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Showers and a possible thunderstorm during the evening will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Low 58F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..
Tonight
Showers and a possible thunderstorm during the evening will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Low 58F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
Mary Jo Abernethy (left) and her parents, Nell Abernethy (center) and Paul Abernethy (right), have all served in the medical field in Alamance County. The family is seen here in 2008.
Paul Abernethy sits in his office in the Bailey Coble Building in downtown Burlington where he began a solo practice in eye, ear, nose and throat, assisted by his wife, Nell Tucker Abernethy, RN. The practice later became Alamance Eye Center.
Mary Jo Abernethy (left) and her parents, Nell Abernethy (center) and Paul Abernethy (right), have all served in the medical field in Alamance County. The family is seen here in 2008.
Times-News
Courtesy of Mary Jo Abernethy
Mary Jo Abernethy doesn't remember what made her decide to become a nurse. What she does know is that decision was one of the best of her life.
When she began college, she originally didn't choose a nursing major. Soon after, she decided to pursue nursing and never looked back.
The medical field wasn't new for Abernethy. Her family reunions look like a nursing convention, she said.
Her father, Paul Abernethy, had an impact on medicine in Alamance County for decades to come. Paul was influential in the merger between Alamance County Hospital and Memorial Hospital of Alamance, which became Alamance Regional Medical Center as it's known today. He was also a founding partner of Alamance Eye Center.
Paul grew up in a mill town in Western North Carolina in the 1920s. He graduated from high school at 16, having skipped a grade. At that time, high school only went through 11th grade.
Paul also sped through his time at Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C. because the school wanted to graduate people as quickly as possible with the impending war, Mary Jo said. If students had been accepted at a professional school, Wofford let them graduate. Paul then went to medical school and graduated at 21 years old. He was part of the first class of medical students and having graduated early, he became the first graduate of Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University.
After graduating from medical school in 1943, he joined the military and spent the remainder of World War II in the Pacific, serving as a doctor for the army.
After returning from the war, Paul began a job as a general practician at Rutherford County Hospital as he waited for a spot to open up in the eye, ears, nose and throat program at Duke University. While working in Rutherford County, he met Nell Tucker, who served as the night nursing supervisor there. They were married six months later.
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Paul and Nell Abernethy are pictured here on their honeymoon in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1947.
Times-News
Courtesy of Mary Jo Abernethy
Shortly after that, the couple had their first of four children, and Nell decided to stop working and stay home to take care of the baby. Paul got his slot at Duke, and the family moved to Durham for him to go through eye, ear, nose and throat school. In the early 1950s, he had finished school, and the family moved to Burlington.
Paul opened Alamance Eye Center, and Nell practiced nursing from home, helping friends with their medical issues. She also worked for the Red Cross.
"A lot of times people just needed an open ear and a soft shoulder, and that would make a lot of things better," Mary Jo said of her mother.
"She was the best diagnostician I think I've ever known," Mary Jo added. "She was very good at what she did."
In the 1970s, ophthalmology became its own field, separating itself from the ear, nose and throat profession. Paul chose his true love of taking care of eyes.
Paul Abernethy sits in his office in the Bailey Coble Building in downtown Burlington where he began a solo practice in eye, ear, nose and throat, assisted by his wife, Nell Tucker Abernethy, RN. The practice later became Alamance Eye Center.
Times-News
Courtesy of Mary Jo Abernethy
During his lifetime, Paul served as chief of staff of both Alamance County Hospital and Memorial Hospital of Alamance. He oversaw the merger between the two hospitals, which came together to become Alamance Regional Medical Center as it stands today.
In addition to practicing medicine, Paul was a photographer, pilot and golfer. He also loved to play theater organs, which are organs that people used to play to accompany silent movies.
Paul built one of these organs at the family's house. He would play it at Christmas parties and theater organ guild meetings held at their home.
Paul Abernethy poses for a photo on the theater organ at his home in the early 2000s.
Times-News
Courtesy of Mary Jo Abernethy
"Anything he set his energies to, he excelled at," Mary Jo said. "He had that kind of diverse talent, diverse intellect, and my mother is one of the smartest women, if not, people I've ever known."
