The hospital nursing schools

1897 – 1991 and after

What they were: For most of the twentieth century Fort Wayne's nurses were trained in hospital diploma schools — three-year programs run by the hospitals themselves, students living in dormitories on the hospital grounds and staffing the wards as they learned.

Parkview (Hope Hospital): The oldest began in 1897 as the training school of Hope Hospital, and became the Parkview Methodist Hospital School of Nursing. The school's building, English Hall at the Randallia campus — State Street at Randallia — was dedicated in the fall of 1953; the school changed its uniform in 1949. It trained more than 2,404 nurses before closing in 1991; the last class of 32 graduated in May 1991, and nursing students were referred thereafter to IPFW. Its alumnae association still funds nursing scholarships through the Parkview Foundation.

St. Joseph: St. Joseph Hospital, founded in 1869 by the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, opened its School of Nursing in 1918 across the street from the hospital. Students attended the three-year program by day and worked at the hospital in the evenings.

Lutheran: Lutheran Hospital's School of Nursing holds a first of another kind: in 1949 it became the first Fort Wayne nursing program to accept a Black student nurse, over the strenuous objections of the hospital's medical staff — two years after Mrs. Frank King had become the first Black nurse hired to a professional staff position in the city, at Methodist Hospital in 1947. Lutheran's closing year is not established in the sources consulted.

Sources:

1. The History Center — Parkview Methodist Hospital School of Nursing, uniform exhibit and institutional history (1897–1991; 2,404 nurses).
2. Indiana United Methodist heritage page, Parkview Methodist School of Nursing — English Hall, 1953.
3. St. Joseph Hospital (Fort Wayne, Indiana) (Wikipedia) — School of Nursing opened 1918.
4. Peggy Seigel, "Fort Wayne's Women Medical Pioneers," Old Fort News 76:1 (2013) — the 1947 and 1949 firsts.