Temporary exhibit “St. Mary’s Hospital & School of Nursing” is now open at the William A. Neal Museum of the Health Sciences in the Health Sciences Center and is free for students, faculty, staff and community to visit.
St. Mary’s cape and nursing cap donated to the West Virginia & Regional History Center (WVHRC) by alumnae Virginia Scholl (‘56) and Jane Lewis (‘49).
The “St. Mary’s Hospital & School of Nursing” exhibit tells the facility’s tale of meeting medical care needs in West Virginia, addressing high patient demand, expanding healthcare education, handling financial turmoil, providing military service training and ensuring equal access to training for all despite cultural norms of the time.
Prior to 1898, there was no established medical facility in the Clarksburg, W.Va. area. Most medical care was provided by physicians who traveled between hospitals and treated patients along the way, family members and local midwives, company doctors or independent licensed physicians.
As a state-of-the-art facility at its beginning, the hospital had 25 beds, steam heat, electric lights, an elevator and an ambulance service. Soon, the hospital could treat more than 200 patients at a time, and the nurse training program was developed.
St. Mary’s Hospital School of Nursing was the first nationally accredited school of nursing in West Virginia and trained 960 nurses before closing in 1969.
The exhibit and St. Mary’s rich history are full of stories and accounts of the evolving healthcare needs of Clarksburg, medical treatments, nurse training and accreditation demands of the time and other accounts of West Virginia’s social, cultural and healthcare development narratives. A trailblazer in West Virginia, St. Mary’s Hospital School of Nursing admitted Black students well before desegregation in1954 and was also the first nursing school in West Virginia to admit male students, despite nursing being traditionally a female profession at the time.
Objects in the exhibit are all donations from St. Mary’s School of Nursing Alumni Association and on loan from WVU Libraries’ West Virginia & Regional History Center.
For more information about the Neal Museum or the “St. Mary’s Hospital & School of Nursing” exhibit, and how to visit the museum to see any of its exhibits, please visit nealmuseum.wvu.edu.
Alumna Barbara (Williams) Flewellyn’s (‘57) diploma and Alumnae Association membership card is featured in the St. Mary’s exhibit. Flewellyn wrote a history on St. Mary’s entitled “A Special Place” and donated her research materials and personal objects to the WVRHC.