Carolyn Morrison’s life has come full circle. Once the manager of Acute Care at Scheurer Health, Carolyn now enjoys her retirement at the same place that she worked…right here at Scheurer. As a resident of Country Bay Village and an active member in the Scheurer Auxiliary, it comes as no surprise that she is such an ambassador of the great culture and environment that Scheurer provides to everyone. Born in a “small” town in Iowa (about the same size as all of Huron County combined), Carolyn has always loved that feeling of small-town living. She grew up as an only child in Marshalltown, Iowa and loved how slow-placed it was and being able to simply walk across the street to get to school. When her mother passed from cancer when she was 13, her life’s journey decided to bring her out of her small town roots to the big city. After finishing up the ninth grade with only eight other students in her class, her father moved the family to the Motor City for a fresh start after marrying a home economics teacher. “Moving to Detroit was quite a transition,” Carolyn expressed, “When I first came to Detroit, I had to take a public transportation bus from where we lived to get to school every day. I graduated from Southeastern High School in Detroit in 1959 with 500 kids in my class.” It was there that Carolyn decided to pursue a career in nursing at the University of Michigan, “In the age that I grew up in, a woman had three career choices. You could be a nurse, you could be a teacher or you could be a secretary.” “When my mother was ill with cancer, she was in the hospital bed in our house for over a year. This was back when there was no such thing as chemo to help with the cancer. From that experience with my mother, I wanted to pursue nursing.” Carolyn did just that at the University of Michigan (U-M). While studying and enjoying life in Ann Arbor, Carolyn was approached by a dormmate to go on a blind date with Don, her fiancé’s friend. Don was studying psychology at U-M and was asked to take his friends out since he was one of the very few that had a car at the
time. Don agreed but only if he had a date to accompany him. Luckily, Carolyn turned out to be more than a carpooler and the couple was inseparable moving forward. The pair dated for two years and it was only a month after Carolyn graduated in 1963 that she and Don married. From then on, life happened quickly for the two. Don went on to work at General Motors (GM) in the computer world and Carolyn became a teacher of nursing at Nazareth College’s St. Joseph School of Nursing in Flint – one of four colleges in Michigan at the time that offered a bachelor’s degree in nursing. “The funny part about all of this is that my first ever job as a nurse was being a teacher at a school of nursing,” Carolyn grinned, “It was a full-circle moment considering I did not want to be a teacher but ended up teaching anyway.” After two years of teaching, Carolyn became pregnant with their first child, Scott, who was born in 1965. Soon after, they had their second child, Lynn, who was born in 1967. This time around, Carolyn had switched job paths and was now working at an obstetrics o ce in Fenton, MI. This venture was short-lived as Don needed to be in the GM o ce so they uprooted their family to Beverly Hills, Detroit where Carolyn worked as a pediatric nurse and gave birth to their third child, Kathy in 1972. With Carolyn’s dad growing older, she had decided to have him move into their bustling family home so she could take better care of him. It was during this time that Carolyn had their fourth child, Elizabeth. As a surprise to no one, the family had run out of all available space and decided to build a house in Rochester to accommodate their growing family. Her father had lived with the family for several years before he passed and Carolyn expressed gratitude for being able to have him in the house with her family for all those years. The move to Rochester brought about another new adventure for Carolyn. She took a job at Ascension Providence Rochester Hospital formally known as Crittenton Hospital, working STORY CONTINUED ON PAGE 26
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