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Old girls getting together 70 years down the line
Date: 16 March 2012
Old girls getting together 70 years down the line
When you have trained together, worked together, lived together, cried together and had children together, you can’t help but become a family.
That’s how Colleeen Yorwarth feels about her sisters in the Waikato Hospital Graduate Nurses Reunion Association (WHGNRA).
The association was formed in the 1940s as an ‘old girls’ association, and while “it’s not PC to use the term old girls anymore,” the aim remains the same.
“It’s a catch up and it’s important. Our lives, as ex-Waikato Hospital nurses, are intertwined and have been ever since we met because of the way we worked and trained. We can go years without seeing one another and nothing changes,” she said.
The WHNGRA is holding its biennial reunion lunch at the Kingsgate Hotel on March 17 – the day after which Mrs Yorwarth will turn 77 years old.
The association is 300 members strong and about 70 years old. At the upcoming lunch, there will be two members present from the 1940s; one of whom is now in her 90s.
“If that doesn’t convey how much we value these reunions, then what will?” asks Mrs Yorwarth.
“I have been a member since the mid-60s and haven’t missed one since.
“In our younger days, we used to be a lot more active in fundraising and it was actually the WHNGRA that fundraised for the nurses’ chapel, which was where Henry Rongomau Bennett Centre is now on the Hamilton campus.”
Mrs Yorwarth started her training at Waikato Hospital in 1953. She worked for eight years as a ward sister and tutor sister.
After leaving to raise a family, she returned to the workforce as a midwife at Huntly Hospital, under the auspices of Waikato District Health Board, in 1973.
She retired in 1995 when maternity services were terminated in Huntly, and apart from a six month stint in Tauranga, her entire nursing career has been based in the Waikato.
So Mrs Yorwarth is a true blue member of the WHGNRA, including holding two terms, or four years, as president and being made a life member a few years ago.
She said the association started out as biennial afternoon tea get-togethers in the 1940s and later progressed to dinner meetings.
Now, as their membership ages, the reunions have returned to daytime affairs.
“We have a really great catch up and very good speakers. This year we are having two nurses who trained overseas coming to speak to us about settling in New Zealand and into the New Zealand health system.”
But she says, much more than the lunch and the speakers, Mrs Yorwarth is looking forward to seeing ‘the girls’.
Visit http://www.waikatodhb.govt.nz/page/pageid/2145843925/The_Village_on_the_Hill
for more information about Waikato Hospital in years gone
by, as well as this interview with four retired Waikato
Hospital nurses:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beFko630MrU&feature=player_detailpage&list=UUdkk3oSRu2_RHEO-l-LuUGg
ENDS
Waikato District Health Board
Healthy People. Excellent Care
Waikato District Health Board (DHB) employs over 6500 people and plans, funds and provides hospital and health services to more than 391,770 people in a region covering eight per cent of New Zealand.
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