When Virginia Keller was young, two of the few career options open to women were nursing and teaching.
She chose nursing and spent more than 40 years in the field, putting herself through night school and working her way up to hospital administrative positions.
As the director of staff education at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, she trained student nurses and was responsible for in-service and continuing education programs.
“She really started that program,” said Barbara Frederickson, one of Mrs. Keller’s former staff nurses. “She was able to impart a lot of knowledge because she had such a long history in the field. She started working before the advent of penicillin and saw the advent of a lot of exciting medical programs that we take for granted now.”
Mrs. Keller, 91, died of complications from a stroke Tuesday, June 13, at her home in McHenry.
“She was very forward-looking,” said her daughter Joan Stoy. “She was really a pioneer and opted to make changes in her field. She only stood about 5 foot tall–she was just a little bit of a thing–but she was quite a lady.”
Mrs. Keller was born Virginia Wright in 1914 in Yorkville, Ill. Her father owned a hardware store, and her mother died when she was young.
She graduated from Yorkville High School and moved to Chicago, where she completed her training as a registered nurse in 1935 at what was then the Evangelical Hospital School of Nursing on Chicago’s South Side.
While training as a student nurse, she met her husband, Elmer Keller, whose mother was in the hospital for an appendectomy. They got married in 1935. At the time, married nurses were not permitted to work in hospitals, her daughter said, so she stayed home to raise her two daughters.
Her husband was transferred to Ohio just before World War II. The shortage of nurses allowed her to work at small hospitals near Mansfield, Ohio. When the family returned to Chicago in 1947, she became an emergency room supervisor at Evangelical Hospital.
While there, she was invited to serve on a task force in Washington, D.C., that helped develop hospital civil defense plans.
Mrs. Keller anticipated the shift to college-based degree programs for nurses and enrolled in night school in 1948, her daughter said. While working full-time and raising two daughters, she attended Loyola University and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in nursing education and a master’s degree in education.
“She was a very driven person,” Frederickson said. “She was really at the grass roots of nursing education.”
Mrs. Keller was a hospital administrator in nursing programs at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park, Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago, Passavant Memorial Hospital in Chicago and Wesley Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Passavant and Wesley merged to become Northwestern Memorial.
“She was very modest. She wasn’t a gangbusters type of person,” her daughter said. “She was always able to handle situations without strong-arming people. She got these positions through hard work and earned respect.”
She saw many changes in the field and remembered the day at Wesley Hospital when nurses no longer had to wear the white hat, stockings and crisp uniforms.
In 1974 she moved from Morgan Park to the 57th floor of the John Hancock Building. Her husband was ill at the time, and she wanted a shorter commute to the hospital, which made it easier for her to check in on him.
She often hosted staff parties at her condo, and during a huge snowstorm in the late 1970s allowed staff members who were trapped in the city to stay at her home.
“She had a warm, friendly approach and a great working relationship with her staff,” Frederickson said. “She opened up her home to everyone, and we all came to know her family well.”
She retired in 1979 and cared for her husband full-time until his death in 1984.
Her daughter said she became a “city mouse” and enjoyed living downtown. Her condo had a bird’s-eye view of Navy Pier, and she invited friends and family over every year to watch the Air and Water Show. She lived independently at the Hancock until 2000.
For the last six years, she lived with her daughter in McHenry.
“She lived through two World Wars, the Great Depression, and used to reminisce that automobiles were a relatively new phenomenon when she was a teenager,” her daughter said. “She saw a lot of changes in her 91 years and a lot of hard times. She had a lot of stamina and strength of character and she taught her daughters to be strong girls too.”
Survivors include another daughter, Janet Carlton; a brother, Fred Wright; a sister, Patricia Lowery; four grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.
Services will begin at 10 a.m. Friday in the Blair Chapel at Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, 126 E. Chestnut St., Chicago.
