Angels of Westmoreland Honor Guard

04/11/2026

Patricia R. Bair was only seventeen when she graduated from high school. She attended one year of college at IUP before transferring to Westmoreland School of Nursing and graduating in 1948 with a Nursing diploma. She then graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing with a BSN in Nursing Education in 1951.

Patricia had a love for education, a love for nursing, and an even greater love for music. She combined all of these into her long career as a nurse educator. She taught at Westmoreland School of Nursing from 1952 until they closed their doors in 1975. She then went on to educate young student nurses, teaching part-time as an adjunct professor at both Westmoreland County Community College and the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. She enjoyed being on the nursing staff at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, MI. For several years she was a part-time night-shift supervisor at Westmoreland Hospital on the Medical–Surgical units, filling in when needed.

In her free time, her daughter Patricia remembers her mother always being involved by serving on various boards and volunteering wherever she was needed. She recalls that her cousin, Carla, now a Nurse Practitioner, spent many hours on the phone with her mother, getting support and advice. Her aunt was a mentor simply by being available to bounce ideas and offer help when needed. She was a giving and positive person who loved seeing her students blossom into successful nurses. Being that she was an “old-school” nurse, she truly missed seeing the white uniforms and caps go by the wayside.

In keeping with her love of music, she once wrote music to be sung with the Florence Nightingale Poem and would have her students sing the poem from time to time. Patricia will be remembered as a talented, dedicated nurse who felt it was important to teach young students how to be successful and competent nurses. We thank her for that.

04/02/2026

When a Nurse Dies

When a nurse dies,
the halls remember
not in echoes,
but in the hush
that falls over rooms
once warmed by her presence.

When a nurse dies,
the beds whisper stories
of hands that held,
words that healed,
moments she carried alone
so others didn’t have to.

She wore no armor,
yet she went to war
against pain, fear, and death
and often, she won.

Now she lies still,
and for once,
we stand by her bedside.
We whisper “thank you.”
We weep in the silence
she once filled with strength.

When a nurse dies,
it is not the end of her shift
it is the rising of her legacy.

In every pulse she steadied,
every tear she caught,
every “you’re not alone” she offered,
her spirit lives on.

So let us not mourn,
but marvel.

A light has gone out,
but its warmth remains.

Rest now, brave soul.
Your hands have done enough.
Your shift is complete
and oh, what a shift it was.

03/26/2026

The only career option that Doris Hightower considered when she graduated from New Kensington High School in 1950 was nursing. She attended Citizens General Hospital School of Nursing and graduated in 1953. Upon graduation, she took a position at Citizens Hospital as a staff nurse in the OB/Gyn Department.
In 1956 she and her husband started a family that would grow to include two daughters and a son. Being that she and her husband were both only children, having a bigger family was probably something that they both treasured. Even though Doris worked full time during her forty-three-year career, she always made time for her children, trying to be home with them when they got home from school and in the evenings and on weekends.
Through the years, she worked her way up the ladder from being a staff nurse to head nurse to nursing supervisor, but always putting direct patient care first and foremost. In forty-three years, she assisted with the delivery of many children in the Alle-Kiski Valley area, even assisting with the births of some of her grandchildren!
Doris was instrumental in the planning and lay out of one of the first birthing centers in this area. She attended several meetings at Magee Hospital, learning about the design and reasoning behind this new concept of delivery. Because of her influence and input, Citizens General Hospital was one of the first hospitals with a birthing center that allowed fathers to be present in the delivery suite. After the delivery the couple was treated to a candlelit steak dinner to celebrate their new arrival.
With her years of experience and tenure, she saw a lot of changes in the nursing profession, some of which she had a hard time adjusting to. One of these changes occurred when the nursing unform became more causal, moving from the white uniform dress, cap, stockings and white nursing shoes to the scrub suits and tennis shoes. As her daughter remembers, her mother wore her uniform “fearlessly, proudly and boldly”, impeccably starched and polished. Another change of the times that was even more frustrating as she became older was the switch from the nursing emphasis being on direct patient care to more of a technical based nursing care, diagnosing from machines and lab tests, sometimes completely ignoring the “on hands” and visual evaluations.
Over the years, she always found the history of nursing as being fascinating to learn about. Her son worked for Brea College in Kentucky and once when she visited, she was able to learn about the “Frontier Nursing” in Kentucky where the nurses administered care by travelling to people’s homes as there were no hospitals. She never missed an opportunity to learn about her profession.
She was not only a caregiver at the hospital but also for her family. She cared for both of her parents as well as her in-laws as they aged and required care. She took care of her husband prior to his passing and will be remembered as a caring and compassionate caregiver.

