by Claire Foote

A year ago, I had the privilege of introducing Dr. Marilyn Whitley to you, as she presented Dr. Oliver Osborne with AAPPN’s 2010 award for Nursing Excellence.  This evening, I have the honor of presenting Marilyn with our 2011 Excellence in Nursing Award.

I’m going to tell you a little about Marilyn and her professional career.  I’ll then assume the voice of Oliver Osborne – who, at this moment, is enjoying Spain – as, in absentia, Oliver presents our award to Marilyn.

I met Marilyn Peddicord Whitley in September 1974.  Marilyn was a new graduate of the masters program at the UW Department of Psychosocial Nursing, and a brand-new instructor in the department.  I was a brand-new graduate student.  As I recall, Marilyn came to one of our classes to talk about her thesis research – it was about sex.  Times were different then.  This was barely a decade after oral contraceptives had come on the market.  My classmates and I couldn’t figure it out – here was this seemingly demure, seemingly very straight woman, working in the field of sexology.  Marilyn created a bit of a buzz.

Over the 37 years since, Marilyn has continued to forge ahead in the world of nursing.  I’ll defer to Oliver to give you the details, but will highlight a few areas for you.

After completing, in 1974, an MA in psychosocial nursing at the UW, over the next 9 years or so, Marilyn did post-graduate studies in epidemiology at the UW.  She then earned a second masters degree and a PhD, both in Political Science, both at the UW, as she continued her work as faculty in the UW School of Nursing, as an instructor, an assistant professor, and as a lecturer.   As she pursued academia, Marilyn also continued her clinical work, becoming one of the first advanced practice psychosocial nurses in independent practice in Washington State – many years before the phrase, “advanced practice,” became a professional category.  She was one of the first among us to become certified by the ANA as a Clinical Specialist in Adult Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing.  Together with Linn Larson, who joins us here tonight, Marilyn is one of the founders of the organization that we now know as AAPPN.  For its first twenty-plus years, it was called the Northwest Association of Clinical Specialists in Psychosocial Nursing – NWACSPSN.  It is no exaggeration to say that we owe our very presence here tonight to the pioneering work of Marilyn Whitley and Linn Larson.

After completing her doctoral work, Marilyn’s academic career continued to develop.  Again, Oliver will tell you the details, but I will say that Marilyn’s academic positions included associate professor, professor, assistant dean, associate dean, director of an undergraduate program, and director of a graduate program, all in schools of nursing, in Portland, OR, Havre, MT, Chicago, and Seattle.

Since retiring from her academic life about ten years ago, Marilyn has continued her rich and creative life, pursuing other interests and loves.

I’ll turn the podium over to Dr. Oliver Osborne now.  He will tell you more about Marilyn, her career before retirement, and her career since retiring.

Marilyn Whitley, 2011 Excellence in Nursing Award

by Oliver H. Osborne, PhD, ARNP

Although I cannot be with you today, I am more than pleased to have been chosen to present Dr. Marilyn Peddicord Whitley with the 2011 AAPPN Excellence in Nursing Award. “What goes around, comes around.” Last year Marilyn presented me with this award. And on that occasion, the person who introduced Marilyn is the same one who reads these words for me this evening: your own Claire Foote.

Though I was not privy to the deliberations of the award committee, I can only say: brilliant choice. Excellence is a most appropriate term to describe Dr. Whitley’s way of being in all she undertakes. Her ways of excellence are legion.

She undertook years of formal academic preparation for the many interesting and demanding professional positions she has held.  She received her BS in Nursing from the University of Portland. Then, from the University of Washington she took an MA in Psychosocial Nursing, two years of post-graduate studies in epidemiology, an MA in Political Science, and finally her PhD in Political Science. When I say that during these years she also produced and reared four children, I believe you will understand what a steely resolve supported her.

Then there is what I can only describe as her Roman Catholic rectitude which presents itself to me, not as constricted righteousness or embattled morality, but as a wide-ranging and all-embracing goodness, a deeply-embedded integrity, and an essentially, almost wondrously, adult orientation towards people and the problems they confront. Marilyn’s way of being fosters her ability to successfully and creatively confront nontraditional and poorly-defined tasks.

Some thirty-seven years ago, after she had received her master’s degree and become an instructor in the department, these qualities recommended her to me as the person who should coordinate the department’s undergraduate curriculum, with all the associated difficulties of gaining the collaboration of many faculty members in both teaching and curriculum design. Her exceptional management of this difficult and complex assignment permitted me to focus on a multitude of other tasks. I know I have thanked her before. Let me do so again.

