[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 30 (Thursday, February 15, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1157-S1158]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   TRIBUTE TO BARBARA TENNIEN MURPHY

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the University of Vermont's College of 
Nursing has so much of which to be proud. My wife, Marcelle, who serves 
on the college's advisory board, recently showed me a touching article 
about Barbara Tennien Murphy. It speaks so much to the value of nurses 
and the education they received in Vermont, just as Marcelle did. I ask 
unanimous consent that this article, which was published on the 
university's website last year, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 UVM Nursing Through the Decades: 1940s

       Taking the Lead: Barbara Tennien Murphy '47
       In June 1947, the first students to achieve a bachelor's 
     degree in nursing from the University of Vermont crossed the 
     lawn in front of the Waterman Building to accept their 
     diplomas. Of the 267 students graduating UVM that day, only 
     two were in the new five-year nursing program: Ruby Sanderson 
     of Winsted, Connecticut and Barbara Tennien, of Pittsford, 
     Vermont. At 92 years old, in the year of her 70th college 
     reunion, Barbara Tennien Murphy '47 reflected on her time at 
     UVM with fondness and gratitude for being part of something 
     important.
       Few women attended college in the 1940s and most nurses 
     lacked academic degrees. ``You didn't even need a high school 
     diploma to become a nurse. A bachelor's degree for nursing 
     was very new,'' Murphy said. ``Getting a degree wasn't a big 
     deal to me, but there weren't a lot of choices (for women). I 
     liked math and was pretty good at it.''
       Murphy comes from a family full of UVM graduates and 
     working professionals: Her father, Jerome Tennien '15, 
     majored in agriculture and served on the UVM student council. 
     He managed a U.S. government farm in Panama before settling 
     on his family farm in Pittsford, Vermont, where he taught 
     agriculture at the local high school. Uncles Jim Tennian `10 
     and Bill Tennian `17 studied engineering. Murphy's brother, 
     Jim `43, a mechanical engineer at Wright Field in Ohio, died 
     in a test flight crash shortly after graduating. Her mother, 
     Mary, was a nurse, and sister, Mary, attended the College of 
     St. Rose and taught high school in Windsor, Vermont.
       Murphy entered UVM in 1942, before UVM offered a nursing 
     degree. ``I started in home economics. I was not in love with 
     it. The next year the nursing program began. I immediately 
     knew that was what I wanted,'' she recalled. ``I wanted to 
     use my brain to make my hands work, and they very nicely 
     opened the doors to a degree in nursing. I felt very 
     comfortable with it, I felt complete.''


                          COMPASSION AND FOCUS

       Murphy admired her mother, who went on medical calls in 
     Pittsford with the town doctor and occasionally cared for 
     patients in the Tennien home. One patient, a little girl 
     about six years old, affected her deeply.
       ``Her leg had been cut off by a mowing machine on a farm. 
     They hacked it off and gave her a metal prosthesis to wear on 
     her leg. I was 17, and I felt that I wanted to take care of 
     her,'' Murphy remembered. ``It was a compassion, for her and 
     for others who needed people to care for them. My mother 
     cared for people. She went to the neighbors and took care of 
     things for them. Nobody talked about it, it's just what we 
     did. It was what I wanted.''
       While at UVM, Murphy participated in the All Sports Club 
     and lettered in Rifle, an activity taught by an army sergeant 
     at a firing range on campus. ``I liked shooting,'' she 
     explained. ``I also played badminton and bowled. The 
     university had bowling allies with duckpins.''
       World War II was underway, and most young American men were 
     off to war, so UVM students were predominantly female. The 
     men's dormitories became sorority housing. Murphy lived in 
     Slade Hall. The workload was intense, she said, so she had 
     little time for sororities.
       ``That first year, you didn't get credit for nursing 
     classes, and so you had to take a lot of classes. One year I 
     carried 22 credit hours, which was completely insane. But if 
     you wanted to do it, that's what you had to do. We were the 
     first class, they were experimenting on us,'' she quipped. 
     ``I liked the work at school, and I liked the work at the 
     hospital.''
       Murphy did her nursing clinicals at Mary Fletcher Hospital, 
     a predecessor to the University of Vermont Medical Center. 
     With the war in progress, most of the male staff and hospital 
     supplies had gone to the front lines.
       ``It was war time, and all the porters and help were in the 
     army, so we did everything. We did the cooking of the baby's 
     formulas, scraping the meat of gristle for baby food and 
     washing the linens. We made sure the babies, children and old 
     people taken care of. We washed diapers and bed pans.''
       She believes that the hard work and long days helped her 
     become a better nurse.
       ``I finished my 8 hours and then at 7:00 when we went off-
     duty, we mopped the floors after because we didn't have 
     anyone else to do it. The head nurse was mopping beside you. 
     Everyone worked together to accomplish what needs to be 
     done,'' she recalled. ``Some of the time it was boring, but 
     we learned what you do when you don't have what you need, and 
     how to do it if a lot of stuff is not available. It makes for 
     an excellent adult life. I know my responsibility to my 
     patients.''


