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PROMOTING SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH COLLABORATION
Fay Bower: Not the retiring kind by Carla Hall If you ever accompany Fay Bower, RN, DNSc, FAAN, through an exhibit hall during a conference or convention, wear good shoes—she moves quickly—and pay attention—every interaction is a learning opportunity. You’ll learn who’s who in nursing—everyone knows her and she knows everyone else—who is working where, and what professional changes are brewing. She seems to know everything about nursing issues, policies and trends. For every nursing question and many non-nursing questions, she seems to know the “go-to person” to make things happen. This dynamo doesn’t slow down. June 2007 marks the end of Bower’s distinguished, eight-year term as book acquisitions editor for the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International, but she is by no means retiring. She tried that once or twice, and it didn’t suit her. Bower has been a leader since her youth and a teacher for much of her adult life. She is credited with introducing the nursing process with her first book in 1972 and is one of only a handful of nurses who have stepped into the chief executive role in a college or university. Bower has been called a builder, change agent, futurist and visionary. A nurse’s nurse, her energy is legendary. California dreamer Bower’s story is similar to that of many women of her generation. Born during the Great Depression in the San Francisco Bay area of California, Fay Saitta came of age during World War II. Her father was a first-generation Sicilian-American, her mother of Irish-English descent. She grew up surrounded by people who taught her the value of a penny, but it was also a world full of possibilities, excitement and postwar energy. Anything must seem possible when, as a child, you witness the opening of the 8.4-mile San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Her hometown of Palo Alto, though growing, was still small, with barely more than 15,000 residents (Association of Bay Area Governments, n.d.). Everyone knew everyone else, doors were never locked and car keys were left in ignitions. Going to San Francisco was an event that meant wearing your best dress and taking the train. As a teenager, she worked multiple jobs, her first one at age 13. “It was just understood that you had to contribute,” she says. Summers were spent working with friends in the fields of northern California farms, weeding and picking corn, beans and strawberries. The kids would board buses at 6 a.m. and return home 12 hours later. “After we got tired of working in the fields,” says Bower, “we went to work in the hospital, and I worked in the laundry. After a while, I moved out of that job and became the one who went around the rooms, emptied the pitchers and refilled the ice water, which got me closer to the patients and was very helpful in getting an idea of what nursing was like.” During high school, Bower worked the switchboard for the telephone company and did a stint as a “soda jerk” at a restaurant. She had a strong desire to get a baccalaureate degree after high school, but limited finances removed that option. Neither of her parents had the privilege of graduating from high school, so they wanted their daughters—all three of them—to go to college. Living across the street from Stanford University reinforced that message. As was the case for most women at the time, Fay’s professional career choices were limited to nurse or teacher. She had an interest in nursing and already had a good idea of what it was like, so she chose a three-year diploma program at St. Mary’s Hospital near her home. As was typical, students staffed the units as a way to pay tuition and room and board. After graduating from St. Mary’s, Fay, like many graduates, went to work at the same hospital where she had been educated. She also married Robert “Bob” Bower immediately upon graduation. Bob, whose grandparents migrated to the United States from Germany in the late 1800s, is an accountant, cowboy and retired Army lieutenant colonel who gave up ranch life in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, for Fay. True to his roots, Bob has always managed to have horses, regardless of where the couple has lived. Beginnings of leadership Bower was a leader before the concept meant anything to her. In high school, she ran with 12 other girls and was their de facto leader. “It was like having 12 best friends. We were very close-knit and protective. We hung out at each other’s houses every weekend, but we all had jobs so we didn’t have a lot of time to make trouble.” She learned from her friends that people tended to do what she asked. “I would suggest something, and they would follow me,” says Bower. “It just came naturally. I don’t think I ever thought of myself as a leader, except when something went wrong and I got in trouble.” Bower followed the traditional stay-at-home wife and mother path after she and Bob married in 1949. Their son David was born in 1951, daughter Carol in 1952, Dennis in 1955, and Tom in 1963. Tom has an unusual claim to fame in the Bower family in that he came along while his mother was in the third year of her BSN program at San Jose State College (SJSC), now San Jose State University. Tom was due to be born in September, but Bower could not tell anyone, least of all her instructors and peers. At that time, pregnant women were not