It was almost as if Janice Mabry was destined to become a nurse.
While other children followed the adventures of superheroes and Nancy Drew, Janice read about the saving powers of Florence Nightingale and Sue Barton: Student Nurse. As a teenager, she volunteered as a candy striper and cared for ailing seamen in the U.S. Marine Hospital in Louisville.
In high school, Janice was intensely focused on her chosen career and contemplated becoming a missionary or joining the military to serve as a nurse, but instead decided to devote herself to community nursing.
She enrolled in the Norton Memorial Infirmary School of Nursing in Louisville in the fall of 1956. It was a highly competitive three-year program that was in session year round.The students took nursing classes at the hospital and general studies courses at the University of Louisville.
In addition to the academic and clinical course work, the students were required to work in the hospital as student nurses. Students were not allowed to marry during their first two years of nurses training. So, when Janice became a senior in 1958, she married her high school sweetheart, Gene Cantrall, who was a junior at the University of Louisville.
Nursing school was a physically, mentally and emotionally demanding experience. Students lived in a residence at the hospital and were governed by very strict rules and regulations involving most aspects of their life. As a result, Janice’s class had over a 50 percent attrition rate, but Janice graduated as the top student in her class in 1959.
After graduation, Janice worked for more than a decade at Norton Memorial Infirmary and Baptist East Hospital in Louisville on medical surgical floors, emergency room, recovery room, and the orthopedic unit. But she was ready for a new challenge. Janice wanted to pursue nursing education. She believed that her ex
