’t have the nerve to reach out to her; it was enough for me to know she was alive and enjoying a successful nursing career.
But every couple of years, I repeated the search, just to assure myself that it was indeed her and to check to make sure she was OK (as much as that can be determined by a superficial online search).
Earlier this month I found her on Facebook. I finally bit the bullet and sent her a private message. Judging from what was publicly viewable on her FB page, it appeared as though she wasn’t extremely active on the site, so I didn’t hold my breath waiting for a response.
But when she did respond nearly two weeks later, it took my breath away. A brief but lovely online conversation allowed me to tell her what she meant to me all those years ago, and she assured me that she remembered me from that brief period.
It turns out that we have a real big thing in common. While I am a midlife crisis journalist, she — now retired from full-time nursing and teaching graduate-level college nursing courses — is a published author and “loves writing.”
I am hoping that we can cultivate a new friendship as much as time and distance allows. But I can scratch finding her off my bucket list, because it was that important to me to be able to tell her how important she was during that dreary time in my life.
Not many 13-year-olds have the ability to recognize such precious gifts, let alone express appreciation of them. The 60-year-old me was thrilled to perform that task on behalf of the 13-year-old me.