allowed to attend classes, but a raincoat concealed her pregnancy and enabled her to keep her place in the program. She finished the spring semester with no one the wiser. When classes resumed in the fall, Bob quit work to stay home with Tom so Fay could finish her degree. For nearly six years—from 1958 on—one or both of the Bowers attended college, day or night, Bob for his Bachelor of Science in Business. Turning points While the Bowers were starting and growing their family, Fay worked as a hospital staff nurse and then as office nurse for orthopedic surgeon William Grannis in Palo Alto. Grannis recognized Bower’s abilities and encouraged her to pursue her BSN. In 1961, when she applied to the program at SJSC, she was told her diploma-school degree from St. Mary’s would not transfer. She would need to start her BSN program from scratch. “I cried all the way home but, by the time I got there, I had decided I wouldn’t let this stop me,” Bower says. “So I did the entire four-year program.” She met her lifelong mentor, Margaret Jensen, while at SJSC. Bower completed her MSN a year later and, by 1966, was an assistant professor at SJSC. Bower continued to work per diem on a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Stanford University Hospital until 1972. By that time, she had published her first book, The Process of Planning Nursing Care, and was serving in the dual capacities of associate professor and associate director of curriculum special projects grant at SJSC. The NICU experience proved to be a turning point in her life. Stanford University Hospital was making advances in neonatal lifesaving techniques, and Bower found herself caring for babies kept alive under circumstances that were heartbreaking to her. Had they been born at other hospitals, these babies would not have lived much past birth, and watching families be torn apart by the medical procedures and the daily life-and-death decisions was devastating. “One day I just said, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’” recalls Bower. “I had started to lose the sense of caring. I had to do something else because I was losing my compassion and empathy. That’s when I decided to go full time into education.” Coming of age as a leader Margaret Jensen, who remained a strong force throughout Bower’s life, taught Bower how to teach and write effectively. She also taught Bower the power and responsibility of leadership and the importance of having a mentor, someone who offered a critical voice but was supportive and generous at the same time. Bower stayed at SJSC for 25 years—it became a university during her tenure—eventually chairing the department of nursing for four years. In addition to teaching, she honed her grant procurement and management skills, wrote prolifically, lectured around the world, and practiced the art of leadership and mentoring, all while continuing to raise her family and remaining active in professional nursing organizations. In 1982, Bower was named dean of the School of Nursing at the University of San Francisco (USF) and quickly gained a reputation as someone who could get things done—functionally and financially. Bower is known as a change agent, the person an organization brings in when in need of visionary strength to effect change. Maintaining the status quo is not in her bag of tricks. In 1988, after six years as dean of the USF nursing school, she was tapped as interim vice president of academic affairs at USF. To her great disappointment, Bower was not selected for the permanent position, but another door opened, this one in Nebraska. To the Midwest In 1991, the Bowers packed their bags and headed to Nebraska—an ideal place for a cowboy named Bob—so Fay could interview for the presidency of Clarkson College. It turned out to be a good fit all around, and she was offered the job. “Home had always been the San Francisco Bay area,” says Bower. “Moving to the Midwest was a significant change. I didn’t really want to move, but I knew it would be a great experience. It turned out to be that way. I’m very proud of what we accomplished.” She is credited with turning around the ailing college, which received full accreditation during her tenure. Her time there was not without controversy. There were significant faculty changes during that first year. Before her arrival, the school had been struggling financially, and several applications for accreditation had been denied. The board charged Bower with securing accreditation, building a strong faculty team, increasing funding and alumni participation, strengthening and building programs, and increasing enrollment. According to Cyndi McCullough, RN, MSN, former president of the Clarkson College alumni association, Bower did not sleep much while at Clarkson. “She would be in her office at 3 in the morning and would call me to ask questions. She was so focused on the work that she wouldn’t even look at the clock.” Part of Bower’s success, says McCullough, comes from her passion for nursing and learning. “She is a continuous learner who is constantly reinventing herself. She asks questions of everyone, including her grandkids, and that’s why she is able to be so in tune with the times and the culture. She genuinely finds everything interesting.” Perhaps the best explanation for Bower’s success is her power of persuasion. “People don’t say no to her,” says McCullough. When Bower talks, people open their checkbooks. As if being president of Clarkson College wasn’t