More than 100 Linfield-Good Samaritan School of Nursing students, employees and alumni gathered Tuesday to dedicate Loveridge Hall on the Linfield University Portland Campus. The building, previously unnamed, contains the three largest auditorium-style classrooms on the campus. It is now also the site of a historical exhibit honoring Emily L. Loveridge as an early nursing innovator and entrepreneur.
“It’s impressive to be able to celebrate being the first nursing-education program in the Pacific Northwest,” said Becky Johnson, Linfield’s interim president, told the gathering. “Of course, we are a pioneer because we stand on the shoulders of a pioneer: nurse Emily Loveridge. Emily was a trailblazer, and her legacy lives on at Linfield.”
The exhibit includes materials from the Linfield Archives. Installation was overseen by University Librarian Ginny Blackson. The exhibit was made possible by an Oregon Heritage Grant from the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department and a second grant from the McMinnville Area Community Foundation. In addition, a committee of Linfield trustees also made generous personal gifts and helped raise funds for the project.
Paul Smith, Linfield’s dean of nursing, called Loveridge “a pivotal figure” in the history of the profession and the school.
“Today, as we dedicate Loveridge Hall, we honor her pioneering spirit and her belief that education can transform not only nurses’ lives but also the lives of patients,” Smith said. “This hall will stand as a testament to her legacy, inspiring future generations to uphold the same standards of excellence in education and patient care that Emily set more than a century ago.”
Adding to the “avalanche of good”
Loveridge, who lived from 1860 to 1940, began the first training program for nurses in the Northwest. She helped shepherd a small, wooden hospital with 50 beds into a modernized 330-bed brick hospital. Loveridge oversaw Good Samaritan Hospital at a time when few, if any, other women in the United States were in similar leadership roles. She also organized the State of Oregon’s response to the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918. The nursing school she founded merged with Linfield in 1982 to become the Linfield-Good Samaritan School of Nursing.
Pam Wheeler, professor emeritus of nursing, gave a brief history of Loveridge for the gathering. She authored the 2022 biography, “Emily Lemoine Loveridge: Pioneer and Leader in Nursing.”
Linfield trustee Dave Haugeberg used the metaphor of a snowball that Loveridge began rolling down the top of a mountain generations ago, which has now turned into a bigger and much more powerful wall of snow. He announced the creation of the endowed Emily Loveridge Excellence Fund, which provides the dean of nursing with discretionary funding to support faculty and staff, for the benefit of future nursing students. Haugeberg encouraged those in attendance add to the fund so that Loveridge’s influence would gain in strength and reach.
“We should call ourselves the Emily Loveridge Avalanche Team,” Haugeberg told the crowd. “Every one of us can be a part of it. The motto is ‘Thank you, Emily,’ and the goal is to add what we can to the avalanche of good she generated in her lifetime. Today, and into the future, that avalanche can transform nursing education and continue to provide the opportunities that will make this one of the greatest schools of nursing anywhere.”
