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A Nurse and Activist
Authors: Angelica Walker, Samantha Miller
Dorothy Patach is the kind of woman someone can talk to about her life and, five hours later, still be hearing stories from the highlights reel. From major medical advancements to community-revolutionizing projects, she has accomplished many amazing things in her life and given so much of herself to Omaha and the nursing profession. Her 30 years at the University of Nebraska at Omaha are such a small fraction of her incredibly full life, and her kindness, generosity, and innovation will long remain in the hearts and minds of those she has touched.
Bohemia to Nebraska
At different points in the late 1800s, both sides of Dorothy Patach’s family immigrated to Nebraska from Bohemia, which is now located in the Czech Republic. Some wanted to avoid going to war, and others wanted new opportunities. They were hardworking people who were invested in their community and believed in the importance of education. Dorothy’s parents, John and Marie, had been acquaintances “back in the old country,” but it wasn’t until they met again in Omaha that they decided to marry. Dorothy was born on December 4, 1923 in South Omaha.
Holding a number of important jobs, Dorothy’s father worked for numerous companies and at different locations when she was younger. He spent a significant amount of time in California on one job, so Dorothy and her mother would visit him when they could. He was also a member of several organizations, including one in which he had to be able to speak and write in Bohemian, something not everyone had held onto.
Early Interest in Nursing
Dorothy’s father had a strong influence on her as he provided a lot of volunteer service and was very community-oriented. But another strong memory of him also had a lasting effect on Dorothy. After drinking some milk once, Dorothy’s father developed undulant fever, an infectious bacterial disease, and almost died. The hospital didn’t know how to treat it well, so Dorothy’s mother kept him home and they sponged him to keep his fever down. Without some important medical advancements like dialysis that could have helped her father, he suffered from numerous ailments brought on from a number of procedures performed at the hospital. Although she was only five, Dorothy remembers sitting on the bed, sponging his face and shoulders to keep his temperature down. This was the beginning of her desire to become a nurse.
Childhood and Education
Dorothy led an active childhood and had a happy home life, encouraged by her parents to learn and do new things. She went to school at Hawthorne Elementary, which was “an excellent school with great teachers.” Her mother had started teaching her before she formally began school, so Dorothy found herself far advanced compared to other classmates. Teachers convinced Dorothy’s mom to have her skip kindergarten and first grade, but her mother refused to push her further ahead. Instead, Dorothy was assigned to help teach other kids who were struggling. As she puts it, “For me, teaching was always there.”
Dorothy was interested in artistic output, which her parents also encouraged. She started taking piano lessons around age six and eventually acquired an accordion, which a musician from the bank taught her to play. Dorothy even taught herself to figure skate by watching Sonja Henie tapes at home. Dance was also an important part of Dorothy’s young life. She learned to tap dance from Sam Brown, the dancer who taught Bill Robertson, who went on to teach Shirley Temple how to dance. Dorothy also took ballet from legendary dancer and teacher, Cora Quick. When she was only twelve, Dorothy would sometimes dance at the Orpheum when traveling ballets needed a stand-in dancer.
Dorothy was a good student as well. She learned civics from a blind teacher named Mr. Kuncel and served as his grader. She would stop by his class and take roll before heading off to her own, so she was usually a little bit late. Dorothy graduated from Omaha South High School in December of 1941.
Starting Nursing School
Dorothy made plans to attend college with the aim of becoming a nurse. She had her sights set on the University of Nebraska School for Nurses. In order to be accepted into the nursing program, students typically needed to have completed two years of college courses first. Dorothy’s friend Helen came up with the idea that they should attend the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, mostly because Helen wanted the prestige of going to a state university on scholarship. Dorothy’s father refused to let her apply for scholarships and declared that they would pay their own way. She and Helen planned to take classes to get enough credit hours to apply for the incoming nursing class the following September. But the attack on Pearl Harbor that December changed everything.
On January 1, 1942, Dorothy and Helen received letters from Charlotte Burgess, the Director of Nursing at the University of Nebraska School for Nurses, asking if they would consider starting nursing school that February without having taken any other college courses. Since Clarkson School of Nursing used South High School teachers for science classes like Anatomy & Physiology, Microbiology, and Chemistry, classes Dorothy and Helen had already taken at the same school, Ms. Burgess had decided that they could join the nursing class at her nursing school, though she admitted it would be difficult. Ms. Burgess told them that they would room together, learn together, and support each other in that class of eighteen students. Though she was excited to start nursing school, Dorothy remembers that it was still really difficult: “Here we were in school with all these students who already had the maturity of at least two years of college. Some already had teaching certificates!” Dorothy struggled and persevered, making sure to dedicate herself to studying, but Helen had failed out by August.
