Three sisters, one calling

Taking a high school biology class designed to educate future nurses gave Mary Ann Brockman an early taste of nursing school. Although two-year diploma programs were the usual route for nursing back then, Brockman’s parents had instilled the importance of a four-year degree in their four daughters (Kathy, the second oldest, became a dietitian). Those factors, combined with the availability of financial supplements for nursing students provided by President Ronald Reagan’s administration, made Brockman’s decision to earn her BSN an easy one.

Brockman commuted daily to campus with three nursing friends, coining the nickname “The Carpool.” Their commute enabled additional studying before exams, engaged discussions after exams, and bonding that created lifelong friendships.

“The four of us are still close to this day, as we shared so much back then,” Brockman says.

After graduation, the four friends joined Cincinnati Children’s and Brockman worked for a few years in the hospital’s long-term care unit. The desire to escape Ohio’s winters encouraged her move to Florida, which led to a position in the adult oncology unit at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, where opportunities in pediatrics were limited.  

“I almost quit every month for the first six months; it was so hard. Then I stayed in that same department for 35 years,” Brockman recalls. “I realized that helping people through the biggest crisis in their lives was my true calling.”

Laurie (Nolte) Casey started her academic career at the UC College of Arts and Sciences but quickly realized nursing was her calling, inspired by the impact her older sister Mary Ann had on people’s lives.

After graduation, Casey worked as a registered nurse at Providence Hospital in Mount Airy before joining the teenager unit at Cincinnati Children’s. She took a few years off to focus on her two children, then leveraged her nursing background as a utilization reviewer for insurance companies until her retirement at 59 years old.

 “She was always interested in an alternative angle of nursing,” her younger sister, Terri, says.

In May 2023, Casey passed away at age 62.

Despite concerns about how challenging the nursing program would be, Terri (Nolte) Rutz wanted to be a nurse for as long as she can remember.  

“Mary Ann was such an influence on me, I remember ironing her uniform while she studied for exams, I wanted to support her as I could,” Rutz recalls.

Like her two older sisters, Rutz earned her BSN from UC. After graduation, she moved with her husband — a graduate from the UC College of Engineering and Applied Sciences — to Mississippi, where she worked as a pediatric nurse. A few years later, they returned to Cincinnati and Rutz joined the Emergency Department at Cincinnati Children’s, then transitioning to inpatient care until deciding to stay home with her children.

In 1990 her sister Kathy, who taught healthy eating habits to pregnant women, encouraged Rutz to join in evening childbirth classes throughout Cincinnati. Those classes piqued Rutz’s interest in natural childbirth, leading to her becoming a doula. Over the following 10 years, Rutz helped more than one hundred women as a certified childbirth educator, doula and as a mom-baby visiting nurse.

“That’s what is so fun about nursing, there are so many different avenues you can take,” Rutz says.