Mathews turned stumbling blocks into stepping stones
Nurse, teacher brought public health to masses
Laura Mathews had a gift for turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones and challenges into fuel for personal growth. She lost her mother at age 8, but still set her sights high, nurturing eight children of her own.
And after losing her oldest son to leukemia, one of her primary missions became providing health services to underprivileged children.
“I’ve had some personal pain, some hard times,” Mathews told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 1997.
“But I grew from them.”
Mathews of Milwaukee, a former state southeast regional director of public health for the Department of Health and Social Services, died of complications related to congestive heart failure Aug. 27. She was 85.
“She was stronger than anyone I’ve ever known,” said her daughter, Joyce Patricia Mathews.
“She kept pushing. She persevered.”
Laura Mathews was born Laura Louise Wright July 11, 1932, in Covington, Tenn., to parents William Austin Wright Sr. and Victoria Wright.
She graduated from Frazier High School in Covington and married Jesse James Mathews in Jackson, Miss., in 1951.
After the couple moved to Milwaukee and their oldest son died in 1961, Mathews earned a degree in licensed practical nursing from what is now Milwaukee Area Technical College and worked nights at St. Joseph’s Hospital.
“They had me doing registered nurse work, so one day I asked my supervisor when I would get R.N. pay,” Mathews said in the 1997 interview.
The supervisor answered: “When you become an R.N.”
Mathews’ reply: “Don’t you think I can’t.”
Mathews earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing from Marquette University, the first in 1973 and the second in 1979.
She served as a public health nursing coordinator and an occupational health nursing consultant for the State of Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services before becoming director of nursing services at the Steven Bryant Nursing Home in Milwaukee.
In 1984, Mathews became the state’s director of public health for Milwaukee County and southeastern Wisconsin.
She later helped develop a professional health care services department to serve children at Wee Care Day Care Center and helped start the state’s Women, Infants and Children program at Wee Care.
After retiring in 1992, she coached nursing students at Marquette and went on to earn associate’s and bachelor’s degrees in religious studies from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.
In 2007, she earned her
doctorate in religious studies online from Trinity Theological Seminary in Canterbury, England.
Mathews served as an adult Sunday School teacher and was active at Pilgrim’s Rest Baptist Church and Calvary Baptist Church.
“She grew up in an era before the civil rights movement and saw some unpleasant things,” her daughter said.
“But she never lost her compassion.”