[The Montana Professor 18.1, Fall 2007 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Gretchen McNeely
Associate Dean, College of Nursing
MSU-Bozeman
gmcneely@montana.edu
Anna "Pearl" Sherrick is referred to as a "Gem" of the College of Nursing because she was a "highly prized and well-beloved person"/1/ as the founding Director of the School of Nursing at Montana State College,/2/ a position she held with a variety of titles from 1938 until July 1965, when she returned to teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and to serve as the Chair of the Graduate Nursing Program. The reference is also a pun, as a pearl is considered to be a semiprecious gem.
The name "Anna" is pronounced either AN-a (English) or AHN-nah (European); Anna Pearl Sherrick was called Anna (English pronunciation) Pearl by the nursing faculty or more formally as Miss Sherrick or Dr. Sherrick./3/ She was called Pearl by her family. The pearl is the birthstone for June, and supposedly "imparts health and wealth."/4/ Anna Pearl, of course, was known for imparting healthcare directly to her patients and indirectly through the teaching of nursing students over many decades.
In this article I have attempted to present a portrait of this fascinating and innovative leader of the College of Nursing, not necessarily a chronology of her accomplishments, which were numerous and have been well documented in other publications, but a human interest story about "a nurse who saw no barriers to progress," the inscription on a building plaque (the cornerstone) at Sherrick Hall on the MSU campus in Bozeman./5/
I was fortunate to have met Dr. Sherrick when I was a new faculty member at MSU in the early 1980s, quite a while after her 1970 retirement from the School of Nursing. I engaged in a number of conversations with this incredible woman at various occasions in the College of Nursing such as faculty/staff Christmas parties. She was already in her 80s at this time. We used to have gift exchanges at the Christmas parties and I was the recipient of a lovely Yellowstone National Park calendar that Dr. Sherrick brought as her gift for the exchange one year in the early 1990s. She loved her adopted state of Montana, especially "the Park." I too love "the Park" and treasure the calendar that she autographed for me. I also have a photograph of me with Dr. Sherrick, taken at her 90th birthday party held at the College of Nursing in Bozeman in November, 1989. That photo is also a treasured remembrance of my short visits with her.
All who knew her were saddened on October 20, 1993, when she passed away at the Bozeman Deaconess Hospital at 6:00 a.m. She had been recovering from recent hip surgery when she died peacefully just about a month short of her 94th birthday./6/ Dr. Kathleen A. Long, then Dean of the College of Nursing, and those in administrative, faculty, and staff positions, attended the lovely memorial service to celebrate her life, held on October 30, 1993, at the Hillcrest Retirement Home in Bozeman. Anna Pearl had resided there for some time and loved the view of the mountains as well as the university from that vantage point. The Rev. Charles Willming, Anna Pearl's pastor from the First Presbyterian Church of Bozeman, officiated at the service./7/ Included in his brief remarks was the reading of a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox as follows:
There are two kinds of people on earth today;
Just two kinds of people, no more, I say.
Not the sinner and saint, for it's well understood,
The good are half bad, and the bad are half good.
Not the rich and the poor, for to rate a man's wealth
You must first know the state of his conscience and health.
Not the humble and proud, for in life's little span,
Who puts on vain airs, is not counted a man.
Not the happy and sad, for the swift flying years
Bring each man his laughter and each man his tears.
No; the two kinds of people on earth I mean,
Are the people who lift, and the people who lean.
Wherever you go, you will find the earth's masses
Are always divided in just these two classes.
And, oddly enough, you will find too, I ween,
There's only one lifter to twenty who lean.
In which class are you? Are you easing the load
Of overtaxed lifters, who toil down the road?
Or are you a leaner, who lets other share
Your portion of labor and worry and care?/8/
Pastor Willming went on to describe Dr. Sherrick as a "lifter."
