BILLINGS — The halls of St. Vincent Healthcare looked a little different than they did in 1965, but the memories came rushing back just the same on Friday.
“This just brings back so many memories,” said Laurie Vogele, a nurse of 40 years.
Watch as the Class of ’65 walks the halls once more—reliving the moments that shaped a lifetime of care:
Seven members of the original 15 graduates from the St. Vincent’s nursing class of 1965 returned to the place where their careers—and in many ways, their lives—began. The reunion brought them together in the same corridors where they once trained, bonded, and faced the challenges of a profession defined by care.
“It’s been 60 years, and some of us haven’t seen each other since then,” said Vogele.
One woman recalled exactly where she was during one of the most defining moments of the 20th century.
“It was here that I found out John F. Kennedy had been shot,” she said.
To those outside the profession, nursing might seem like a field of charts and checklists. Those who have lived it, however, share it is something more enduring—a heritage passed from one generation to the next.
“Nursing is just—you know, we’re very proud of our heritage. It really even goes back to Florence Nightingale,” said Janet Harris, St. Vincent’s chief nursing officer.
Harris’s own inspiration came from close to home. She did not begin with a textbook, but with a neighbor in a crisp white uniform.
“She would come out in her white dress and her white cap. I just thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. So, I was like, ‘I wanna do that,’” said Harris.
Vogele, now 80, shared a similar origin story. Long before Harris ever put on her own cap, Vogele found meaning in that same symbol.
“Well, I always idolized a nurse when I was a nurse’s aide and she had a cap on like this," said Vogele. "I thought it was dignity, I loved to wear my cap."
Some things have changed in the decades since—the paper charts have gone digital, the white caps replaced by scrubs, but others have not. The values at the heart of nursing, its capacity for empathy and resilience, continue.
“You are oftentimes a part of somebody’s worst day, or a part of one of their best days,” said Harris.
For Harris and Vogele, the reunion was more than a walk down memory lane. It was a homecoming of the heart—a moment to feel 20 again, and to see the legacy they have each helped build reflected in one another.
“You never quit. You never quit. It’s a wonderful life,” said Vogele.
