Never late… except for a retirement celebration

By Doug Russell, News Editor

STIGLER, Sept. 10 — Barbara Hillhouse never wanted a big fuss made over her retirement. Never. But she got it anyway.

It was just 20 months later than it might have been.

“I didn’t want any of this,” Hillhouse said when she attended a special ceremony at Haskell County Hospital Thursday afternoon. “I tried to get away without it and here they drag me back for it.”

“I told you I’d get you,” said hospital CEO Chris Larkin, smiling at the woman he’d lived next door to as a boy.

“But I’m going to get you back,” Hillhouse responded with a smile. “I always have.”

Since she first started working at Haskell County Hospital on Dec. 24, 1962, Hillhouse “probably worked in every department at the hospital,” Larkin said. “She’s been a mainstay.”

Times were different when Hillhouse first started working at the hospital. She’d learned something of nursing hands-on while working at a nursing home for several years but left to stay home. Then came the hospital. “They needed help and I thought I could go to work for a little while. That little while turned into 45 years.”

She initially worked for the hospital as a medication nurse, ensuring patients had their medicines on time, as well as working with nurse’s aides. “That was before Medicare, you understand. I guess they started trusting me, because they started leaving me in charge on weekends.”

As time passed, Hillhouse learned about other departments in the hospital as well. “They taught me a bit about X-ray, the laboratory, so when they needed somebody I filled in.”

“I was here to work and if I was needed somewhere, I needed to do it.”

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