Professor Lowell Hickman, a long-time faculty member in the Music Department at MSU-Bozeman and Director of the Bozeman Symphonic Choir for years, sang two lovely solos during the celebration, including "The Lord's Prayer." Dean Long provided a tribute from the College of Nursing and read a brief statement from Anna M. Shannon, DNSc, RN, who had served as the third Dean of the College from 1975-1990. Psalm 23 and 121 were read by the Campus Chaplain from the University of Iowa, Rev. David Schuldt (the husband of Sandra Sherrick Schuldt, a great niece of Dr. Sherrick's). Mrs. Schuldt concluded the service by reading the well-known and loved "Irish Blessing" printed on the program. She explained that it was a Sherrick family tradition for birthdays, weddings, memorial services, and other family gatherings. Following the reading of the blessing, the pianist provided a lively rendition of "When the saints go marching in" and "Every time I hear the spirit." It truly was a happy celebration of life, not a sad funeral service./9/ Anna Pearl's final resting place is Bowen, Illinois. Her ashes were placed in an urn and taken to the Bowen Cemetery where her parents were entombed./10/
Though raised in the Methodist Church in Illinois, Anna Pearl had been a long-time member and elder of the Presbyterian Church in Bozeman and, because she loved children and had none of her own, taught a children's Sunday School class there for many years. She also served as the Chair for the "Little Sister" program of the Bozeman Business and Professional Women's (BPW) Club for several years, and was known to entertain neighborhood children at her home on stormy afternoons when they couldn't play outside./11/
Dr. Sherrick's portrait begins with her birth on the "old Sherrick homestead" in Loraine, Illinois, on November 26, 1899, near the close of the 19th century./12/ Her paternal ancestors had come to the United States from Switzerland. It is likely that her surname was originally Schürch as her family's history is listed with the Schürch Family Association of North America./13/ Her parents, Joel Darragh and Josephine Susannah (Harris) Sherrick, were a farmer and a homemaker. Anna Pearl was the youngest of their eight children. Sitting between her two youngest brothers, Otho Carl and Harry Solomon, Anna Pearl rode a gray mare named "Nel" a mile and a half to attend the one room Glenwood Grade School in the rural community where she was born until the family moved into town in 1909. She continued her education in the public schools there, graduating from Bowen High School in 1918. Though it was not as common for women to attend college at that time, Anna Pearl enrolled in Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, for two years (1918-1920)./14/ She endured about two years of poor health before she was able to continue her education at Carthage College in Carthage, Illinois (summer 1923)./15/ She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1924 at Illinois Women's College (later named McMurray College) in Jacksonville, Illinois./16/
Anna Pearl was not content with her bachelor's degree. In fact, many have mentioned that Anna Pearl lived the dictum that "education never ends."/17/ One of her older brothers, Dr. John Wesley Sherrick, MD, was an obstetrician and gynecologist who sparked her interest in nursing, much to their father's dismay, as he was strongly opposed, perhaps because of her history of poor health and the physical demands of nursing practice. But she was determined to become a nurse./18/ According to Anna Pearl's great niece, Jane Sherrick Nash, the whole family had certain characteristics that she summed up this way: "They all were quite self-confident, direct in their speech, and very determined in their ways. In fact, my husband thinks there is a special Sherrick gene labeled 'stubborn.'"/19/ That was apparent in Anna Pearl as she enrolled on September 3, 1924, in the University of Michigan's nursing program to pursue a post-baccalaureate diploma in nursing. She completed her nursing education December 2, 1926, and became licensed as a Registered Nurse (RN) in Michigan. She stayed in Ann Arbor for six months, working as a private duty nurse as well as providing some special duty at the University Hospital known at that time for research in pernicious anemia./20/
Anna Pearl next took a position as a science instructor at St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago where she taught courses in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and bacteriology (now known as microbiology) to nursing students. During her first semester of teaching, she was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis, which required nine months of confinement in a sanitarium and almost two more years at home for complete rest and recuperation. During that time, she further developed her ardent interest in nature, particularly flowers and birds, which had budded during her childhood while playing on the farm and in the woods around Ebenezer Church. Gardening and ornithology became two of her lifelong passions./21/
