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In Memory Of Our Poets

Jeanette White (Redmond) (-1983) - Class Of 1964

 

This nurse's way of caring will be missed

Students of Jeanette Redmond
will remember her as being "warm"
and her Lamaze classes as being
a "very personal experience."

By Mary Ellen LeBlanc
Tribune Staff Writer

   Jeanette Redmond taught people how to have babies: But when she died last Sunday at the age of 36, a lot of those people said they learned a lot more from her than that.
   "She made us feel so welcome and warm, yet conveying all the knowledge about childbirth," said Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive end, Lee Roy Selmon. "I felt more comfortable and useful when our son was being born," he said.
   Selmon and his wife, Caybra, were two of the hundreds of persons Redmond taught the Lamaze technique of preparing for childbirth at St. Joseph's Hospital.
   "You don't meet a lot of people that are as warm and tender as she was," Selmon said. "We're going to miss her."
   "She had a reputation as being a caring individual, so her classes were booked months in advanced," said Redmond's husband, Michael.

     "Jeanette initiated the Lamaze program for expectant parents at St. Joseph's about five years ago," said Redmond, "while she was working as a nurse clinician in labor and delivery. She first came to St Joseph's in 1974 and was a member of the American Society for Psychoprophlaxis Obstetric," he said.
   "She always wanted to be an obstetrics nurse," said Redmond.
   She continued to teach and work in labor and delivery at the hspital even after doctors, in 1979, diagnosed a brain tumor and told her she had 12 to 18 months to live.
   "Most of her students didn't know she was sick," said Redmond. " She continued to work through some difficult days because," he said, "she loved it and wanted to continue doing it."
   "She made the class a very personal experience," said Kathy Ricchezza, a close friend and nurse at St. Joseph;s, who went through Redmond's Lamazze class about a year ago.
 		    "She said she learned as much from her class as she gave," said Ricchezza.
   "On Wednesday afternoons, Redmond would volunteer two hours of her timeto teach pregnant teen-agers at George Washington School how to care for themselves physically and emotionally," said Suzanne Sullivan, a nurse at the school.
   Many of Redmond's students both in the high school and at the hospital kept in touch with her through cards, gifts, and even class reunions, her husband said.
   One gift she received was hand-stitched message in a wood frame which reads, "Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves."
   St. Joseph's will be dedicating a plaque in her honor for the hospital's new cancer center and has established the Jeanette Redmond Memorial Fund.

A nurse who touched many lives

Jeanette Redmond always
did a little extra as a nurse
at St. Joseph's Hospital. Her
death is mourned by many.

[ Editor's Note: Jeanette White Class of 1964 was married to Michael Redmond Class of 1962. Jeanette passed away on January 23, 1983. The following article was reprinted from The Tampa Tribune, January, 1983. ]