Jean Mortenson Scholarship

Jean Mortenson had to decide between becoming a telephone operator and a nurse. Being a telephone operator (think of Lily Tomlin’s character in the show Laugh-in circa 1969) had the early lead until about age 12. Jean began to spend more time with her best friend (“Sis”) and Sis’s mom Mildred who went to work on the night shift dressed in all white, including white shoes, a white cap and white stockings. Turns out that Mildred was a nurse who had interesting patient-care stories she shared with Jean. Jean started leaning toward nursing.
As a high school senior in the small Pennsylvania town of Sheffield, the local general practitioner (Dr. Mull) learned of Jean’s interest in nursing and offered her a two-week internship as his assistant. When a patient arrived one day with an arm nearly severed, Jean’s experience with blacking out gave her second thoughts about the proposed career path she was contemplating.
Undaunted, Jean applied to several hospitals in Western PA and Western NY to become a student in their nursing program (that’s how you did it in those days). Her credentials were good and each of the several hospitals encouraged her to come sit for an entrance exam. She sat for several, passed them all, but the first hospital in Erie PA, Hamot Hospital, had caught her attention.
Jean knew no one at Hamot (75 miles from her home, a long ways in those days), but a young lady (Joanie) she met while taking the entrance exam was an Erie local and the two were destined to become best friends.
Joanie and Jean spent the next two years being taught the basic classes by professors from the local college (Gannon College). Turns out that math was really important in those days because the nurses had to mix drugs themselves and anything less than a 90% average in math was a failure. Joanie and Jean also interned for weeks to months in Pediatrics, Surgical and the Mental Health facility in Warren PA (Waren State Hospital).
Warren State turned out to be Jean’s love. There were about 2500 mental patients at the hospital and Jean was assigned to the woman’s section. Jean was very fortunate to be accepted by the female patients because a small 120 pound female would have been no match for the housed patients. It seems that Jean became a favorite to play games with and to square dance with because it was easy to spin Jean’s body parallel to the floor when the command of “spin your partner round-and-round” was given.
Jean met the love of her life, her husband Gordon, while in nursing school and Waren State proved to be a great location for her to work.
Nursing was always important to Jean and she hopes that others will find it to be rewarding like she did.