Texas Hill Country Nurses Honor Guard releases nurses from their pledge — at bedside or at the graveside, always free

When a nurse graduates, she takes a pledge.

The Nightingale Pledge — named for Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing — is a professional and moral commitment that nurses carry for the rest of their careers. It is not a document they sign and file. It becomes part of who they are.

The Texas Hill Country Nurses Honor Guard exists to release them from it when their tour of duty on Earth ends.

“We start out our nursing careers when we graduate reciting a Nightingale Pledge,” said founding member and secretary Mary Ellen Cook, who appeared Thursday on Lead Live’s Nonprofit Week alongside President Libby English and member Tina Thompson. “At the end of one’s tour of duty here on this planet, we do what is called a Nightingale Tribute, which essentially releases that nurse from his or her Nightingale Pledge.”

The ceremony is the nursing profession’s equivalent of a military honor guard — performed free of charge for any licensed nurse, either at the bedside as a living tribute or at a funeral or memorial service. The six retired nurses who make up the local chapter arrive in traditional white uniforms, blue and red Nightingale capes, and historic nurses’ caps. They process to the front carrying a Nightingale lamp. They present a white silk rose to the family. They give the primary survivor a framed copy of the tribute and a small porcelain Nightingale lamp. Then they ring a singing bowl three times.

“It sounds just like an old-fashioned call bell from the 70s,” Cook said. “I promise you the first time I heard it, I was like: ‘Oh my god, what patient is calling?'”

The three women who appeared Thursday represent more than a century of nursing between them. Thompson has been a licensed vocational nurse since 1978, entering the profession at age 16. Cook became an RN in 1983 after beginning pre-nursing training in 1979, spending 31 years in a hospital mother-baby care unit and neonatal intensive care before retiring in 2017. English retired to the Hill Country four years ago after serving as the RN at Austin’s largest dermatology practice.

The work is personal in ways that can catch a nurse off guard. The local chapter recently performed a short-notice tribute for Joelle Taylor, a licensed nurse who died in a flooding event in the Bandera area. Cook had crossed paths with Taylor professionally before retiring.

“When I saw her face,” Cook said, “that really brought it home for me.”

More than 100 people attended that service. The funeral director told the group afterward: “When you were giving the tribute, there was hardly a dry eye in the house.”

Cook offered a plain summary of why the honor guard matters to a profession that often goes unrecognized.

“Nurses — like teachers — are in the Rodney Dangerfield profession,” she said. “We don’t get no respect in some instances. And this is how we can bring back a lot of that respect.”

The local chapter, which celebrated its third anniversary on Wednesday, Aug. 19, is supported by community members including Johnny Grimes and Layng Guerriero. The group will attend the Texas State Nurse Honor Guard Inaugural Conference in San Antonio on Sept. 25-26, which Cook is helping organize. On Aug. 31, they will staff a hydration station at Mega Monday at the Light on the Hill Kid on the Hill Ministry in support of flood recovery volunteers.

To request a tribute for a licensed nurse or to support the group Facebook: “Hill Country Nurses Honor Guard.”