enough, Bower also served as president of the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International during her time in Nebraska. As president of the honor society, she focused on expanding its international reach, extending the International Leadership Institute and the Arista programs. She was the first president to preside over the Sigma Theta Tau International board of directors, which prior to her term had been a governing council, and was president when Nancy Dickenson-Hazard became executive officer. Going home Bower promised Clarkson’s board she would stay five years, but five quickly turned to seven. By 1996, she had accomplished what she had set out to do and had begun succession planning. She and Bob missed the kids and grandkids out West. The time had come to go home. As she handed off the reins in 1997, she was leaving a place transformed under her leadership. She looked forward to taking time off and settling back into the northern California lifestyle. Two years later, however, retired and a little bored, Bower agreed to become acquisitions editor for the Honor Society of Nursing, to help build a professional publishing program. The honor society had published some good books, but there was little dedicated strategy or planning in place. Bower was asked to professionalize the program, increase book submissions and help identify sales opportunities. One of the first books she accepted turned out to be one of the best for the honor society and for a relatively unknown nursing professor from Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA, who passionately felt it was time for nurses’ stories to be heard. Sharon Hudacek, RN, EdD, who created the Making a Difference line of books in which nurses tell stories about experiences with patients, shares the following story about her first face-to-face meeting with Bower. “It was in Indianapolis. I was [getting ready to publish] Making A Difference, Vol. I. I was to meet her at this little Italian restaurant. [Except for our many phone conversations,] I had never met her before this day. I thought she would be 6 feet 4 inches tall and robust. Instead, this petite little dynamo strolled in, Bob at her side. “As the last seven years have so quickly passed, I can say with certainty that Fay is greatness. She is strong, yet soft enough to guide the novice. She is direct, yet open-minded enough to see the value in nurse stories. She is serious, yet capable of a contagious laugh that has warmed many hearts.” Making a Difference, Hudacek’s book of nurse stories, quickly became a bestseller and inspired nurses worldwide to write down their own stories, to validate their work. It spawned A Daybook for Nurses: Making a Difference Each Day and Making a Difference, Vol. II. More importantly, nurses and nursing leaders began to recognize the value of storytelling in nursing practice. In the eight years since Bower became acquisitions editor, the honor society has published 22 books by and about nurses and their work, achieving significant gains in book sales. According to Jeff Burnham, editor-in-chief of Sigma Theta Tau International: “Fay is responsible for moving our publishing program into the professional arena. She knew we couldn’t compete against the major academic publishers, so she looked for a niche that wasn’t full. She was strategic. “She has never been afraid to take on projects that other publishers might not look at, because she has the perspective of a nurse. She knows what nurses go through and she knows what they want to read. There is no one who knows more about nursing and about nurse publications than she does. I will never be able to thank her enough, not only for what she did for our book publications, but also for mentoring me when I first came on board.” Bower has always been passionate about publishing and writing, and she believes more nurses should contribute. “If nurses don’t get out there and publish—compete with the other professions—they won’t be viewed as seriously as the other professions, and that’s bad.” Out of retirement Bower officially retired when she left Clarkson in 1997—her work as acquisitions editor for Sigma Theta Tau International was part time—but it wasn’t long before she needed other activities to fill her days. She wrote, took on consulting jobs, traveled, lectured and remained active in her professional associations. She even took a job as teaching assistant to a first-grade teacher—her oldest granddaughter. Bower missed, however, the energy and inspiration she got from being intimately involved in the daily lives of nurses and nursing students. When she received a call in 2000 asking her to interview for the position of chair of the nursing department at Holy Names College in Oakland—Holy Names University (HNU) since 2005—she didn’t think twice, even though the school was in tremendous flux following the exodus of a significant number of faculty members and students. HNU needed a chair capable of rebuilding the nursing department, creating partnerships with health care organizations, supporting the college in transitioning to a university and developing innovative programs to make education more accessible for students. Someone who knew Bower recommended her. Ask Sister Nancy Teskey, PhD, associate dean of academic affairs, about Bower’s arrival at HNU, and she doesn’t equivocate. “We were sorely in need of a good leader, and we got one in Fay,” says Teskey. “She walked in and everything turned