Commitment to aid others was nurse's strong suit

4/11/2005

FINDLAY - Edith G. Eisaman, who became a licensed practical nurse when she was in her 40s, died of cancer Wednesday in her home. She was 78.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer almost 10 years ago, her daughter, Debra Bame, said.

Mrs. Eisaman worked in the orthopedic department at Blanchard Valley Regional Health Center for more than 20 years, retiring in 1992. "She was a wonderful nurse," her daughter said.

Her family said nursing appealed to her because she loved working with and helping people. "That was something that she knew she could do, and she was very good at it," her son, Tom, said.

Mrs. Eisaman, who worked in the Findlay City Schools cafeterias in the 1960s, had thought about being a nurse for many years. Mrs. Bame, who was hit by a car when she was 5, said her mother sat by her bed for days and watched the nurses in the hospital.

She got her chance to become one in the late 1960s, when her eldest daughter, Rebecca, planned to go to the Bowling Green Area School of Practical Nursing. Mrs. Eisaman's husband, Victor, agreed to pay for his daughter's gas and car if she would take her mother to school with her, Mrs. Bame said.

She worried that she wouldn't pass the entrance exam, but she got into the school, and her entire family supported her studies. Her husband studied with her every night and made up flash cards to help her.

"It was kind of a family thing for us," said her son, who started college the same year she went back to school.

She graduated in 1969.

Mrs. Eisaman was born in McComb, Ohio, where she graduated from high school in 1945. She married Victor M. Eisaman in 1947. He died in 2004.

She was a member of Howard United Methodist Church here for more than 50 years and was active in the Mary Circle and the United Methodist Women.

Surviving are her daughters, Rebecca A. Sampson and Debra E. Bame; son, Thomas W. Eisaman; sister, Clara B. Hoffman; eight grandchildren, and one great-grandson.

Services will be at 11 a.m. today at Howard United Methodist Church, where the body will be after 10 a.m.

The family suggests tributes to the church, Bridge Home Health & Hospice, or the Blanchard Valley Regional Health Center orthopedic department.