03/24/2026

The Seven Goodbyes of a Nurse

No one says goodbye
more softly than a nurse.

The first goodbye
is to the patient who gets to go home.
A smile at the door.
A final set of vitals.
A quiet joy
you carry into the rest of your shift.

The second goodbye
is to the patient who never makes it out.
The room goes still.
The monitor goes silent.
And part of you
stays behind with them.

The third goodbye
is to the family
who walks away with empty arms.
You hold their grief
the best you can,
even when your own heart
is breaking too.

The fourth goodbye
is to the coworker
who couldn’t do it anymore.
Too tired.
Too hurt.
Too drained to keep giving
from an empty place.

The fifth goodbye
is to pieces of yourself.
The sleep you lost.
The tears you hid.
The softness you fought to keep
in a world that kept asking you
to be hard.

The sixth goodbye
is to the life outside the hospital.
Missed birthdays.
Cold meals.
Phone calls unanswered.
People you love
learning to live around your absence.

The seventh goodbye
is the one no one sees
the moment you almost leave nursing too.
When the weight is too much.
When your heart is too tired.
When you stand in silence
and ask yourself
how much more you can give.

And somehow…
you stay.

Because no one says goodbye
more softly than a nurse.

And no one
keeps showing up
with a breaking heart
quite like we do.

03/20/2026

Lenore Bouldin’s father passed away from a massive heart attack when Lenore was only twelve years old. Her mom worked at Monsour Hospital and her daughter feels that both of these occurrences are the reason for her interest in the nursing field. She graduated from the Allegheny School of Nursing and then went on to receive her BSN from Penn State University.
Her nursing career started at Monsour Hospital and she was instrumental in getting the Coronary Care Unit up and running. She worked fulltime while her children were growing up and Barb remembers fondly when her mother would take she and her brother in to work with her if there was a scheduling conflict with their dad’s work. While she was teaching CPR and other classes they would run up and down the hallways and played in the back of the auditorium.
While at Monsour Hospital, she was also responsible for starting “Key Care”. This was a Home Care Company that was ran by the hospital. Lenore then continued working in the Home Care field for various other home care agencies, even starting the former “Country Care” in Rillton with a friend and coworker. She retired and closed the home care agency when her health started failing. Barb followed in her mother’s footsteps and started working as a nurse’s aide, an LPN and now as an RN doing in home Infusion Therapy. Barb has the distinct advantage of saying that her mother was her first boss, literally…
Lenore was a caring and nonjudgemental nurse. She treated everyone the same, regardless of race, social standing or disease. She was also very firm and had high standards. She would not lower her standards when testing staff and didn’t care if you were a nurse, a doctor or a nurse’s aide, everyone needed to know what was being taught that day.
In addition to being a critical care nurse, an educator and a home health nurse, Lenore was active with the American Association of Critical Care Nurses and the American Heart Association Board, both in Westmoreland County. She will be remembered by those who knew and loved her and by those that she helped along the way…

03/07/2026

03/07/2026

Beverly Courtney was an only child. When she told her parents of her plans to attend college to study nursing, they preferred her to go directly to work at the hospital and to not pursue a degree. Luckily for Bev, she had a very progressive aunt that convinced her parents that going to college was the best move. Beverly graduated from Duquesne University with her BSN in 1968 and started her career as a staff nurse at Shadyside Hospital from 1968-69.
During her thirty-seven-year career as a nurse Beverly worked in a variety of settings, usually full time, even while raising her son and daughter alongside her husband Bill. After Shadyside, she worked at Mercy Hospital for a year and then at the Western PA Hospital School of Nursing as an Instructor while also working at York Hospital as the Inservice Co-Ordinator from 1970-1972. She then decided to return to staff nursing at Columbia Hospital from 1973-74. She took a little break while her children were small and then returned to staff nursing at Westmoreland Hospital in 1976. Her desire to educate future nurses returned when she worked as an instructor at WCCC from 1981-1991. She then transitioned to becoming the Education Coordinator at Health South Hospital of Pittsburgh for fifteen years before returning to WCCC as an instructor in 2005 until her retirement. During her career she also was a CPR instructor for the American Red Cross.
Her way of caring for others made her a nurse that was respected and appreciated. She also gave back to her community by volunteering with the Duquesne University RNWIN program which stands for “Retired Nurses Working in Neighborhoods”. Their mission was to provide public health for low-income clients with things like various screenings and just spending time with people that may have received a lot of attention otherwise.
According to her daughter, Jennifer, even though Bev worked, she always put her children first and was a wonderful role model, teaching them about having a good work ethic. She remembers her mother working at Health South and she and her brother, David would call almost daily getting home from school with various requests such as “Can we have a popsicle, are we allowed to go outside and play and the list would go on…” Even though Beverly had to be interrupted from whatever she was doing and answer the daily calls received by the switchboard, she would never be impatient or upset. She was also known as the “neighborhood nurse” and being that she was the only nurse in her family, she was the consultant regarding all things medical.
As Beverly’s memory began to fade, her need to help others was still evident. At Newhaven Court, she would sometimes be the greeter as visitors came on to her unit. She would also try and help other residents, sometimes without them wanting help, but she saw a need and tried to take care of it. That is what nurses do…