around. The energy she puts out makes everyone feel charged.” She likens Bower to a Jack Russell terrier. If you have ever been around a Jack Russell terrier, you know it has nearly boundless energy and needs to be in charge, working and focused at all times. (Teskey and Bower share a mutual love of Jack Russell terriers. The Bowers named theirs Eddie, so call him Eddie Bower.) “Fay is my Jack Russell terrier on staff,” says Teskey. “All I have to do is give her a general idea, and she works it to death until she comes back with a plan.” She considers Bower a futurist. When Bower first signed on with HNU, she realized one of the big problems was making education more accessible. In an area where normal life—jobs, family, education and so on—is complicated by traffic congestion and significant commuting time, Bower believed the university should offer education to adult-learner nurses where they worked. She found funding and built a broadcast studio so nurses could further their education at their place of employment. Another significant change Bower made was taking education full circle, back to the hospitals. Says Teskey: “It’s very difficult [to adequately compensate] nurses who are clinical experts to teach classes. Fay decided this function belonged to the hospitals, so she created a training program to teach clinical specialists how to teach so the hospitals [in partnership with HNU] now have faculty on staff.” Bower designed the MSN/MBA program in collaboration with the HNU business school to make it as attractive and efficient as possible for adult learners who are already in high-stress situations. Students meet every other weekend for the MBA part and once a month for three days for the MSN portion of the curriculum. She is also working to help solve the nursing shortage through a program called “The Third Age.” “What do nurses do when they turn 45 and they want to quit working because it is so physically demanding?” Bower asks. As it is now, she explains, the profession loses the knowledge of these experienced nurses. She thinks nurses over the age of 40 should be offered alternative career choices—to teach, mentor or be retrained for a less-demanding specialty. “We need to do anything to keep these nurses in nursing one way or another,” she says. True to her energy levels, Bower is doing one more “part-time” job: She has been an appraiser for the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Magnet Recognition Program since 2006. Giving back Bower is a strong proponent of engaging students in nursing associations. Her contributions and support of various organizations have been an important part of her life and success. As a BSN student in the 1960s, she was president of the first Sigma Theta Tau International chapter in California at SJSC. She went on to serve as president of several honor society chapters before serving as president of the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International from 1993-95. From 2007-09, she will serve as president of Nu Xi Chapter-at-Large. Family is Bower’s rock. It motivates and inspires her and has always been her priority. “Without them, I couldn’t have done any of it,” she says. She acknowledges there were sacrifices, but they were usually in the form of sleep—lack thereof for her—as she spent time with her family and then stayed up as long as necessary to get the work done. Ask her about her kids and grandkids, and she doesn’t want to stop talking. She maintains frequent contact with family members and credits them with keeping her young and informed. There are now two Bower great-grandchildren and 10 grandchildren, including two “adopted” grandchildren from a former USF nursing student, Mary Jo, whose mother tragically died while Mary Jo was still in nursing school. The Bowers welcomed Mary Jo into their lives and consider her part of the family. And her husband of 58 years? Well, Bob Bower is special. Ask anyone who knows Fay, and they will tell you that Bob keeps her on track and running smoothly. Sit with Bob and Fay and you quickly recognize that they have a hidden language of unspoken words and signals. Bob has a special place in the hearts of many staffers at Sigma Theta Tau International headquarters. He is a favorite at conventions and meetings for his calm, collected demeanor and his funny stories and jokes. Is he the man behind the woman? Well, yes and no, but you’ll have to ask them to find out. Nurse leaders, peers and colleagues of Bower search for words to adequately describe Bower and her contributions—both personal and professional—to their lives. Terry W. Miller, RN, PhD, sums it up best: “To me, Fay Bower is a nurse leader who represents the ultimate role model and mentor. All of nursing has benefited from Fay’s leadership because of how she thinks and how she works to better the lives and careers of others. Few people can match Fay’s ability to take difficult situations and redefine them as an opportunity. Fay represents a remarkable blend of savvy, intelligence and practicality, coupled with a matchless work ethic. Most of all, she transforms conflict and problems into solutions for the advancement of nursing and, ultimately, the health of all people.” RNL —Carla Hall is development editor for the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Reference: Association of Bay Area Governments. (n.d.) Palo Alto city historical population. Retrieved May 23, 2007, from http://www.abag.ca.gov/abag/overview/datacenter/ |