By the fall of 1930, Anna Pearl was well enough to start teaching again as a science instructor at Parkview Hospital School of Nursing in Pueblo, Colorado, a position she held for three years./22/ She has been referred to as "being curious" and having an "inquisitive nature," excellent qualities for a science teacher. During this time, in 1932, her father passed away, leaving her mother a widow in Illinois. During the summer quarter of 1933, Anna Pearl enrolled at the Colorado State Teachers College in Greeley and completed a Master of Arts degree in education with a major in biology on June 9, 1934./23/ Following graduation, she took a position as an instructor in the Montana Deaconess Hospital Training School for Nurses in Great Falls, Montana./24/ The Methodist minister at home in Illinois asked her mother, "Why do you let her do this alone?", remembering the difficult time this frail girl had recovering from tuberculosis./25/ Though her mother was worried about her daughter driving alone from Illinois to Montana, her brother John assured her mother that it was all right to let her drive across the country in her little Durant/26/ car so she could take the job in Great Falls. Anna Pearl's sister, Mae, once commented that Her mother "talked about how lost and fearful she felt as she watched her youngest child start off alone to the wild and wooly West!"/27/ When asked by a niece why she had decided to do that, Anna Pearl replied, "I went because I needed a job." She had no money to travel any other way./28/ In 1990, Anna Pearl recalled that her own personal reasons for going to Montana included its healthy climate, her love of Montana and the West, and the scarcity of jobs for a nurse with a master's degree./29/
Anna Pearl was once asked by a friend why she never married. She replied that during the time that she would normally have been dating, she was quite ill and trying to regain her health (presumably during the illness that prevented her from continuing in college when she was twenty)./30/ Instead of marriage, she lived a very independent life and devoted her energies to her career. Dr. Sherrick's great niece, Jane Sherrick Nash, granddaughter of Anna's brother Harry, reported that one time she and her sister, Sandra, were visiting Aunt Pearl in Bozeman and were talking about husbands and families. Anna Pearl said, "Husbands are fine if you get a good one, but if you don't get a good one, you're better off without one." Dr. Sherrick made the professions of nursing and teaching the focus of her life-long career./31/
In 1934, nursing education was predominately provided in hospitals; the emphasis was on apprentice learning in clinical settings. But people like Anna Pearl knew that students needed more academic/theoretical preparation and there was no college in Montana at that time that offered an academic degree in nursing. There had been some early "affiliations" with colleges such as the one between the Kennedy Deaconess Hospital Training School for Nurses and Northern Montana College in Havre./32/ Affiliations provided the opportunity for nursing students to earn college credits for non-nursing courses such as chemistry, for example. However, anyone who wanted a bachelor's degree in nursing at that time had to leave Montana for programs in other states.
In 1935, Anna Pearl was selected to serve as the Director of both the Montana Deaconess Hospital's nursing service and the Training School for Nurses. According to Dr. Laura Walker, Anna Pearl's successor as Director of the School of Nursing in 1965, "[Anna Pearl] immediately began to 'stir up' the field of nursing education in Montana."/33/ At the urging of Blanche M. Fuller, the Administrator of the Hospital Training School in Great Falls, it wasn't long before Anna Pearl wrote a proposal to combine the Deaconess Training Schools for Nurses in Great Falls, Havre, and Bozeman to form the roots of the current College of Nursing at Montana State University in Bozeman. The initial planning was done in 1937 and the final agreement was signed in May 1938. It was initially known as the Consolidated Deaconess School of Nursing and affiliated with the Montana State College so that nursing students could earn college credits and eventually, a bachelor's degree, if desired, while preparing for a career in nursing./34/ The consolidation was later dissolved. The Training School at the Billings Deaconess Hospital joined the group of schools under Dr. Sherrick's leadership in 1943./35/
While she was still in Great Falls, Anna Pearl wrote the following poem, "Capping Night," and dedicated it to one of the most memorable events in the life of nursing students of that era, the Capping Ceremony. While only part of the poem was published, the entire poem is included here as it was found in Dr. Sherrick's faculty file in the College of Nursing:
Will you light, light, light your candles white?
That they may shine like stars at night.
Helping those who need your cheer,
That they may feel through all the year
The spirit of joyful heart,
And the service of hands filled with Nursing Art.
