Standout took over LCSC nursing division on this date in 1965

Lewis-Clark State College is commemorating its 125th anniversary in 2018. This occasional feature highlights dates of interest in the school’s history.

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Sept. 30, 1965: When Grace Smith was named on this day to be the first director of the Lewis-Clark Normal School nursing division, the college knew it had made a superb choice.

Smith came from a long line of educators. Her mother, Melvina Grant Shawen, was the first principal of Moscow High School. Her aunt, Martha Grant Heddington, was the first superintendent of schools for Latah County.

Smith earned her Bachelor of Science degree in pre-nursing from the University of Idaho and completed the graduate course of study in advanced nursing in 1936 at Stanford University, where she was head nurse of the pediatric outpatient department in 1936-37.

She earned a Master of Science degree at the University of Washington and became the clinical instructor at St. Luke’s School of Nursing in Spokane from 1943 to 1945.

In 1955, Smith became a public health nurse for Latah County. After receiving a federal grant, she studied at the University of Washington in 1959 and 1960, obtaining a master of public health nursing degree.

She resigned as the public health nurse for Latah County to assume the headship of the new division at the Normal. With Sr. Helen Francis, the administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital, Smith had championed the establishment of a registered nursing program and had allied herself with Gov. Robert Smylie’s sister Dorothy to beat back the naysayers.

Classes began in the fall of 1966 in a single classroom on the third floor of what is now Thomas Jefferson Hall, with Smith, Diane Johnson and Nellie Montague as the faculty. Johnson held a bachelor of science degree in nursing from Seattle University. Montague was a graduate of the old St. Joseph’s school, completing a bachelor’s degree at Walla Walla College and a master’s at the University of Washington. She taught nursing at Columbia Basin College in Pasco and Deaconess Hospital in Spokane.

Smith retired from LCSC in 1978 and died on March 17, 2005, at the age of 92, still living at her home near Potlatch.

Branting, a former Lewiston educator, recently was named Lewis-Clark State College institutional historian.