02/22/2026

Bernadette Roitz travelled by streetcar from Lawrenceville into downtown Pittsburgh to attend Mercy Hospital School of Nursing where she also worked while attending school. After graduation she worked on the Medical Surgical Units and enjoyed caring for her older clientele. During her time at Mercy, she married Rudy and they started a family that grew to total five children.
After the birth of her fifth child, she decided that she would transition to school nursing to give her and her family a better “work/life balance”. She spent her entire school nursing career with the Norwin School District, primarily at Stuartsville Elementary and during that time she obtained her Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing degree which was a requirement, at the time, for a full-time position with the school.
Her quest for knowledge led her to travel with two friends to California University once a week until she obtained her Masters in Nursing as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner and then, later, was awarded her Master’s Degree in School Counseling from Duquesne University. She was able to accomplish all of this while still having time for her growing family.
Some of her noteworthy accomplishments include:
She was the first person in her family to receive a college degree
She was the first nurse in PA to offer education regarding HIV/Aids prevention in the early 1990’s that she presented to middle school and high school students.
She was the first nurse in PA that administered the 3-part Hepatitis Vaccine within the school system which also required educating the parents about this new vaccine.
In addition to her school nursing career Bernadette also enjoyed working with her very dear friend, at the time, the late Dr. Harry Gillespie in the mid 1990’s in his Pediatric Office. She ran a clinic on Tuesday evenings from 6-8:30, treating routine ailments, such as sore throats and earaches, and performing school physicals.
Bernadette was a trailblazer for several family members that have become nurses. Following in her footsteps into the nursing profession were a daughter, son-in-law, four granddaughters, a grandson and a great granddaughter. Her oldest granddaughter, Emily, dedicated her dissertation to her “Granny Bern”. Emily describes her grandmother as being a genuine caretaker, someone that you could call and ask anything and she would know the answer, because she was “wicked smart”. She recalls her grandmother being present when she presented her dissertation for her PHD in Nursing and Bernadette’s name tag had more credentials after her name than pretty much everyone in the room.
Let us remember this nurse that spent most of her career caring for and educating children and as being someone who brought compassion, love and knowledge to those lives that she touched.

02/12/2026

Cynthia Campana knew early in life that she wanted to be a nurse. She enrolled in the McKeesport School of Nursing directly after graduating from high school. She began her career at McGee Hospital, but most of her years were spent in Labor and Delivery at Forbes Hospital in Monroeville.
For over twenty years, Cindy helped mothers bring their babies into the world. She will be remembered by the families she cared for as a kind, gentle, and approachable nurse. She formed a close-knit second family with her colleagues on the labor and delivery unit. Working primarily on the second shift, they relied on each other for support. Her friend Joanne, known to all as “Rock,” recalled that Cindy was a great storyteller, and staff always enjoyed listening to her humorous, sometimes taller-than-life versions of unit—and home—events. One story involved her being transported out of her home by a stretcher during the holidays. Her major concern was if the EMS were being careful transporting her around all of her decorations. Another involved her renting a scooter while on vacation and ending up in a ditch.
She could be calm and comforting in stressful situations, and many former patients would recognize her in public and thank her for her kindness. She was a comforting presence for young mothers and a calming sounding board for the thousands of questions new parents have.
Cindy’s son Ron remembers accompanying his mother and sister to the hospital to pick up her paycheck. They would always be treated to breakfast in the hospital cafeteria, with the “cheesy eggs” that Ron fondly recalls. He noted that the nurses his mother worked with became her second family, and he and his sister grew up knowing many of her colleagues and their families—several of whom are now his patients at his own practice. Cindy remained in contact with many of the nurses she worked with over the years, and they spent time outside the hospital as friends. An extended family formed from the bonds of nurses who cared for one another for so many years.
Cindy will be missed by her family and friends, but she leaves behind memories of laughter, kindness, compassion, and love. May she rest in peace, knowing that she helped make the world a better place by guiding so many babies into this world.

