This post is part of the Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month.
Today’s prompt:
What education did your mother receive? Your grandmothers? Great-grandmothers? Note any advanced degrees or special achievements.
Both of my grandmothers left school after the eighth grade to work in the hosiery mills in Philadelphia. My mother was the first person in my family to graduate high school. Her father attended one year of high school and my other grandfather attended 3 years. She also was the first to obtain an education beyond high school.
My mother graduated from the Presbyterian Hospital nurses training program in Philadelphia in 1959. It was a three year program with traditional classroom learning and hands-on training. She told me she had always wanted to be a nurse. She also told me some eye-opening stories about working in a city hospital in the 1950’s. Hint: drugs and violence are not new phenomena.
Upon graduation my mother worked in the maternity ward of Presbyterian Hospital. Later in her life she worked as a home health care nurse.
