Vitals machine donated to Health Occupations

Many hospital colleagues fondly remember Virginia “Ginny” Huelsing. Ginny worked from 1964-2006 at St. Anthony’s as manager of anesthesia/surgery. When Ginny passed away in September 2021, her family wanted to bless St. Anthony’s Health Occupations class for continuing the legacy of health care in their family.

JoEllen Armstrong, med/surg nurse and Health Occupations Class instructor, shared the story. “I met Sidney Huelsing, Ginny’s granddaughter, last summer when Ginny was a patient* and Sidney was helping take care of her grandmother in the hospital.  As we were talking, it came up in conversation that Sidney was going to be in Health Occ.  I laughingly told her that I would be her teacher and I told her she would be great in Health Occ because I could see what a great caregiver she was.  She told me she wanted to go into nursing, which excited Ginny, because Sidney would be following in her footsteps.” 

When Ginny passed away a few months later, the Huelsing family included the Health Occupations Class as one of the memorial donation choices, which brought in over $1,000.  The memorial donations combined with a generous donation by the Health Occupations director Laura Sullivan from Eastern IL Education for Employment System 340 recently allowed the Health Occupations Class to acquire a vital signs machine for their classroom for teaching purposes.

A special thank you to Michael Wall, director of philanthropy, who worked with materials and bio-medicine departments to find a reliable vitals machine that could be purchased for amount donated.

*Shared with permission of the family.