Paul and Nell were both heavily involved in the community. Both actively participated in activities at their church, Front Street United Methodist Church. Nell was also a member, and at one time president, of the Alamance Caswell Medical Auxiliary, which was a group made of medical spouses working to support the medical fields. The group held antique fairs at Elon University, which was at that time called Elon College, to raise money for scholarships for local students pursuing a career in healthcare.
"One thing I think that made mother and daddy such contributions to this community is that they had such a strong marriage, and they were totally devoted to each other, and
they both had a gift for what they did and a love for what they did," Mary Jo said.
Paul died in September 2013 at 92 years old, and Nell died about eight months later in May 2014.
Out of their four children, Mary Jo became a nurse following in her mother's footsteps. Their son became an optician. Their other daughter became a violinist, sharing her father's love for music. She later taught computer science at Alamance Community College. Their second son became a judge.
"I learned a lot about nursing at my mother's knee ... and she learned nursing at her mother's knee," Mary Jo said. "Though she was not a trained nurse, my grandmother probably took care of more people than a lot of trained nurses have ever done. She served as a midwife and a hospice nurse and everything."
Nell Tucker was a student nurse at Rutherford Hospital School of Nursing in Rutherfordton in 1940.
Times-News
Courtesy of Mary Jo Abernethy
Mary Jo didn't originally plan to pursue nursing as a profession but decided in college to change her major to nursing and is glad she did.
"One day it just thunderstruck me, 'yes, that's what I'm going to do,' and I've never looked back," she said.
Mary Jo attended Salem College before transferring to UNC Greensboro, where she graduated in 1977.
Following graduation, she worked in oncology. Mary Jo had previously worked with babies, and working with people at the ends of their lives was a huge shift.
"As people are dying, their world gets smaller and smaller," Mary Jo said. "As a nurse, you are invited in and you are critical to that to that person."
After working as a nurse for a time, Mary Jo felt like something was missing. She was reading a magazine one day when she saw an advertisement for being a flight nurse with the air national guard.
"I said, 'I have to go do this.'"
Mary Jo Abernethy served in the air national guard for about 25 years. This photo was taken at her promotion ceremony in 2014.
Times-News
Courtesy of Mary Jo Abernethy
After training with the military, Mary Jo became a medical officer and took a medical crew to Panama in the 1990s, helping move thousands of Cubans who had tried to escape Fidel Castro's regime. Once Panama said they could no longer house these people, the medics moved them again, this time to Guantanamo Bay, which didn't have the same reputation it does now.
"We were on each flight, I think, not necessarily so much to do air medicine, but to show these people that we were there with compassion and we were trying to help them," Mary Jo said.
During that time, Mary Jo kept running into Colonel Lawrence Lane, and he eventually asked her to dinner. A few months later, they married.
After returning to the United States, the couple spent time in the air national guard based in North Dakota and then St. Louis, Missouri.
Mary Jo looks back fondly on her time in the military. During that time she traveled to places such as Germany, Afghanistan, Japan and South Korea — places she doesn't think she would have had the opportunity to go had she not been in the military.
"I knew that the military would put me in positions that I would never choose for myself, but they would train me and give me the instruments I needed to succeed," Mary Jo said.
In 2002, her husband retired, and the couple moved back to Burlington. Mary Jo continued in the air national guard, commuting to and from Fayetteville for a few years. She retired as a colonel in 2017, which she said was a great honor to receive the rank of colonel.
Mary Jo is also involved in the Alamance County community and currently serves as president of the Burlington Women's Club.
Mary Jo now works at Alamance Regional Medical Center, where she has worked for more than a decade. She serves part-time in cardiac and pulmonary rehab.
"Every time I walk in there I feel like I'm walking into a sacred place because of the things that are done there and the lives that have changed and the lives that are saved, and the comfort that is given," she said.
Going to work, Mary Jo would pass people in the hallway that she knew had been part of her father's era. Her father never worked directly at ARMC but oversaw the merger that created it. Working at ARMC, Mary Jo is able to see the fruits of her father's labor.
"To see such a beautiful combination and how the staff have melded together and the standard of care is everything my father hoped it would be and worked for," Mary Jo said.
Breaking news reporter Rachel Berry can be reached at rberry@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @racheldberry.
