Elizabeth Nelson and Hazel Coleman Honored by Board

The Lunenburg Health Service, Inc. Board of Directors recently acknowledged its indebtedness to and lauded the contributions of two former directors of nursing services: Willie Elizabeth Guthrie Nelson, who passed away May 6, 2009, and Hazel Daniel Coleman, who passed away May 21, 2009.

Nelson served as the first Director of Nursing Services for LHS. She left a promising career with the United States Public Health Service in Washington, D.C. to come to Lunenburg County to set up the policies and procedures and nursing standards that are still in effect today. Her career in public health nursing spanned over forty years. In 1980, she received the Nancy Vance Pin Award for outstanding state nurse from the Virginia Nurses Association. The Virginia Nurses Association recognized her as one of Virginia’s Pioneer Nurses at their centennial celebration in 2000.

A resolution of the board, adopted on July 20, honored Nelson “for her visionary guidance and pioneering efforts in establishing our nursing policies and procedures and for her unselfish commitment and dedication to fair andcompassionate nursing care.”

Coleman served as nursing director from 1967 until 1989, the longest tenure of any LHS nurse. A resolution adopted on July 20 reads, in part, “This servant of God is not remembered by her many years of service as a nurse, but by the difference she made during those years by stepping into people’s lives to be a calming, quiet presence, to share in the excitement of birth, the challenges of illness, and the heartache of death, to provide a listening ear and a gentle touch, and to provide medical care and insight.”