Time Machine: A beloved Elkader nurse

ELKADER - Elkader nurse Louise Liers had driven her 1930 Model A more than 198,000 miles in 1949.

The 60-year-old obstetric and child care nurse had seen the births of more than 500 Elkader babies in the previous 15 years and more than 7,200 babies in her 40 years of nursing.

She was invited to a celebration May 1 at the Elkader fairgrounds, but she almost missed it when she was called to attend the birth of another baby, a girl, at 10 that morning.

She arrived at the fairground shelter house in time for a big basket dinner. More than 300 people from Elkader, Clayton County and elsewhere had gathered for the celebration in her honor. Liers was greeted by friends, family and associates, before a dear friend, Duluth Pieper of Clayton, began making presentations. He gave her a $15 check, a $50 savings bond and a sealed box that she thought contained a watch.

He then led her to the closed doors at the side of the shelter. When they were pulled open, there stood a shiny, new Chevy Styleline Deluxe purchased with the funds donated by her grateful friends and patients.

Overwhelmed, Liers could only say, 'Oh, no! Oh, no! What is it?”

Hundreds of people knew about the 'appreciation fund” for their beloved nurse, but the secret was kept well.

When she had calmed down a little, she said, 'I don't even know how to drive a gearshift car, but believe me, I am going to learn!”

In August, The Gazette reported, 'Our special friend, Nurse Louise Liers of Elkader, is back from one trip and already planning another one - this time to the Ozarks, maybe, in the fall. She learned to drive that new car Elkader folks gave her, but she ‘bends her shoes' against the floorboard, she says, when someone else is herding it.”

Liers was born in Clayton. When she was 9, she moved with her parents to a farm a few miles away. She attended high school in Dubuque, then enrolled in nursing school in 1907 in Chicago. While there, she assisted in delivering 3,000 babies. Premature babies were her specialty.

After her training, she stayed on in Chicago as head of an obstetrics department until 1916, when she enrolled in training to be a Red Cross nurse. Before she finished, the United States went to war with Germany and she was sent to France. The Army was in charge of all nursing personnel sent overseas, so she became an Army nurse.

'During the war,” she recalled in a 1978 Gazette interview, 'we were at a base hospital. It would take about four hours by train to reach the front. Some were shipped by hospital trains, but mostly by French cattle trains with bunks built in. Toward the end of the war, in 1918, trains that took four or five hours to get back from the front were taking four or five days, we were pushing the Germans back so fast. When they'd bring in these trains at night, everyone would work, treating them, bathing them and feeding them and changing their dressings.”

She told of maggots in the soldiers' wounds and treating the wounds with ether to kill the maggots. It wasn't until near the end of the war that they discovered the maggots were helping to clean out the wounds.

'They even raised sterile maggots before the war was over, so they could put sterile maggots into those infected wounds,” she said.

After the war, she returned to private nursing in Chicago until 1927, when she decided to come back to Clayton County to take care of her aging mother who still was on the family farm.

Because she was in a rural area, she put nursing on the back burner and began raising eggs, shipping them back to Chicago. One snowy day, she met a couple of farmers who had struggled through the bad weather with their sled and two horses to find help for their mother, Sophie, who had pneumonia. The doctor couldn't get to her from Guttenberg, so they asked Liers for ideas on how to take care of her.

She went back with them, staying a few nights to care for the sick woman. When she called a doctor for information, she was overheard by 18 other people on the party line (a telephone circuit shared by several subscribers). Everyone wanted to know how Sophie was doing.

Sophie pulled through and Liers learned how rural people help each other.

While she was taking care of Sophie, a trapper came and took care of her cow so she wouldn't have to worry about milking it. When she refused to take payment for caring for Sophie, the family began to bring her produce, cream and steak.

The following spring, Liers began nursing at Elkader and continued until she was almost 80. Failing eyesight caused her to finally quit.

A highlight of her career came in February 1950. After more than 20 years of working together, delivering hundreds of babies, Liers and Dr. P.R. V. Hommell delivered their first set of twins. The Harrill Larsons of Elkader became parents to Larry Lee and Laura Rae at McGregor Hospital in Elkader on Feb. 28.

Liers was 91 in 1978, when she quoted Charles Frohman, theatrical manager and producer who went down with the Lusitania in 1915. Frohman said, 'Why fear death. It's life's greatest adventure.”

'And I think it is,” she said. 'It's not in my hands.” But, she added, 'I'm going to stick as long as I can to see the hills.”

Louise Liers died Sept 14, 1983, at a Guttenberg care center. Her body was donated to the University of Iowa for medical research.