MCDERMITT - While today the nursing profession is considered an honorable and even a prestigious position to hold, that has not always been the case. Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 and by age sixteen it was clear to her that nursing was her calling and believed it to be her divine purpose. At the same time her parents viewed the profession as lowly and menial labor at best. Determined to pursue her true calling despite her parents' forbidding it, she enrolled as a nursing student at the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Fliedner in Kaiserwerth, Germany in 1844. When thousands of British soldiers were sent to the Black Sea in 1853 for the Crimean War, the people of England were in an uproar over the neglect of ill and injured men.
In 1854 England's Secretary of War contacted Nightingale asking her to organize a corps of nurses to send to their troops. With a team of 34 handpicked nurses, Nightingale quickly set to work.
She procured hundreds of scrub brushes and asked the least infirm to scrub every inch of the hospital. She would make rounds during the night with a lamp resulting in being dubbed 'the lady with the lamp', and her efforts reduced the hospital's death rate by two-thirds. Part of her reward after the war was a gift of $250,000 from the British government. In 1860 she used the prize money to fund St. Thomas' Hospital and within it the Nightingale Training School for Nurses.
Eager to follow her example, even women from upper classes started enrolling at the training school. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no longer frowned upon by the upper classes; it had, in fact, come to be viewed as an 'honorable' vocation. It is interesting to note here that she contracted 'Crimean Fever' and was bedridden at age 38, but continued her work from her bed till her passing at age 90!
McDermitt Combined School's Valedictorian of 1990, Kelly Politte, holds a position in that same profession that Florence Nightingale made 'honorable'. Kelly was born in 1971 to Gary and Vickie (Taylor) Politte in Sullivan, Missouri. Her paternal grandparents were Clarence and Margret (Lawrence) Politte, and maternal were Gilbert and Alpha (Guthrie) Taylor. While Gilbert's profession was mining both Kelly's dad and grandpa Clarence were linemen, and it was Gary's position as foreman of Harney Electric that moved his family to Orovada, Nevada when Kelly was in the 7th grade.
Kelly started school in Buffalo, Wyoming and then went to Dubois for 2nd till the 7th. She remembers that on Friday after school was out, the whole family would pile into the car on a whim, to visit various historical sites in the area. After the move to Orovada she finished the seventh grade at the Orovada School, transferring to McDermitt for the eighth grade. She liked teacher Sue Russo but her favorite class was Bob Pace's science; and living in Orovada she remembers the long bus ride to school every day.
In high school she liked Drama and English with Darlene Albisu, Art under Dottie Souza, and Barb Ferguson's Government classes. She was a member of the Academics Olympics' team and was a cheerleader. She was sidelined from sports for most of high school because of a bone disease, Legg Calve Perthes disease which affected the head of the femur causing the bone to die. She had her first surgery to try to correct the problem when she was 8 years old followed by another when she was 16. The hardware was removed from the second surgery in 1988 and she was cleared to play volleyball in 1989. She left the doctor's office and went straight to a sports store to get volleyball shoes and knee pads. Her senior year she was on the Bulldog volleyball squad coached by Bob and Mary Kay Pace.
Graduating in 1990 as valedictorian, she earned scholarships from Nevada Gaming, Amex Gold Mine and the Orovada Lions Club. After school Kelly had also worked at the Rocky View Inn until her surgery and later at the McDermitt Snack Stop. Her senior year she worked for the 1990 census in Orovada and McDermitt. The summer after graduating she was employed by Amex Gold in their office and in general maintenance.
Kelly went one year to UNR before transferring to the nursing school at Wyoming Western in Rock Springs, WY where she received an associate's degree. With the first of several degrees in hand she moved to Albany, Oregon where she commuted to Portland to work as a Long Time Care nurse while working slowly toward a Bachelor degree. She later worked in Lebanon in the Medical Surgical Unit and the OB (mother and baby) Care. She received a Bachelors of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree from Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in 2000.
Her first job was as a travel nurse, in Rawlings, Wyoming at the hospital, but she also applied for a position as an instructor at Casper College further north in Casper, Wyoming. It so happened that the job description called for experience in Long Term Care and OB! She got the job that she has now held since August of 2000.
Kelly describes her life as a whirlwind these days. She teaches 60 students every year so over the last 14 years has trained over 800 students in the honorable profession of nursing! She teaches one group of students in Long Term Care on Monday and Tuesday, and a different group in the classroom for OB on Monday morning. Continuing her own education she earned a Masters of Science from the University of Wyoming in Laramie in 2005.
In 2006 Kelly rid herself from the effects of her old childhood bone disease with total hip replacement surgery. While young to have this procedure she is grateful to forever be free from the pain and worry of the disease. That same year she was certified as a nurse educator for on line teaching and now teaches part time at U of W in their on line virtual classroom as a distant educator.
Given the directorship of the nursing program at Casper College in 2010, Kelly says that she missed the classroom so badly that she gave up the position in 2012 to return to her students and clinical at the bedside. Loving travel, she recently took a group of students to London to study the British Health Care System. They found the hospitals to be similar to the USA, and one they visited focused on HIV and AIDS patients. While there they also toured the Florence Nightingale Museum.
Kelly has also traveled, extensively on her own, usually with her sister Chrysta, also of Casper, to the mainland of Europe-starting in Amsterdam, to Berlin and Nuremberg in Germany, Paris, Prague in the Czech Republic, and Luxemburg and Bruges in Belgium. Another trip to Ireland is defiantly worth repeating in her opinion, and they have been on a Caribbean Cruise. Planning to partially retire while young she would also like to return to Scotland to see the Scottish High Lands. In the mean time she is currently working on her Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) through Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Some of her classes are on line and some follow an Executive format that requires her to be on site for five days three times a year. It is a very intense five days and she says there is no time for sightseeing while she is in Cleveland! She targets this degree to be obtained by the year 2018.
As well as her sister Chrysta, Kelly also has an older brother, Alan, who is married to Teresa (Villalobos) (MHS 1991), who grew up in Orovada, and they live in Douglas, Wyoming.
Kelly would stress to the kids at McDermitt Combined School to, "Study hard! It is wonderful to get out of college with no student debt. Pay attention-get good grades and earn those scholarships. Do what you love. I guess I loved school so much that college was a natural step for me and-I'm still in school!!"[[In-content Ad]]
