Bio: Hansen, Helen (Nursing Career - 1980)

Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Hansen

----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI) 9/18/1980

Hansen, Helen (Nursing Career - 1980)

Helen Hansen’s 35-year career as a nurse has taken her from the combat zones of the South Pacific during World War II to the health services of three different institutions of high learning. But her most hazardous duty wasn’t during her stint in the army.

It happened in about 1943 on the day a deer was being chased by a dog out of the swamps that now comprise the UW-Stevens Point’s north campus. The deer plunged through a window in Old Main and ran confused down a corridor, into her office where it knocked over hundreds of bottles of medicines and other supplies.

She hasn’t seen quite as much commotion on the job since, even in the period when she was assigned as an Army nurse in Tinian and Saipan where her movement was restricted toa small area because the islands hadn't been secured militarily.

Hansen has retired from the health service staff at UW-SP where she served the past 22 years. In her new status she and her father, William C. Hansen , share an unusual distinction. They are believed to be the first two-generation team to be in the ranks of UW-SP’s retired faculty.

The father’s and daughter’s careers coincided several years here before his retirement in 1962.

Hansen was born in Milltown, in northwestern Wisconsin, where her father was the high school principal. She grew up in Neillsville, Oconto and Stoughton and was graduated from the UW-Madison School of Nursing in 1943.

Her first position was with the Army Air Force, stationed in Stevens Point when it had a contingent of trainees at the then state teachers college. Her total military career continued until 1946 at which time she became a campus nurse at Iowa State Teachers college in Cedar Falls. After two years there and time out for more class work at UW-Madison, she became the nurse at UW-Platteville where she remained eight years before returning here in 1958.

Hansen was UW-SP’s only nurse when she was hired and for the first semester her duties included being a biology instructor and a dorm director. There were limitations on the level of health care that could be provided, she recalls, because a physician was here only part of each day. Now there are three full time physicians, four nurses, two physician assistants, a full-time and half-time medical technologist, a half-time life style assessment coordinator, a secretary, and a receptionist. A half-time health educator may be added.

Hansen says she believes today’s collegians have more stress related problems than their counterparts of a generation ago. Flu epidemics have become much more common, too, as the institution has grown, and students have become more mobile. A student may go home for a holiday to a distant place and bring a new strain of infection back that otherwise might not have reached the community, she observes.

Wellness has become a watchword in the UW-SP health service in recent years, promoted by several of the former and present physicians who have become nationally known in this field. Miss Hansen believes there is an element of faddishness in it, but she says there is something “very practical about it.” A lot of activities such as excessive jogging are done in the name of wellness, she contends, and people are altering their diets on the basis of some questionable claims that certain foods are harmful and vice versa.

“But all in all, wellness is an economical way to serve and maintain a high level of health for the general population,” she advises.

Hansen, who will continue her residence with her parents at 508 McDill Ave., hasn’t stopped her trips to campus. Instead of coming as an employee, she now is a student taking a mathematics course under a tuition-free program for senior citizens. She plans to give more time to the humane Society and Portage County Democratic party in which she has held longtime memberships. Music and crafts are her hobbies. Her retirement was marked during the weekend at a gathering here of the Wisconsin College Health Association, an organization of which she is one of the last original members. At a luncheon, her colleagues in the local health center presented her with a gift and the organization gave her a commendation in the form of a plaque.