The nursing schools: three schools and a college program

1894 — 1988, and the college line continuing

The schools the hospitals kept: Both founding hospitals trained their own nurses, and the state's closed-school records — the Indiana Archives and Records Administration's register of Indiana's closed nursing schools — give the runs and the endings. Memorial's school is the city's longest: it opened in 1894 as the Epworth Hospital and Training School, its first class of five graduating in 1897; it took the Memorial name with the hospital in 1945, as the Memorial Hospital School of Nursing; and it closed in 1988, ninety-four years after the founding. The Catholic school began with the new century's building campaign: Saint Joseph's Hospital School of Nursing opened in 1907 — Saint Mary's College's nursing history confirms the sisters opened it that year, and the medical center's timeline gives its first class as nine students.

Its course ended in merger: in 1950 it merged with three other nursing schools of the Sisters of the Holy Cross to form the Holy Cross Central School of Nursing, and its last class graduated in 1952. The merged school's own founding is stated two ways, and both stand: the state register dates Holy Cross Central from the 1950 merger, while Saint Mary's account credits Sister Maria Amadeo, C.S.C., with establishing the school in 1949, as a three-year diploma program standardizing the training at the congregation's five hospitals in Illinois and Indiana, its graduates able to add a fourth and fifth year at Saint Mary's toward the bachelor's degree. Holy Cross Central was renamed the Holy Cross School of Nursing in 1969 and closed in 1975. A thread ties the school to the marker of the departure entry: Sister John Francis Heleke, C.S.C., of the Holy Cross nursing faculty in South Bend, initiated the 1965 Civil War nurses marker.

The college line runs apart from the diploma schools and outlasts them: at Saint Mary's College — which stands in the unincorporated Notre Dame CDP, printed with that civic fact as elsewhere in this history — Sister Maria Amadeo officially launched a five-year baccalaureate nursing program in 1935, the first in Indiana and one of the earliest in the country on the college's account; its final baccalaureate students graduated in 1962 and the program closed for lack of funds; it was reestablished in 1973, accredited by the Indiana State Board of Nursing and the National League for Nursing's commission, and continues — the one nursing school of the founding generation's world still teaching nurses for this ground.

Sources:

1. Indiana Archives and Records Administration, register of closed Indiana nursing schools — the Memorial Hospital School of Nursing (opened 1894 as Epworth, renamed 1945, closed 1988); Saint Joseph's Hospital School of Nursing (opened 1907, merged 1950, last class 1952); and the Holy Cross Central School of Nursing (formed 1950, renamed Holy Cross School of Nursing 1969, closed 1975).
2. Saint Mary's College, history of its nursing program (August 2025 account) — the 1907 opening of the sisters' South Bend school; Sister Maria Amadeo's establishing of Holy Cross Central in 1949 as a three-year diploma program for the congregation's five hospitals; and the college's own line: the five-year baccalaureate program of 1935, first in Indiana, the final class of 1962 and the closing, the 1973 reestablishment, and the program's continuation.
3. Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center, published timeline — the 1907 training school's first class of nine students.
4. Today's Catholic — Sister John Francis Heleke, C.S.C., of the Holy Cross nursing faculty in South Bend, as the initiator of the 1965 Civil War nurses marker.