Nurses & Chicago's Nurse Parade
When Frances Vlasses decided to donate to the Nurses Float online it started a chain of events that has been wonderful. Frances, a professor at the Loyola University Niehoff School of Nursing, has volunteered to decorate floats for the past several years. How did that connection happen? Her neighbor, in Chicago, is a floral designer that works for Charisma Floats and she got Frances involved. For the 2010 Parade, Frances contacted F4TF telling us she was going to be in Pasadena decorating and it just happened to be the exact date and time the Board of Directors were observing the decorating process. We met with Frances and she told us about the Nurse Parade and gifted us with the book that she and her co-authors wrote.
Authors Carolyn Hope Smeltzer, Frances R. Vlasses, and Connie R. Robinson are nurses committed to uncovering the silent, often hidden stories of nurses. Here, they expose the “best-kept forgotten nurse story”—the story of the “world’s largest shortest parade.”
When I read the Chicago’s Nurse Parade Book, I was struck at the similarity of the goals for the 1949 Chicago Nurse Parade and our goals for the 2013 Nurses Float. The goals were simple, recognize the contributions of nurses and to recruit nurses to the profession. It validated that the current Nurses Float project is honoring history and providing an opportunity for us to replicate the honorable goals set by the Chicago Nurse Parade.
Book Description:
Chicago singularly honored nurses, our “Angels of Mercy,” for a decade (1949–1958). Father Clarence M. Brissette O.S.M., director of the Sorrowful Mother Novena, originated both Chicago’s “Nurses Day” and Chicago’s Nurse Parade in 1949. The purpose of the parade was twofold: to give the nurses a “day of glory” and to also encourage others to join this undermanned, noble, and caring profession. The first Chicago Nurse Parade (1949) had two floats, four bands, and included many nurses marching in capes. The 10-year anniversary parade (1958) had 4,000 marching uniformed nurses, over 30 bands, and over 100 decorated floats representing nearly all Chicagoland hospitals and schools of nursing. In 1958, over 100,000 spectators lined Jackson Boulevard to honor nurses in what would be the final parade. This book is available to you at www.arcadiapublishing.com.