Will you fill your hearts this night
With a love both pure and bright
For this, your profession true,
For nursing leaders, old and new,
That your candlelight shine afar
As Saint Catherine's torch, a guiding star?
Let us gaze into our professions mere [sic; mirror?]
That we may realize our heritage of years,
Then rejoice and greet our chosen day,
Holding our light with its shining ray,
As we serve humanity with the true spirit of nursing
For one of the oldest and finest arts is the Art of Nursing.
So will you pledge yourselves this night,
With your candles all a light,
That on each successive year,
You, as candles from your sphere,
Shall cast a light on those you guide,
Thus serving mankind whate'er betide?/36/
I never heard about Saint Catherine's torch in my study of nursing history. I have discovered there were at least two different martyrs who are known as Saint Catherine: one from Sienna and the other from Alexandria. However, I could find no "torch" references for either of them. I did learn that Saint Catherine of Alexandria was known as "learned in the sciences" and was skilled in debate with philosophers of her time. Because of that, they besought her to "illumine their minds" before studying or writing. Perhaps the reference to the torch is one of providing illumination in the practice of nursing./37/ There was a notion of "passing the torch" from one group to another, from the old to the new, similar to the concept of "passing the torch" that is reflected in the poem "In Flanders Fields" by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD, a physician in the Canadian Army. This was a reference to the soldiers who died in WWI and are buried in Flanders' fields of poppies in Belgium./38/
The Montana State Board of Nursing and the Nurse Practice Act (statutes resulting from legislation and rules of the board) were also improving the standards for nursing schools in Montana in the 1930s. Anna Pearl was appointed to the Montana State Board of Examiners for Nurses by Democrat Governor Elmer Holt in 1936 and she served four terms until 1951. Most of that time, she also served in the role of President of the Board, a powerful position./39/ Having been appointed to the Board of Nursing for one four-year term, I can appreciate the level of commitment that Anna Pearl made to protect the public for 16 years.
I have read many accounts of Dr. Sherrick's life and in those accounts, various authors have described her in many ways, including a trailblazer, visionary, problem solver, mentor, encourager; she was influential, dedicated, determined, persistent, deeply respected, caring, concerned, and able to stimulate students. Because she was direct in her speech, when she wanted something done, she would just tell someone to do it and they wouldn't argue with her; they just did it. For example, when I was conducting research regarding the development of the master of nursing (MN) degree program at Montana State University, I interviewed Herva Fiske Simpson, one of the three students to enroll in the first class of the MN degree program in 1957. When I asked her why she entered the program, she responded that Dr. Sherrick told her to do so and so she did./40/ I have heard many similar comments over the years about Dr. Sherrick's direct approach, which allowed her to accomplish so much in her career. I also believe that people responded to her as they did because they trusted her wisdom and judgment and highly respected her.
The development of the Consolidated Deaconess School of Nursing in the 1930s into the Montana State University College of Nursing in the 1980s has been described quite well in many publications. Therefore, I will just summarize a few major highlights here to demonstrate what this "Gem" of the College of Nursing was able to accomplish between 1937 and 1965, which were the twenty-eight official years of her leadership of the nursing programs at MSU.