In the early 1980s came a state budget crisis that threatened the department’s survival. Again, with little instruction other than to go rally the department’s graduates to lobby in Olympia and the community on its behalf, Marilyn’s and Linn Larson’s energetic action contributed immeasurably  to its survival. Immediately thereafter, using the contacts and good will they had developed, they were able to lay the foundations for the development of what has become the AAPPN.

After receiving her PhD, Marilyn spent four years as the Associate Dean of Student Affairs at the University of Portland where she quelled student unrest and helped re-set the School’s academic standards. Then she spent two years as the Director of the Joint Venture Project with the Oregon Health Sciences University and the Veterans Administration Hospital, Portland Oregon. This work required her to foster the productive collaboration of professionals from two different institutions to achieve a common goal.

Her next adventure was as Professor and Director of Nursing, Northern Montana College (now Montana State University), Havre, Montana. That school, located on the high plains just south of the Canadian border, staffed by few graduate prepared faculty, was seeking a leader who could gain its accreditation.

The school serves the Highline, the sparsely-settled northern tier of Montana, named for the railroad and highway that run parallel to the Canadian border for hundreds of miles through Havre to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Abandoned settlements dot the route. Several Native American reservations exist in uneasy relation to the majority culture. In the towns and hamlets, poverty is rampant and viable enterprises few. Among these are the healthcare facilities that draw on the school’s graduates.

I will never know just what drew Marilyn to this remote region and thorny undertaking. Northern Montana wasn’t ready for a PhD Political Science nurse bent on professionalism, committed to diversity, on a mission of change, sporting an artist-husband who made her breakfast and chauffeured her everywhere. At her request, I provided consultation and visited Havre and those communities. I know whereof I speak when I say her task was monumental.  But she achieved her goal and even managed to graduate historic numbers –eight! –Native American students her third and final year there.  Also, during her second year in Havre the BSN program was NLN accredited and the AND program in the third year.

After four years, Marilyn left the plains of Montana to become Associate Dean and Director of the Undergraduate Program at Loyola University, Chicago. Four years later, she returned to Seattle to serve four years at Seattle University first as a consultant and then as the Director of the Graduate program where she developed the fast track program for nurse practitioners.

In addition to her classroom teaching and academic administration, Marilyn has had a successful clinical career.  She has held positions as a staff nurse;  public health nurse; prenatal educator; psychotherapist in private practice serving families, couples, and individuals; supervisor of sex therapy trainees in the UW Sexual Dysfunction Clinic; registered nurse consultant for the Veterans Administration, Seattle; and nurse practitioner in Washington, Oregon and Montana. She also has ANA certification as a clinical specialist in adult psychiatric mental health nursing.

She has made significant intellectual contributions to nursing, presenting more than 50 papers at conferences and workshops, publishing 12 articles in scientific journals, writing seven book chapters, producing five videotapes, and submitting grants.

In closing I want to acknowledge Marilyn’s devoted husband Lee, former school teacher and contractor, now and for many years a professional artist, who facilitated her work always, but particularly when they were away from home. He drove her the many miles between Seattle, Portland, and Havre, and back and forth along the Highline. Together, they have brought up four lovely children. It was Lee who promoted her interest in ceramics. After her retirement, she became an accomplished and prolific potter, and for many years she and Lee have sold their products in Seattle’s Pike Place Market.

Throughout her career and the many places it has taken her, Marilyn has made many dear friends. I’m proud to number myself among them, and very proud to present her, in absentia, with this richly-deserved award.

AAPPN  THANK YOU 4-1-2011

by Marilyn Peddicord Whitley

Hello!  Good Evening!  I’m pretty surprised and honored by this award.  Thank You!! Thank you very much!!  It is not an April Fools’ Joke, right? I’m just wondering because:

I have one of those vita’s that is likely to prompt an H.R. person to ask for an explanation.  I’ve moved around.  I’ve spent time in foreign venues.  I’ve done a few unpopular things.

However, you are not an H.R. group so I’m not going to explain.  Rather, I want to say you are MY group. That’s why the award has a special meaning to me.  You’re the people that I feel close to. You are the people with whom I can identify. When we came home from those foreign places a few years back and attended one of these dinners and I saw you dancing after dinner I knew I was back again with “my people.”

I haven’t always enjoyed groups.  In fact, I began my public life as a Girl Scout drop out – about age 10.  They glued paper together and made up stuff to do.

You don’t spend your time making up work. You devote your energies to some of the real and important work of the world.  It is said that the most difficult of human endeavors is the work of getting along and nurturing others to reach each person’s potential.  It is hard and requires just enough immersion into others’ circumstances to offer direction and encouragement.  It is sometimes dangerous work.  A number of you work with people who are very unstable.  Some of you have been threatened and some injured.

