A love affair with healing, beginning as a teenage candy striper, led this nurse to a decades-long health-care position in the corporate world — and, eventually, a seat in the North Carolina House of Representatives.
Nurse
North Carolina’s Pioneers of Nursing
The story of nursing in North Carolina starts with the nurses who laid the foundation for today’s health-care heroes.
Called to Serve
Growing up near Fort Bragg instilled in one young nurse a sense of duty to community and country. She’d go on to reach the rank of lieutenant general, eventually assuming command as Army Surgeon General — the first woman ever to do so.
Angel of an Epidemic
In the late-1980s, a Boone nurse opened the doors of her western North Carolina home to AIDS patients and HIV-positive men, giving them space to cry, shoulders to lean on, and fellowship with other sufferers at a time when fear kept some people from even lending a hand.
The Gentle Giant from Swannanoa
Ernest Grant is exploding stereotypes in the medical world, not only as the first Black man to serve as president of the American Nursing Association — but also as the first man, period.
