Nurses Reunite After 50 Years At Sanford Tour

They graduated from St. Luke's Nursing School in 1968

FARGO, N.D. — Nurses who graduated from St. Luke’s Nursing School half a century ago got to reunite and explore how hospitals have changed.

“I’ve always been a nurse. I always knew as a child I was going to be a nurse. I don’t think you become a nurse just by chance. You want to work with people, you want to help people,” Sandra Berreth, a nurse from St. Luke’s class of 1968, said.

“The longer we’re together, the more we look like the pictures when we graduated,” Gracia Fulwiler, the reunion coordinator, said.

“They start smiling, you see the laugh lines around the eyes, and you know who that person is,” Berreth said.

Not only was it an opportunity to catch up with each other, but they also got to see some of Sanford’s features, from the ambulances to the operating rooms.

Nurses say they’re fascinated by all the new technology that hospitals have now, like Sanford’s air–med helipad, which overlooks the city of Fargo.

“I remember when I was helping patients in these kinds of times, and oh my gosh it was so different! To be a patient, and have all these things available to us now,” Fulwiler said.

She and Berreth have the same message for the next generation of nurses.

“Don’t get yourself hung up in one area because believe me, medicine is such a wide place,” Fulwiler said.

“Nursing has never done me wrong. Nursing has always supported me in whatever I wanted to do. In this day and age, diversify what you’re going to do,” Berreth said.

Sanford used be called St. Luke’s, before being renamed as Meritcare. It became Sanford Health in 2009.