When as a teenager Grace Carr set out from a small town in coal country to become a nurse at Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown, World War II was still raging. The year was 1944, and she has been with Sacred Heart ever since.

For the past eight decades, she has either trained, worked or volunteered at the hospital, now St. Luke’s Sacred Heart Campus, a journey of many years and memories, both personal and professional.

Carr (nee’ Malloy), who turned 97 on July 4, still volunteers each Wednesday at the hospital.

She says she keeps coming back because, “It’s my alma mater, and I love this place!”

At age 17, Carr left her family home in Freeland, in the coal region of Luzerne County, to join the profession that is considered the most trusted in the world. She was the first nurse in her family but not the only one.

And she has never looked back.

“As long as I can remember, I wanted to be a nurse,” she said proudly. She graduated from the Sacred Heart School of Nursing in 1947, got married, started a family and never thought of leaving the hospital at Fourth and Chew Streets in downtown Allentown.

During her schooling, she served as a Nurse Cadet, a government trainee role within the U.S. Army, for which she was paid $15/month in her first year, then $20/month during her second year and $30 in her final year. The government also paid her tuition to the School of Nursing, on the condition that she, and other Cadet Nurses, work for a public organization like Sacred Heart, she recalled.

As a newly minted RN, she worked nights on the medical-surgical floors, soon growing a family. All five of her children, and nearly all of her grandchildren, were born at Sacred Heart. Her daughter, Grace Loring, trained at the School of Nursing, then worked in the pediatric ward for 35 years before retiring.  Two of her sisters followed in her footsteps, training and working at “The Heart,” as it’s affectionally called.

Carr retired at age 62 to take care of her ailing husband and started volunteering in 1993 after he passed away. She has logged more than 6,000 hours as a volunteer, always on Wednesday, taking specimens to the lab, escorting patients to tests and procedures and delivering water and flowers to patients.

“Grace is fantastic,” says Volunteer Engagement Specialist Beth Fogel, who has known Carr for 20 years. “We call her Amazing Grace. She loves to talk about the history of the hospital. She’s such a joy to talk to and has a great sense of humor.”

Carr carries a supply of sweets in her pocket when she’s at the hospital, nibbling them during her shift and sharing them widely with her fellow volunteers.

She lives in a three-story house in Allentown, and when not volunteering, she enjoys reading, sewing, visiting with family and keeping up her home.

She came to the hospital on a recent Wednesday, driven there by her daughter, Grace Loring. Though Carr wasn’t scheduled to volunteer because she was recovering from a recent foot surgery, she was keen on telling her tale of dedication to the institution’s patients, physicians, nurses and fellow volunteers.

One of her most memorable patients was the newborn son of a fellow nurse in the nursery. “He’s now my son-in-law,” she says with pleasure. “Who knew that would happen?”

Grace Carr has no plans to close this chapter of her life anytime soon. Instead, she hopes to continue serving the hospital as its oldest volunteer ever, an integral part of its 100-plus year history of caring for the community’s sick and injured.

“Keeping busy keeps me going,” she said. “I’ll keep coming back here as long as I’m able.”

 

About St. Luke’s

Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of more than 20,000 employees providing services at 15 campuses and 350+ outpatient sites.  With annual net revenue of $3.4 billion, the Network’s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke’s hospitals operate the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania, with the Bethlehem Campus being home to St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital.

Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania.  In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school campus.  It also operates the nation’s oldest School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 52 fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with more than 500 residents and fellows. In 2022, St. Luke’s, a member of the Children’s Hospital Association, opened the Lehigh Valley’s first and only free-standing facility dedicated entirely to kids.

SLUHN is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare’s five-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction.  It is both a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital and a Newsweek World’s Best Hospital.  The Network’s flagship University Hospital has earned the 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital designation from Fortune/PINC AI 10 years in a row, including in 2023 when it was identified as THE #4 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY.  In 2021, St. Luke’s was identified as one of the 15 Top Health Systems nationally.  Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of the SLUHN’s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.  The Network is also recognized as one of the state’s lowest-cost providers.

Information and images provided to TVL by:
Sam Kennedy