Many of you are in private practice assisting individuals and families.  Others hold jobs inside institutions.  It is all a careful, quiet, dance toward assisting the fabric of a free and civilized society to grow together and remain in tact.  From a Political Science point of view, your work is part of what makes our life enviable.  So many around the world who would like to be among us or even emulate our life style have very little idea how to create a society where they can freely grow and thrive.

A good number of you have worked very hard to keep this organization alive and thriving.  This organization supports our legitimacy and “watches our backs” when we are required to do something important but unpopular.

I would like to mention a few people who dared to stand up to the legislature to gain prescriptive authority and further legitimacy for their colleagues. As one of the originators of this organization, I thank you and ask those of you who are here to stand for a round of applause.

Rebecca Allen, Merry Armstrong, Susan Caverly, Jan Davis-Morgan, Claire Foote, Suzanne Leichman, Trudi Levy, Glee Lyon, Mary Ellen O’Keefe, Donna Poole, Nina Ramsey, Lois-Price Spratlen, Bonita Quiroz-Cantu, Cheryl Raleigh-DuRoff, Patti Varley and more recently Lisa Trigg, Tatiana Sadik, Jessica Webb, Zarah Kushner. AND always Connie Huffine the really fine administrator who makes everything click together.

While we are recognizing people, I would also like to introduce my husband of 53 years, Lee.  And our children:  Stewart Whitley, Susanna Whitley Barnette and her husband Phil, Steven Whitley and his wife Mary.  Our third son, Stanley, is unable to be here today.

Besides all of you we also have our special support group present:  Linn Larson, who was also active in establishing this group, Dr. Lois Price Spratlan and her husband Dr. Thaddaus Spratlan, Mary Taylor Bush and her husband Bill Bush, Dr. Kathy Smith-Dijulio and her husband Don Dijulio.  In absentia are Oliver Osborne, his wife Julianne Nason and Helen Graves

There are some people here who are just beginning their careers.  I’m not sure you realize what a grand education you have been fortunate enough to acquire. As a nurse, you do not have to spend your working life in a small space or with a limited group. Nurses are valuable.  We get jobs!!! We keep jobs!!!  We can change jobs!!!  We adapt!! We can acquire a little more education and move to another area of nursing.  Very few professionals have the flexibility that we do.  Add the interpersonal skills that psychiatric nurses have and you are especially valuable.

A significant portion of my career was centered around students.  I like students and I liked being a student.  It was rare for me to meet someone that I didn’t enjoy even when I held a role that included telling someone that nursing was evidently not their calling.  During those times I usually remembered the admonition of Hildegard Papleau –I heard her talk one time while at the U. of Washington.

Yes, I’m old enough to have seen her in person.  She was an impressive woman, in one of those larger than life Agatha Christie bodies.  I can still see her standing on the stage, alone, very tall, long sweater, ankle length skirt, gray hair, shaking her finger at us.  “Hold the standards high.”  She said.  She didn’t just mean academia she also meant in our practice. She urged us not to give in to institutional demands that did not offer our students and clients the best advantages for success.  She also challenged us to more rigor in our work, more thought and understanding about the what and why of our profession.

That admonition holds true today especially in declining economies and shrinking programs.  In order to offer our best skill sets the milieu must contribute considerable strengths.  Those of you who work to achieve and hang on to those situations deserve our support and thanks.

My career did span a considerable chunk of modern history.  My work as a public health nurse included several one-room schools in Kittitas County outside of Ellensburg.  They were rare even then, I visited them regularly.  In fact, Ellensburg was such a remote place the State had to send a special Doctor to read the T.B. x-rays.  I remember him, Dr.Cedwick Northrup. He was a dapper grey haired man with a well-tended mustache.  He used to begin his dictated notes by saying colorful things like, “This young male of 75 summers.”  I thought them to be so old.  One day as I sat beside him making notes in charts, he tapped me on the knee and said, “All things are relative, aren’t they Mrs. Whitley.”  I was 23 at the time.

Nursing was good to me and to our family.  The knowledge base helped a great deal with the raising of children.  I could stand firm and say, “Don’t bleed on the rug.” without getting overly emotional or guilty.  I went back to school when my own life needed a greater intellectual challenge. As a result, we got to travel and live in different parts of the country.  Montana is pretty much right in claiming to be “The last Best Place” and Chicago truly is a toddling town.

Now, I am the person of 75 summers.  I’m hoping you’ll all be able to enjoy your work and each other at least that long.

Thank you again.  This is such a nice surprise.  I really do treasure it.