[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.''
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