AFTER 45 YEARS, NURSE ENDS CAREER

Florence Lewis was 14 when she started her career at St. Francis Hospital, helping the nuns in the sewing room.

Co-workers said goodbye Friday as Lewis retired from St. Francis Medical Center after 45 years of helping patients get well.

"Everything has changed," said Lewis, 60. "I don't think there's anything that's the same except giving a pill, and I don't even think it's the same medication anymore."

Lewis, a Cape Girardeau resident, has seen the hospital move to a new and larger facility and watched medical technology blossom. Nursing has changed through the years, too, she said, "but your patient's still your patient, and you care about them and you want them to be happy and be cared for. That's the main thing."

Nursing often meant long hours and low pay when Lewis started.

"You girls have it made, to a certain extent," she told co-workers. "I came here working three straight months with one night off a week, and that was from 7 at night until 7 in the morning."

"So does she get back pay?" someone called out.

Lewis said her first paycheck as a registered nurse was for $279, "and that wasn't take-home pay. And that was for two weeks!"

During her retirement celebration -- co-workers were careful to point out that Lewis had forbidden a retirement "party" -- Bob Owen, the hospital's human resources director, handed Lewis an employment application.

"Have you ever seen one of these?" he joked.

"She always bragged that she'd never signed anything to start working here, so we made her sign the application to retire," he said. Lewis's employee number is 23, Owen said. "We've got numbers in the 6,000s now."

Lewis has been working on 3C, now the respiratory floor, since the hospital moved to its new facility in 1976.

"Florence is the floor," said nurse Maureen Wessell, who has worked with Lewis since 1977. "She's the one that taught us all how to be good, caring nurses. When you get out of school, you're green. She mentored us."

"She comes to work at 5:30 in the morning when she doesn't have to be here until 7 so she can get to know what's going on with her patients," said Pam Landeros, also a nurse on 3C. "That's how much she cares about her patients."

After putting in her time in the sewing room, "I moved up into pediatrics and took care of all the children who had polio in the big epidemic" in 1949 and 1950, Lewis said.

She started her nurse's training in 1953, and worked at St. Francis during summer breaks in the three-year program.

"For two weeks I worked nights during my senior year, and I was the man in charge. I wasn't even out of nurse's training. I was still a student," she said. "We couldn't do that now."

Lewis also worked in obstetrics for several years, and helped deliver co-workers' children.

She says she'll miss her patients and co-workers, "but I'm ready for (retirement) mentally."

An avid golfer, she plans to spend more time on the course. "I've hit three holes-in-one in my lifetime. I'm probably not as good as I was in my heyday, but I enjoy it," she said.

She and her husband, Billie, are planning a trip to Germany in June.