By Janet Hewitt, Guest Blogger
Rita Chow’s resume is exceptional in every way, even by Washington D.C. standards, where the Ph.Ds and “The Honorables” run rampant. Dr. Chow’s many credentials are impressive and she surely epitomizes the life-long learners who make up the Smithsonian Associates volunteer corp. But at 95, she’s had more time than most to master the pursuit of knowledge.
An Associates volunteer for the last twenty years, she spent a career as a trailblazer in public health, retiring in 1995, after 27 years with the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS).
Today, she’s still blazing new trails. She’s planning a trip to Iceland in May—because to her, 95 is just a number. And the trip dangles the added enticement of learning more about music, one of her passions.
Rita was born in San Francisco in 1926 to Chinese parents who fostered in her an early drive to learn and achieve. Those early lessons clearly stuck. Rita studied both Cantonese and Mandarin on top of her regular studies in the San Francisco public school system. Her 60+ years-long career in public health, nursing and education is unique. To give you an idea of how noteworthy her career has been, consider this: The “Rita K. Chow Papers” reside at the University of Virginia School of Nursing, in the Eleanor Crowder Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry. There are 25 boxes of her professional and personal papers in the collection. The academic degrees alone could fill a box or two. She started out earning an Associate of Arts degree in 1946 from the San Francisco Junior College, and then a Bachelor of Science from the Stanford University School of Nursing in 1950. She followed that up with a Master of Science in Nursing from what was then Western Reserve University (now Case Western) in 1955. She received a Doctorate in Education from the Teachers College of Columbia University in 1968. Then came a Bachelor of Independent Studies in Public Health from George Mason University in 1983.
Rita was at the forefront of some key developments in modern nursing. She directed a cardiovascular nursing research project at Ohio State University Hospital, which laid the foundation for her well-regarded nursing textbook: Cardiosurgical Nursing Care: Understandings, Concepts, and Principles for Practice, published in 1976. And her work in long-term care centered on a program to improve conditions in the nation’s nursing homes, plus she’s done notable work in the development of a certification program for holistic nursing.
Some notable assignments with the U.S. Public Health Service include being the Supervisory Clinical Nurse and Quality Assurance Coordinator at the Rosebud, South Dakota, Sioux Reservation Hospital. And just before retiring, she served as Director of Nursing for the Federal Bureau of Prisons Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas. In that assignment, Rita assisted in the establishment of a new long-term care facility for the Federal inmate population, including an inmate-run hospice program.
Rita was honored with the Holistic Nurse of the Year award in 2001 and the U.S. Public Health Service Chief Nurse Officer Award in 2003. She monitored seven federal university grants and contracts. She achieved the rank of major in the U.S. Army Nurse Corp., and remained in the Army Reserves until 1968.
So, after a long career that took her all around the country, how did she find out about being a Smithsonian Associates volunteer? A retiring colleague at PHS mentioned to Rita that she was going to volunteer with Associates. Rita thought that sounded like a good idea, and filed it away for future reference.
When Rita retired from PHS in 1995, she ended up moving back to the Washington area and put her name on a wait list to become a SA volunteer. And yes, that’s correct, Dr. Rita Chow was wait-listed for four years before she got called up to become an active SA volunteer. (Getting into Stanford might have been easier.) Yet, some things in life are worth waiting for. Thinking back, she says, “I was delighted to receive the call to be a Smithsonian Associates volunteer 20 years ago.” What have been some of her favorite assignments? “My earliest assignments matched my interests in western art history, Tai Chi and Chinese Calligraphy (Studio Arts),” Rita says. She adds, “Since I have studied art in the past, even as a volunteer, my favorite Associates’ programs are often linked to the offerings that are part of the World Art Certificate electives.” She says, “Besides art, I love music—classical, popular, folk and jazz. Not surprisingly, my favorite program presenter is Saul Lilienstein.”
Over the years, Rita says that the program offerings “have been imaginatively, highly varied.” And she adds, “My volunteer tasks have never been boring.”
We asked Rita to put her programmer’s hat on for a moment and suggest an idea for a future course that Associates might offer. She says she’d like to see more on the topic of “Comparative Religions: Common Concepts, Principles, and Rationales for Differences.” In her recommendation you could almost see her planning out the syllabus, and listing the required reading. She was in full-on teacher mode as she identified and spelled out three specific course objectives and noted that the course might “require a number of speakers.”
At 95, Rita Chow still relishes learning, and is ready to hit the road in pursuit of it. As if we needed any more proof, she reminded us, as we exchanged emails, that she was busy finalizing the booking details for her May music trip to Iceland. Because for Rita Chow, the learning just never stops, and different time zones are not an obstacle.
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