02/04/2026

Joanne Rhodes was a wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. After graduating from Hempfield High School, she worked for Bell Telephone until her four sons had grown and graduated from high school. Joanne was always generous, willing to help those in need. She chose to answer that calling by enrolling in Westmoreland County Community College, where she completed the Licensed Practical Nurse program.
Following graduation, she cared for the elderly at Westmoreland Manor and then at St. Anne Home. She finished her career with twenty years of service at Monsour Hospital, primarily on the second shift. Joanne cared for both of her parents before they passed and continued to help others whenever possible.
As a mother of four, Joanne combined patience with a “no-nonsense” approach, holding high standards and expecting nothing less. It was often said that it could be “her way or the highway.” Although many nurses begin their careers straight from high school, Joanne took the longer road back to her calling—and left a lasting mark on those she cared for. She will be greatly missed by her family and friends.
Joanne led an interesting life, filled with hobbies, travel, and family, yet she always found time to care for others in need.

02/03/2026

Louise Mucci was a daughter, a wife, a mother, grandmother, great grandmother, sister, aunt, friend and nurse. Her willing to help others had no boundaries and was always at the forefront of everything that she did.
Louise graduated from Latrobe Hospital School of Nursing and immediately went to work at the hospital, where she worked primarily on the fourth floor during her 38-year tenure. Afterwards, she continued her nursing career in the Home Health Care arena.
Louise met Al, her husband of sixty years while she was in nursing school. He recalls that being a nurse was very important to her from the time they started dating. Louise worked full time her entire career while raising three daughters. Colette recalls many holidays, even as young children, having to wait for Mom to come home from work to celebrate Christmas and other major holidays.
Family was also very important to Louise. She took care of her mother who lived on her own in Crabtree and then later moved into an apartment across the street from Louise and Al, then after a fall, she moved in with them for a bit before deciding to go into long term care. Louise visited her mother every day and brought her meals that she liked. She ensured that her mother was being well cared for until she passed at the age of 100. In addition to her being a nurse, her younger twin sisters also became nurses, following in their sister’s footsteps.
Louise was a dedicated and contentious nurse. While working Home Health Care, back when charts were still hand written, she would often be seen at home transcribing her notes from the days work on her own time, freeing up the time she spent with her clients as opposed to completing the mounds of paperwork that all nurses have to deal with. Her daughter said that many nurses have reached out to her to recall Louise as being a mentor to them and that she was always willing to lend a helping hand. She, like many other nurse’s are the “neighborhood” go to for medical advice and was the daily consultant for her daughters, family and friends when they needed a little guidance or just a little bit of TLC.
After retirement she enjoyed many lunch dates with her former coworkers and enjoyed spending her time with her family. Louise should be remembered for her kindness, her willing to help and her dedication to the nursing profession.

01/15/2026

Marie G. Cardella touched many lives with her quiet, compassionate demeanor. After graduating from Jeannette High School, she enrolled in the former St. John’s Nursing Program in Pittsburgh, where she earned her nursing degree. She began her career at Jeannette Hospital as a staff nurse and later served as the nurse on duty for Latrobe Steel. Most of her career was spent at St. Anne Home in Greensburg, where she started as a staff nurse and rose to become Director of Nursing for several years before her retirement. Even after retirement, Marie volunteered countless hours at St. Anne Home, assisting with patient records.
During her time at St. Anne’s, Marie lived less than a half-block from her place of work. Her dedication to residents and their families, to her staff, and to the home itself was evident to everyone, especially her family. If she was called about an issue, no matter what time of day or night, she would be there to help. Her children accompanied her to work as they grew up and witnessed firsthand how devoted and caring their mother was. Her son, Michael, followed in her footsteps and became a nurse, and her daughter, Dana, worked in medical offices.
Michael recalls his mom always stressing the importance of physical touch when talking with a resident. A touch on the arm or back, along with talking and actively listening, was essential to making residents feel cared for—something he carries into his own nursing practice.
Dana recalls her mother as insistent on understanding the importance of meticulous documentation. “Dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s” was a refrain she heard many times: If it isn’t documented, it isn’t done—Document, Document, Document. All nurses understand this crucial lesson.
Marie was not only a nurse at her workplace but was also considered the “neighborhood go-to,” sought for aches, pains, and injuries. There was a young boy who had a nasty fall from his bike on the road, and Marie was the first on the scene to help. Once a nurse, always a nurse. Her family would agree, though, that when it came to her own children, she could be a marshmallow—lovingly protective, but not always the cool and calm demeanor she showed to others.
Marie Cardella was a leader who did so with quiet, loving reserve while upholding high standards. She was a defender of her staff when she felt they were not being treated fairly, yet she listened to all parties before making decisions. Her family always came first, but her residents, their families, and the staff she oversaw were a very close second. May she be remembered as compassionate, loving, and caring by all who had the privilege of knowing her.