Late nursing director to join Lodi hall of fame
Lorraine Pope, who passed away in 1983, will soon be one of the newest inductees into the Lodi Community Hall of Fame.
Pope served as Lodi Memorial Hospital’s Director of Nurses from 1958 until 1977, and was a member of the Lodi Memorial Hospital Foundation, Lodi Memorial Hospital Building and ground board member and president of the Lodi Memorial Hospital Auxiliary. She was also a board member of the San Joaquin Delta College School of Nursing, president of the Omega Nu sorority and an active church volunteer.
Pope also served as a mentor to Jeanette Munsill for 10 years, and is remembered fondly by the now-retired nurse. Munsill best remembers Pope for her tender, loving care (TLC) style of nursing, and her dedication to all of her patients and endless compassion.
“She could handle any problem, personnel or doctor. Patients were her No. 1 priority. There’s a completely different kind of nursing they do today, compared to the bedside nursing we did back then.”
Terry Whitmire, Pope’s daughter, also had fond memories of her mother to share. When Pope was between 10 to 12 years old, she was in an auto accident, Whitmire said, requiring her to take the bus back and forth to St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco for plastic surgery.
This served as the catalyst that inspired Pope to pursue nursing, eventually becoming a registered nurse through St. Francis and taking an extra year of training at Stanford University to become a surgery nurse.
During Pope’s time as Director of Nurses at Lodi Memorial, it was quite uncommon for a woman to hold the position, according to Whitmire, but Pope’s strength and integrity earned her the respect of superiors and peers alike.
“She was a visionary, and she was a doer. It didn’t matter that it was a man’s job, she got it done. Everybody knew where they stood with her, she was a full-blooded Italian woman who talked with her hands and gave lots of hugs. She never asked her staff to do anything she wouldn’t do herself,” said Whitmire.