Back on Jan. 4, when publishing a number of old photos of some of St. Tammany Parish Hospital’s first nurses, we lamented that we did not know those nurses’ names.
We know who our original doctors were, thanks to newspaper stories that trumpeted each of their names upon the hospital’s opening 70 years ago. Its first nurses, however, were largely overlooked.
That was just the way things were in 1954.
Then we received an email from ninth-generation St. Tammany resident Rebecca Mohr Carter, who recognized a familiar face in those pictures – and which brings us to today’s installment in our 70-part series chronicling the hospital’s history.
Installment No. 29: Meet Great Aunt Emmy
Today’s artifact: A biography of Emma M. Porche Wetherbee, one of St. Tammany Parish Hospital’s first nurses, as penned by her grandniece Rebecca Mohr Carter after seeing it on the St. Tammany Health System website.
Why it is significant: Sure, you can look at history as nothing more than a collection of facts. But when you can attach names and faces to it all, the past has a way of coming alive.
That’s the case with nurse Emmy Wetherbee, whose story we are honored to share below on behalf of all those nurses who worked alongside her, as well as those who have followed in her footsteps.
Special thanks to Carter for writing it (“with the help of my two sisters, my mother's half-sister and Ancestry.com”) and agreeing to share it: