PATRICK'S PEOPLE: Cecilia G. Waggoner recently celebrated her 100th birthday

Cecilia G. Waggoner can give  you the recipe for good health and long life in three words.

Those words are broccoli, blueberries and Scotch.

“But remember, everything in moderation,” she added. “Good genetics also helps, along with having very little chronic disease. And I  think it’s just plain to enjoy life and like what you’re doing.”

Waggoner speaks with authority. First off, she turned 100 on Jan. 3. Second, she served as a registered nurse and was active in nursing and nursing education for more than 50 years.

She celebrated her 100th birthday Tuesday night with a dinner at Jim’s Steak House, hosted by the Kansas State Nurses Association, District 20.

Aside from some loss of vision, Waggoner remains active and more mentally alert than many people half her age. The aches and pains of age haven’t dared to come near her.

“It is a little unusual to reach my age with no arthritis, no pain anywhere,” she said.

Waggoner was born Jan. 3, 1913, in Hereford, Texas, the daughter of the late Emil Ensman and Barbara Wenzinger Ensman. The family moved to Pittsburg in 1915, and she has spent nearly all her life here.
Her interest in nursing started early, and she decided to drop  out of Pittsburg High School to attend Mt. Carmel Hospital School of Nursing.

“You didn’t have to  have a high school diploma to go to the nursing school,” Waggoner said. “You could go with only two  years of high school.”   

J.L. Hutchinson, for whom Hutchinson Field is named, tried to persuade her parents not to  let their daughter quit high school.

“I can still see him telling my parents, ‘Don’t let her do it’,” Waggoner said. “I told him that I would finish high school, and he said, ‘That’s what they all  say’.”

Her parents allowed her to enter nursing school, and she received her diploma in nursing from Mt. Carmel Hospital School of Nursing in December of 1932. Waggoner was registered to practice professional nursing in Kansas in 1933, and did private duty nursing and was an instructor in health and home nursing in Crawford and Cherokee Counties from 1933 to 1939.

She also kept her word, and received a diploma from College High School in 1935.

Waggoner found that she had a love of teaching nursing and earned a bachelor of science in education from Kansas State Teachers College, now Pittsburg State University, in 1939. She served as an itinerant teacher in adult education for the Kansas State Board for  Vocational Education from 1939 to 1943.

“Back in those days, there were no nursing homes and you had people taking care of stroke victims who didn’t even know how to turn them over in bed,” she said. “There’s a knack to taking care of helpless people. I used to carry a mattress in the back of my car and drive around the state to teach people how to take care of  the helpless. I really did like adult education and teaching those farm women.”

She married Gerald T. Waggoner on Dec. 26, 1940, in Pittsburg. During World War II the couple went to Fort Knox, Ky., and she was an instructor of nursing fundamentals at St. Mary and Elizabeth Hospitals in Louisville, Ky., from 1943 to  1945.

Waggoner later taught at Mt. Carmel School  of Nursing and was education director there, and became the only lay person ever to head the school. All the other directors were members of the Sisters of St. Joseph.

The Kansas State Legislature, following recommendations from the Kansas Board of Regents in 1969, established the Pittsburg State University nursing department in the fall of 1970. Mrs. Waggoner was appointed to develop and implement the program.

She was determined that this would be a degree program leading to a bachelor of science in nursing.
“The times were already changing and nurses were becoming administrators,” Waggoner said. “It needed to be a degree program. The College of Education and the College of Technology both wanted to having the nursing department.  I wanted it to be in the College of Education because I knew if it were in the College of Technology it would probably remain a practical nursing program.”

Mt. Carmel Medical Center agreed to discontinue its school of nursing when PSU was ready to have its baccalaureate nursing program. Under Waggoner’s direction, the BSN program at PSU was approved by the Kansas State Board of Nursing in the spring of 1971, and the first class graduated in May 1973.

Under her leadership, federal grant funding was approved to construct a new nursing education building in 1974. Matching funds donated by the McPherson family estate were earmarked for construction of the facility, and McPherson Hall was completed in the summer of 1977.

Waggoner retired in 1979, but served as a nursing education consultant and instructor for continuing education classes from 1980 to 1987, and was also a nursing education consultant for the Kansas State Board of Nursing. In the early 1990s she served on the Master’s Task Force which developed the master’s degree in nursing program at PSU.

Waggoner and her husband, who died in 1975, had two children, Gerald T. Waggoner II and Patricia Brandon Waggoner. She has three grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and a baby sister, Barbara Jean McClaskey, Girard.

McClaskey, 14 years younger than Waggoner, also taught many years in the PSU nursing department. To avoid any appearance of nepotism, they tried to avoid mentioning that they were sisters.

Waggoner has received numerous honors over the years, including the PSU Meritorious Achievement Award in 1989, and has been inducted into the Kansas State Nurses Association Hall of Fame in the  Founders Class.