MSU began offering a special program in 1942 through a grant from the United States Public Health Service. It was replaced a year later by The United States Cadet Nurse Corps program, developed as a result of Congressional action to increase the number of nurses in the country. It continued until the end of World War II in 1945, and the last group of students to complete that program did so in 1948. These programs served as the beginning for many federally funded programs in the future./41/
In the post-war years, other innovative programs were implemented, including those in psychiatric nursing and its affiliation with Warm Springs State Hospital (1940) and tuberculosis nursing and its affiliation with the Montana State Tuberculosis Sanitarium at Galen (1942). The tuberculosis program continued until 1955, but the psychiatric program continues, though in a different form and with many other mental health facilities utilized for student clinical experiences in addition to Warm Springs./42/ Public Health Nursing was the next innovative program to be approved. This was the program that eventually brought Dr. Laura Copple Walker to the School of Nursing, and the college continues to offer courses in Community/Public Health Nursing./43/
Between 1937 and 1965, the School of Nursing offered many curricular options including both four- and five-year plans for the BSN, a three-year diploma program, a one-year LPN program, a two-year associate degree program, and finally, a one- or two- year master's degree program./44/ Those programs represent a lot of work on the part of faculty to conceive, develop, implement, and evaluate in preparation for professional accreditation. The baccalaureate degree program was initially approved by the National Nursing Accrediting Service of the National League for Nursing Education (NLNE) in 1949 with the understanding that the school would be resurveyed in 1952./45/
Interestingly, Anna Pearl's annual salary as an Assistant Professor and Supervisor of Nursing Education on her twelve month contract for the 1938-39 academic year was only $2000. Her duties included "supervision of the affiliated Schools of Nursing" and "offering certain courses in each unit of the School of Nursing and on the campus at Montana State College. This position is particularly important in order to maintain the proper and efficient coordination between the different units of the affiliated Schools of Nursing and Montana State College."/46/ Her title and academic rank changed over the years. In 1944, her title was changed to Head of the Department of Nursing in the Division of Science, and she achieved the rank of Associate Professor. It wasn't until 1945 that she was actually given the title of Director of the School of Nursing, which she held until 1965. She also achieved the rank of Professor in 1946./47/ During a reorganization in 1960, the School of Nursing was placed in the Division of Professional Schools. It did not become a free-standing College of Nursing until years after she retired, but Dr. Sherrick started the wheels rolling in that direction.
Dr. Sherrick was able to take several well-established hospital diploma training programs for nurses and combine them into one collegiate School of Nursing that offered an array of curricular options./48/ The Deaconess Hospitals and Schools of Nursing in Montana had been developed somewhat independently in the various parts of the state, but were also connected to one another through the Methodist Episcopal (ME) church primarily through the work of a minister, Rev. W.W. Van Orsdel, affectionately known as "Brother Van," and a Canadian deaconess and nurse named Augusta Ariss. Miss Ariss arrived in Montana in 1902 and was still very active in the Deaconess Hospitals and the Training Schools for Nurses when Dr. Sherrick arrived in Montana in 1934. Therefore, the groundwork had been laid with the development of the individual schools in the early 1900s. Dr. Sherrick was then able to build on that foundation and take the nursing programs to the collegiate level./49/
Ironically, Anna Pearl never earned any degrees in nursing. However, having earned a doctorate and both baccalaureate and master's degrees in education, with a diploma in nursing from the University of Michigan sandwiched in between, she was eminently qualified to administer the nursing programs implemented at Montana State University. She valued collegiate education for nurses and nursing faculty, and determined that nurses in Montana should have the opportunity to earn college degrees as well as college credits in order to have well-rounded educational preparation for careers in professional nursing practice and nursing education. She also kept abreast of the latest trends in nursing practice and nursing education as they developed nationally. Because of that perspective, Dr. Sherrick worked hard with officials at Montana State College to provide those opportunities for nurses in Montana. The baccalaureate degree program was initiated in 1937 and the master's degree program (primarily to prepare nurses for teaching) was implemented in 1957. The first nurse to earn a bachelor's degree in nursing from Montana State College in 1941 was Frances Hixson Macdonald./50/ One must not forget that the school also offered diploma and associate degree programs in nursing in the early years. The students who completed those programs wore white caps and gowns at commencement to distinguish them from students earning the bachelor's degree, but they were eligible to continue their education and earn the baccalaureate degree in nursing at a later date./51/ Those diploma and associate degree programs were discontinued in 1964.
Dr. Sherrick modeled her strong beliefs about educational preparation for nursing practice and teaching. One of the ways in which she did this was by going back to school in 1954 to earn her doctoral degree in education at the University of Washington. She wasn't the kind of person who would ask others to do something she would not do herself. Dr. Sherrick was a great mentor in terms of encouraging (even directing) nurses to go back to school and earn master's degrees so they could teach in collegiate nursing programs. She also understood the national trends toward doctoral education for faculty who desired a career in academe. She was the first Montana nurse to earn a Doctor of Education degree and she encouraged and assisted many other Montana nurses to obtain degrees in higher education as well./52/ It is noteworthy that after twenty-eight years of leadership in the School of Nursing, Dr. Sherrick returned to her first love of teaching for five more years in both the undergraduate and graduate nursing programs before retiring in 1970 at seventy years of age.
