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On September 16, 2017, a group of people gathered to remember nurse anesthetist Anne Penland, a remarkable but long-forgotten daughter of North Carolina. Anne Penland, the first nurse anesthetist to serve in battle in WWI, at the Battle of Passchendaele, was also the first to graduate from the nurse anesthesia program at Presbyterian Hospital, Manhattan, in 1912.
The event was at the site of Anne Penland's childhood home on Haywood Street in Asheville, overlooking a beautiful mountain ridge north of downtown. Pack Memorial Library and the Vanderbilt Apartments now stand where the once-imposing Penland house was located until it burned in October 1903, when Anne was 18.
Those who gathered to commemorate and honor Anne Penland's service included nurse anesthetists from Asheville's Mission Health Hospital and nearby Western Carolina University; representatives of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists; members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, of which Anne Penland was a member from 1915-1974; local history buffs, and a few family members, most of whom had previously known little or nothing about their remarkable relative.
Following the ceremony-whose keynote speaker was Former AANA President Sandra Ouellette, MEd, CRNA, FAAN-Dr Kevin Cherry, deputy secretary of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, presented the proclamation of Anne Penland Day in North Carolina and led in the unveiling of the historical marker the department placed in front of the library recognizing the work of this unsung hero. Just a few weeks later, on Oct. 21, the North Carolina Association of Nurse Anesthetists honored Miss Penland with a posthumous Life Achievement Award.
If Anne Penland is someone you know little or nothing about, even though you are a nurse anesthetist and extremely knowledgeable about the profession, you are not alone. Very little has been written about Miss Penland; she makes a brief appearance in an official history of the Army Nurse Corps by Dr Mary T. Samečky, and she figures in two anniversary histories of the Presbyterian Hospital nursing school (Neighbors, by Eleanor Lee, published 1967, and Nurses of a Different Stripe, by Gary Goldenberg, published 1992.) But like others of her time, she quietly made contributions that ultimately laid the foundation for today's AANA. This article begins with discussion of her early years, education...