University Hospital
Ms. Burgess was an accomplished woman and a role model to Dorothy. She had gone to college and earned her diploma in nursing before serving as an army nurse during World War I. After that, she received her Bachelor of Arts at a school in South Dakota before earning her Master of Arts from Columbia University. She was already in her 70s by the time Dorothy joined the nursing class. When Dorothy was a senior in her program, Ms. Burgess had fallen down and hurt her back. She was kept at the University of Nebraska hospital for about two months, and Dorothy was assigned to personally care of her during the day as well as lead the team that was caring for her the rest of the time. Dorothy sighs and then laughs while remembering what it was like to have Ms. Burgess as a patient. “My only problem with her as a patient was that she wanted her coffee hot. And all we had were gas burners, so I would run with it. We didn’t have fancy thermo cups then. I’d get it to her and she’d say, ‘This isn’t hot enough!’ So I’d haul it back there and I’d boil it again. It was all probably on purpose just to see how far she could push her nurses.”
While Ms. Burgess was laid up, the nursing school was going through accreditation. Dorothy was asked to help Ms. Burgess keep the school going, so she learned a lot about running a school of nursing during that year. But around this time, the United States government started the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps because the war had created such a high demand for nurses. Dorothy only had six months of school left and didn’t want to join, but Ms. Burgess said everyone should join. They got paid $30 a month, but Dorothy couldn’t help the service any since she wasn’t at least 21 at the time. By this time, the Dorothy’s graduating class had dwindled from 18 to 7. Three students were sent to serve at veteran and army hospitals in San Francisco, and the other three went to Denver. Dorothy stayed in Omaha on account of her age.
The University hospital was run by teachers and students at that time, with a head nurse in charge of each floor. Ms. Burgess told Dorothy that since she was staying and had already passed her state boards in June 1944, she would eventually be filling in as Head Nurse of Ward H, the women’s medical ward, when Mrs. Cochran had her baby. Well the baby came just a week later, and Dorothy found herself running an entire ward. A short time later, someone in Pediatrics fell ill, so Dorothy went up and ran that floor for two months. It was then that the Head Nurse of Ward C/D developed a facial paralysis and would be gone for three months. Ms. Burgess assigned Dorothy to run C/D, the men’s surgical ward, in her absence. Dorothy was nervous as it was a 42-bed floor and she wasn’t even 21 years old at the time, but Ms. Burgess just looked at her and said, “You’ll do fine. My office it right outside the ward door.” Ms. Burgess’s tough assignments for Dorothy show how determined and ambitious Dorothy was, even at such a young age.
As Dorothy was doing all this work and finishing up requirements, Ms. Burgess asked her where she wanted to end up. Dorothy enthusiastically told her that she wanted to work in the operating room. As it turned out, the operating room was going to be losing a supervisor soon. The assistant supervisor was leaving for the military, so Ms. Burgess told Dorothy to go up there and start as a staff nurse before the supervisor left, at which time she would become the new assistant operating room supervisor. As Dorothy quickly found, it was rough, tiresome work. At the University of Nebraska Hospital from February 1945 to December 1948, Dorothy worked a busy schedule. She’d go to work at the operating room from 7 a.m. to noon and go back to the hospital at 6 p.m. where she’d serve as hospital supervisor until 11 p.m. During that time, she was also on-call and ran the emergency room since no one else was down there. While this was all going on, Dorothy also served as a clinical instructor for other student nurses.
Straightening Out Clarkson Hospital
In December 1948, Dorothy became a supervisor at Clarkson Hospital because they were having problems. One of the doctors at the Medical Center, Dr. Perrin, asked her to apply and “straighten them out.” Dorothy had already accepted a supervisory position in Long Beach, California, but the job wasn’t scheduled to start for several months. Dr. Perrin told Dorothy that he was sending the nurse currently in the role to school in Philadelphia to learn how to do her job properly. He promised Dorothy he wouldn’t keep her more than six months. Dorothy reluctantly agreed since it wouldn’t interfere with her position in California, but the problem at the hospital was much worse than she had anticipated: “I quit in one week. It was that bad! It was terrible!” But Dr. Perrin told Dorothy she should give it a chance. Dorothy’s mother fell ill around the same time, so she ultimately decided to stay.
Dorothy had the place straightened out in record time: two weeks. Once she introduced some organization around schedules, rotations, and vacations, and planned out schedules for a year, everything settled down. After six months, the old supervisor came back from school in Philadelphia. She started making a mess of everything in one week and was fired quickly. So, Dorothy gave up her job offer in California and stayed on at Clarkson.