In 1965, when Dr. Sherrick stepped down as the Director of the School of Nursing to continue teaching, two events were held in her honor. One event was a dinner planned by the Montana Deaconess Hospital Alumni Association in Great Falls./53/ The Alumni Association met annually, but in 1965, Anna was recognized for her many years of service and presented with a lovely watch on a chain to be worn around her neck. The other event, held around the time of commencement was a dinner at the Riverside Country Club in Bozeman attended by faculty, staff, and friends from around Montana. The dinner ended with a song toasting her upcoming trip around the world./54/ In order to have a little rest and relaxation after twenty years of administrative duties, Anna Pearl registered in February 1966 for an adventure of a lifetime aboard the World Campus Afloat program provided by Chapman College (now Chapman University) in Orange, California. The ship, M.S. Seven Seas, sailed from Wilmington, California, on February 10th and stopped at its first port in Tahiti ten days later. There were a total of seventeen ports of call in Australia, Singapore, India, Greece, Italy, Israel, Africa, and Casablanca, on the trip which lasted for four months, before the ship returned to New York. Anna was one of eighteen senior citizens among three hundred twenty-five students and thirty-two faculty for the duration of the trip. She sent a number of letters and post cards to the School of Nursing while she was traveling.
Upon her retirement from the University at the age of seventy, she was recognized by the Montana University System on July 14, 1970: "Resolved, that upon the occasion of the retirement of Professor Anna Pearl Sherrick from the faculty of Montana State University, the State Board of Education, ex-officio Regents of the Montana University System, wishes to express its appreciation for her long and faithful service to Montana State University, and to the people of the State of Montana" (Agenda item 215-211)./55/
Plans had begun in the late 1960s for the new nursing building on the MSU campus. It was eventually built on the site of the old nursing building, Bridger Hall, which had been brought to campus as a temporary structure twenty years earlier. The new building was funded by state (one-third) and federal (two-thirds) dollars through a grant from the Nurse Education Facilities Branch of the US Public Health Service, Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In June 1973, the half-million dollar structure, which had been completed in 1972 and named the Anna Pearl Sherrick Hall, was dedicated. Anna commented, "It was indeed gratifying to know that the new nursing building has been named in my honor. Friends, faculty, students, and many graduate nurses, former students, secretaries, and family, nephew Neal and wife, Anita Sherrick, from Illinois attended. Mae Sherrick Folckemer, my eighty-nine year old sister, in her wheelchair, looked very pleased with all she saw and heard."/56/
In On June 7, 1975, Dr. Sherrick was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Montana State University in recognition of her many years of service to the University and the State of Montana to improve educational opportunities for nurses. The MSU Staff Bulletin on May 23, 1975, documented this upcoming event stating, "through her vision and energy, she helped nursing education in Montana make great strides, keeping pace with national trends and standards." The School of Nursing faculty and staff from the campuses in Bozeman, Billings, Butte, Great Falls, and Warm Springs, hosted an open house reception that afternoon following commencement. Family, friends, students and alumni alike were invited to share in the celebration./57/
During 1975, Dr. Sherrick also sat for artist Ed Groenhout as he sculpted her image into a life-sized bronze bust. In 1972, he had painted a large 36" x 54" canvas with her likeness but it had been stolen from the College of Nursing the night of April 18, 1974, and has never been returned. The painting portrayed Dr. Sherrick in the foreground and Montana Hall (the main administrative building at MSU-Bozeman) in the background. Professor Groenhout, the Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Architecture, wanted to provide a likeness that would be more difficult for someone to purloin, so after several months of work, first fashioning it in clay, he eventually produced a statue in bronze that weighed over fifty pounds. It was mounted on a concrete base and placed in the patio area of Sherrick Hall. In recent years, the bronze bust sustained some vandalism and had to be repaired, but it continues to stand in that place of honor at the College of Nursing./58/