                           SHOWING GRATITUDE

       Murphy passed the Vermont Board of Nurse Registration exam 
     to become an R.N. in 1947. She received a gold seal and 
     second highest honors with 94 points, just one point less 
     than Ruby Sanderson. ``I didn't mind. Ruby was a nice person 
     and a hard worker,'' Murphy said.
       After graduating, Murphy taught nursing at Barre City 
     Hospital, a forerunner to Central Vermont Medical Center, and 
     then worked at the Boston Children's Hospital. In this 
     period, she experienced an event that shaped her outlook on 
     life and informed her future relationships.
       The polio epidemic was in full swing in the late 1940s, and 
     the young nurse Tennien was assigned to manage the hospital's 
     polio ward. Her unit included the infectious disease 
     laboratory where microbiologist John Franklin Enders 
     cultivated poliovirus for vaccine development (for which he 
     received the 1954 Nobel Prize for Medicine). He grew the 
     virus in human cells--fecal matter--and it was Nurse 
     Tennien's job to collect stool specimens, prepare them 
     properly and send them to the lab.
       ``One day, someone bumped into me in the hall--I thought it 
     was one of the underlings,'' she recalled. ``He said, `I know 
     who you are Miss T. I couldn't do my job if you didn't do 
     yours so well.' It was John Enders!'' His praise resonated 
     with the young nurse, and she never forgot that feeling.
       ``He admitted that other people under him doing the scut 
     work are equally important because they keep him going. It 
     wasn't an inspiring thing to do, collecting smelly stools, 
     but he couldn't have grown the polio virus without me. I've 
     always tried to make sure the people under me knew they were 
     appreciated.''
       She married William Murphy, an aircraft engineer she met on 
     a blind date arranged by her assistant head nurse. Eventually 
     they settled in Connecticut where Bill worked at Pratt & 
     Whitney, and together they raised five children, a girl 
     followed by four boys.
       She attended graduate school at Boston University, studying 
     for a Masters degree in nursing. She completed all of the 
     coursework, but never wrote her thesis. ``I had all the 
     knowledge and I always worked, but I never tried to establish 
     a big career because I had six others I was taking care of.''
       Murphy worked in a nursing home at night so she could care 
     for her children during the day. ``People would say to me, 
     `How do you take care of an eight-room house and five kids 
     and volunteer in the school library and work nights in a 
     nursing home?' Well, you put one foot in front of the other 
     and keep slogging along--it's all good,'' she said.


                              A FULL HEART

       Working with elders in a nursing home amplified Murphy's 
     great appreciation for the power of love in healing. She 
     recalled, ``We had two old ladies in adjoining beds. One was 
     dying, and the woman in the bed next to her said, `Move that 
     bureau so that I can be next to her.' Margaret held her hand 
     all night and pulled her through it. She didn't die. We gave 
     her the oxygen, and she gave her the love.''
       Murphy also taught math at Saint Francis School of Nursing 
     in Hartford, Connecticut, teaching students how to calculate 
     percentages for solutions and medications. ``In those

[[Page S1158]]

     days, the nurses on the floor mixed up their own IV's, it 
     didn't come out of the pharmacy,'' she explained. ``We didn't 
     have IV teams or drip machines. Now that seems like ancient 
     history.''
       She retired from Manchester Memorial Hospital in 
     Manchester, Connecticut, in 1987 at age 62, when her husband 
     became ill and required constant care. She and Bill moved to 
     Putney, Vermont, and when he passed she moved in with her 
     children. She only recently stopped volunteering for her 
     church, visiting the sick and washing alter linens. Murphy 
     stays fit and spry with daily walks on a treadmill, healthy 
     diet, reading books and playing board games with her eight 
     grandchildren. She enjoys keeping up with health science news 
     and reading scholarly articles online. She's honored to 
     represent the first generation of college-educated nurses, 
     and delighted to watch the profession's evolution and 
     progress.
       ``I follow nursing and the sciences. There are so many 
     things in my life now that people speak of so routinely, that 
     didn't exist before. I've done it all, from prenatal to old 
     people's homes, and I've had a ball,'' she reflected. 
     ``Nursing is what I am. I'm proud to see the young women who 
     work in labs or go into other countries and use their 
     education.''

                          ____________________