While browsing the local newspapers, I found a 1981 interview with Sibyl Renaud. She was one of the first nursing graduates of a nurse training program created at the hospital. The nursing candidates were trained by local doctors, who taught them anatomy and other subjects. The candidates were paid $5 a month their second year of training, then their senior year it went up to $15 a month. After graduation, Miss Renaud was paid $4 per day. The students lived in a house on the property and were not allowed to use the elevator. They had to climb up and down three flights of stairs to tend their patients! They also did everything, up to and including cleaning, washing dishes and mopping the floors!
Miss Renaud was one of four who graduated in the first class of 1916. The others were Nettie McMullen, Bess Ansley and Sister Henrietta, a Catholic Nun with the hospital founding nuns of the Franciscan Sisters of Calais. The graduation ceremony was held at the City High School across the street.
Miss Renaud described how the nurses worked 12 hours a day with one hour off for lunch and a half-day off once a week. (WOW!) An interesting tidbit she shared was that she was at the bedside of Father Enaut when he passed away, surrounded by the Nuns who had come to his room to pray.
Sibyl worked as a nurse for sixty years and lived out her last days in a West Monroe nursing home. She died in 1989 at the age of 93 and lies buried in St. Matthew Cemetery.
Sibyl and Dr. C.P. Grey.
Ouachita Parish History Tidbits 