At Clarkson, Dorothy was a part of several important achievements. She developed surgical drapes that were used during new procedures and was part of the team that restructured the operating room at Clarkson, which went on to receive the Hospital of the Year award. Most notably, Dorothy took part in the testing of Formula 99, the first antibacterial soap. Prior to this soap, doctors and nurses had to scrub their hands and arms for an average of ten minutes before they could enter the operating room. The only problem with Formula 99 was that it irritated the skin of some of those who used it. Dorothy suggested changing the form from a liquid to a solid bar, which fixed the problem. That bar went on to become Dial Soap.
Teaching and Administration
After she left Clarkson in December 1956, Dorothy became a nursing arts instructor at Jennie Edmundson School of Nursing in Council Bluffs, Iowa until 1959. During her time there, Maxine Jacks, Assistant Supervisor to the School of Nursing, pushed Dorothy to pursue further education. Dorothy’s nursing education had been a 36-month program, like many others at that time. She decided to further her education and received her Bachelor of Science in Home Economics in 1955, and eventually her Bachelor of Science in Nursing. The University of Omaha offered a Master of Science in Nursing Education equivalent to a strong program in Iowa City. Dorothy got a copy of the curriculum from Iowa and took the extra courses she needed, such as statistics and psychology, and earned that degree in 1959.
Dorothy’s career in medicine included a lot of continued education on her part as well as the creation of further continued education requirements in the field of nursing. She was involved in operating room advancements, the creation of nurse practitioner programs, had been a head nurse, and was hired by Dr. Milo Bail to serve as Director of Nursing and Allied Health, which was a medical technology program. Dorothy mainly taught a course in the history of nursing and a course in nursing education and supervision through the nursing school. She went on to develop an introductory course to health careers as health fields were changing dramatically at the time. She helped students get into all the various new fields like radiology, respiratory health, and occupational therapy in addition to running about 1,000 counselees a semester.
In 1968, struggling financially, the University of Omaha sought to merge with the University of Nebraska. Through this merger, three semi-autonomous institutions were created: the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), the University of Nebraska-Omaha (UNO), and the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). The merger was beneficial, but had a significant impact on university programs, including nursing. As part of the deal, UNL dropped its nursing program, which was then moved to UNMC with most of the other medical programs. This in turn broke up the College of Allied Health, and Dorothy became Assistant to the Dean of Arts and Sciences at UNO, a position in which she remained until her retirement in 1989.
Recognition and Community Activism
After her retirement, Dorothy continued to help on campus with tasks like student registration. The University wouldn’t allow the work to be done completely voluntarily, so Dorothy happily worked for $1 an hour though she remembers it could be quite awful in the summer: “We were out there in the Field House with the flies…It was terrible! But you know, it was fun!”
Even with volunteering at UNO and UNMC, Dorothy wanted to do more. She lived in South Omaha at the time, and there were environmental problems. When she was younger, her father worked for the County Clerk’s Office, so he helped make sure these types of problems got solved when they needed to be. Dorothy picked up the importance of these issues along the way, and the Dorothy Patach Natural Environmental Area is a testament to her work. A company had been hired to make some repairs, and they were tossing chunks of rubble and debris in a nearby ravine. Dorothy called the city to complain and then went to a City Council meeting with some engineers. The city made the company move the rubble, but there was no money to fill in the ravine. Instead, the city used sand and dirt that was picked up during street sweeps in the Old Market and South Omaha to fill it in. The City decided to name the area after Dorothy in honor of her commitment to her community, though she tried to get them to name it Heritage Park. Now the area has fruit trees growing in it, and it is a part of several local community projects.
Dorothy has been and still is involved with a number of community organizations including the Spring Lake Neighborhood Association, the South Omaha Neighborhood Alliance, and the South Omaha Environmental Taskforce. She helped develop the Greater Omaha Neighborhood Association and was asked to serve on the committee for planning and designing the Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge. She still works with the South Omaha Police Precinct to keep up community policing and do a safety fair to teach people about what policemen do. She took part in establishing citywide cleanups, junk hauls, and got grants to plant trees and shrubs and build barbecue pits and picnic tables at several clubs and parks. She helped get a place for people to take used tires, which were previously dumped in ravines, and she was also on a taskforce that got stricter regulations enforced on a chemical company that had been transporting and storing dangerous chemicals hazardously.
Dorothy is known for giving herself to her community and others, and she has been deservedly recognized for it. Some of her awards include the Golden Key, the Nebraska Nursing Association’s Award for Achievement and Leadership in Nursing, and having awards and scholarships given out in her name through the UNO Women’s Club and the UNMC School of Nursing. One of her most treasured recognitions, though, was being awarded the honorary title of Nebraska Admiral, Nebraska’s highest honor, which her father had also received. These awards recognize Dorothy’s selfless service to others, her teaching, and her impact on the changing landscape of nursing education in Nebraska, but as she humbly puts it, “I did this stuff because we needed it!”