In 1977, Dr. Sherrick was invited to visit former neighbors from Bozeman at their home in Norway. She went and had a wonderful time. Dr. Sherrick was not new to international travel, of course. Her first trip abroad had been in 1937 when she went to England to attend an International Council of Nurses (ICN) conference in London. Other stops on that trip included Canterbury and Edinburgh, Scotland, where she enjoyed listening to the bagpipers clad in the tartan kilts of their clans. In 1957, she visited Rome for another ICN conference and was also able to travel to Switzerland, the homeland of her Schürch ancestors, during a trip to Geneva for a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting. Other stops on that trip included Amsterdam and various parts of Germany along the Rhine River./59/
When she retired, Dr. Sherrick wrote and published for many more years in the areas in which she was so passionate: nursing and nursing education, as well as history, both nursing and family history. When she wrote about nursing, it was always within the historical context, a trait that made everything she wrote more interesting and understandable. I find it ironic that Dr. Sherrick ended up being such a prolific writer because within her college "transcripts," (in a College of Nursing file), she earned a C in an English Composition class at Knox College and a C in Advanced Composition in her master's program at Colorado State College of Education. My guess is that she may have been a "non-conformist" in her college years, as she was later in life and had refused to be put in a mold where she was told what to write in a class. Her family, after all, had that "stubborn" Sherrick gene./60/
One of her post-retirement books, The Montana State University School of Nursing: A Story of Professional Development, was published in 1976. With the assistance of Jeanne M. Claus, a faculty member in the School of Nursing, and John P. Parker, the Chair of the English Department at MSU, she documented the origin and development of the School of Nursing from 1937 to 1965. I am pleased that Anna autographed a copy for me during one of our informal meetings: "To Gretchen--Anna Pearl Sherrick."
Besides nursing practice and nursing education, another strong interest of Anna Pearl's was history. Family history was especially important to her, and she worked with other family members to compile and document the stories and history of her Schürch ancestors who had immigrated to the United States from Bern, Switzerland. This work culminated in a book titled A Pioneer Family in Illinois: Martin and Susannah Strickler Sherrick, published in 1979 (and co-authored by Anita White Sherrick, wife of Anna's nephew, Neal). In the Preface they wrote,
This by no means is a definitive history, only a compilation of facts and recollections of friends and members of the Sherrick family. It is an attempt to relate something of a pioneer family and to open avenues for further research. This is only a meager beginning to which much can be added. To recall history is important because by understanding the past we can appreciate the present and prepare for the future.... To tell the story of a family is to tell the story of a community in miniature. A story of a family alone is impossible. Their lives are so entwined with their neighbors and friends, it is impossible to avoid telling something about the people who surrounded them./61/
Her last book was Worldwide Events Influencing Nursing in Montana, published in 1989 when Anna Pearl was ninety years old. That year, the proceeds from the book began the Anna Pearl Sherrick Nursing Scholarship endowment fund established at MSU. The endowment earned enough interest for the first scholarships to be given in the 1990s and since that time, well over thirty nursing students have been recipients of this award in the amount of $500 or more./62/
During her retirement years, Anna Pearl was also very interested in issues related to aging and the elderly. She served on the Montana Aging Council and spent many hours in volunteer work with the Senior Center in Bozeman. In fact, it has been reported that she was very instrumental in getting the new Senior Center funded and built./63/ Her only sister, Effie Mae (Sherrick) Entrikon Folckemer, who had resided with Anna a couple of different times in her life, was confined to the Bozeman Deaconess Hospital long-term care facility for a while before she passed away October 26, 1977. Anna visited her regularly, demonstrating her concern not only for her older sister, but for the elderly in general. When Anna was first confronted with her own aging, she didn't like it, and the fact that she could not continue living alone and taking care of herself, saddened her for a short period of time. But she thought about it briefly, and said to her family, "Well, if that's the way it has to be, let's get on with it." She accepted the limitations of aging in the same way she had always accepted the things she could not change./64/ The most difficult part of moving to the Hillcrest Retirement Home was not being able to take her dog with her. One now retired faculty member from the College of Nursing recalls picking Dr. Sherrick up at Hillcrest and taking her to visit her little dog that was being cared for by a friend so that she could briefly enjoy that companionship that she so missed./65/
Dr. Sherrick has often been referred to as "modest." This description has been used of her in terms of her accomplishments and her personal lifestyle. According to her great niece, Jane Sherrick Nash, "possessions meant very little to her. She didn't collect anything, really, except degrees and class credits. She loved to be with her friends and have tea parties. For tea parties she used her mother's Haviland china and filled in the missing pieces with Melmac or other dishes. Possessions just didn't matter."/66/
She also lived in a very modest home at 1106 South Willson Avenue in Bozeman--I pass it on my way to and from school each day. Though a small and simple bungalow (new when she moved into it in 1950), it is located on one of the oldest and most prestigious residential streets in Bozeman that boasts the likes of the Story Mansion and the Voss Inn as well as other very large and ostentatious homes. Anna described her home:
The front of the house faces the back yard and the garden which is twenty-five feet long. At the back of the garden is a large Colorado blue spruce.... Raspberries, strawberries, many different kinds of perennials and annual flowers and shrubs blossom among the vegetables throughout the summer. The mountain ash has been filled with red berries.... Mr. Smith [a neighbor] had a rose garden that bloomed profusely in the summer for twenty years. Mae [her sister] was fond of the American Peace Rose and Mr. Smith was generous when these bushes bloomed./67/
It is so apparent that her garden was one of her passions as it was so beautifully described and shared with neighbors who "enjoyed picnicking in her yard on holidays from May to September."/68/
Anna Pearl once wrote, "My home, my garden, and my four poodles over the years provided companionship. My first poodle, Blackie, was a gift from a student who thought a dog would be good for me. It was and is." After Blackie died, she bought Buffy, who she described as "a more quiet dog, and spoiled (at eleven years old) but lots of company. I keep as active as my arthritis and growing older permits."
Anna Pearl often had students living at her home, renting her basement apartment. When she needed to give up driving at the age of ninety-one, one of the students who lived in her home became her chauffeur. In a delightful article titled, "Driving Dr. Sherrick," the author described some of Anna Pearl's other characteristics. "After giving up driving, she became homebound and fidgety. Idleness never was the style of the woman whose nursing education career spanned so many years. Unwilling to sit at home, Sherrick searched for a driver and found one in her basement." That young man was Shannon Butler, a student and track star at MSU who rented a basement apartment from Dr. Sherrick. The twenty-three year old from Eureka, Montana, eagerly accepted the proposal to chauffeur his landlady around town. They had met in 1989 when he was apartment hunting and "begging for a place to stay." In the evenings, they fired up her new Oldsmobile for leisurely sight-seeing up Hyalite, Bear Creek, or Bridger Canyons. Shannon admired Dr. Sherrick not only for her contributions to nursing, but for her "spunk and spirit."/69/
Other stories were told about her "spunk and spirit" by her great niece, Jane Sherrick Nash: "Our entire family and Aunt Pearl had a week-end in Minneapolis, Minnesota (during the summer of 1993). She had a good time seeing the kids and being with Neal, our father. Dad and Aunt Pearl had a special relationship over the years. Neal was the family member of the younger generation that she relied on. He always tried to be a gentleman and drop her at the door or help her do things. She would always tell him, 'I can do it' or 'I can walk with the rest of you.' In Minneapolis, we told her we were going to the Mall of America and would be back for lunch. She responded 'I'll just go too' so we toured (for a couple of hours) and she was interested in everything she saw. The independence never faded nor did the willingness to go on an adventure."/70/
Jane also tells of a Caribbean Cruise that Anna Pearl was scheduled to take at the age of eighty-eight with a Senior Citizens group. She fell and broke her hip a few months before the scheduled departure. She simply called the group and said, "I won't be able to go this year but sign me up for next year." She kept her word and went the next year. What a remarkable woman!/71/
Notes
[The Montana Professor 18.1, Fall 2007 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]