How one volunteer found decades of joy in doing the little things for the smallest patients in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS — This month, Corinnie Ketelsen finally took her second retirement after 43 years of service to St. Luke’s Hospital.

After several decades of service to the nursery at St. Luke’s Birth Care Center, she’s OK with not receiving a pension. With two morning shifts per week, she was known to joke about her overtime rate with nurses concerned about her staying late — the overtime rate for zero still is zero, she would explain.

Like all volunteers, Ketelsen wasn’t in it for the money. But unlike most volunteers, she kept working until she was 91.

“I enjoy what I do. I enjoy the people,” she said. “What else can you ask for?”

After graduating from high school in 1949 and nursing school in 1953, Ketelsen served as a pediatric nurse at St. Luke’s and Mercy in Cedar Rapids before becoming a school nurse for the Cedar Rapids Community School District for 25 years. With evening hours, she started volunteering at St. Luke’s in 1979, after her youngest son went to college and a few years before she retired from being a school nurse.

“I have always worked with children,” she told The Gazette in 2019, when she was awarded the United Way Lifetime of Volunteer Service Award after 10,000 hours of service. “There weren’t a lot of opportunities for females in 1949, and I didn’t want to be a housewife. I don’t like to stay home.”

That mentality stuck for a lifetime, even after she retired from nursing. For the last two decades, she’s brought continuity to the Birth Care Center that even paid staffers are hard pressed to match.

Ketelsen found value in doing the little things that don’t necessarily require a nurse’s knowledge. From 6:30 to 11 a.m., she would prepare supplies for infant exams, assist with circumcisions and make sure supply closets were just as well appointed as the recovery and exam rooms.

She changed diapers and outfits and kept anxiety at bay for new parents with a matriarchal presence. Her favorite parts were making the babies happy — typically a simple task, so long as they’re clean and dry, she said.

Nurses know Corinnie has been in as soon as they see nursery windows decorated for the season or holiday, giving a good feeling to those working in the unit, said Kathie Manderscheid, manager of the Birth Care Center for the last 11 years. And as new nurses cycle in, they take cues from her seamless assistance in infant exams.

“It’s the same thing, in a different way, every day,” Ketelsen said. “A volunteer’s job is to help the nurses do what they need help with — (things) I can do that I don’t need to be trained to do.”

“That’s routine stuff, but there is nothing routine — every child is different, every doctor is different, every nurse is different,” she added.

And at her age, the chaotic pace of the Birth Care Center is no easy feat. With dozens of babies on the floor any given day, Ketelsen takes it in stride, never looking frazzled.

Though she’s no longer licensed to provide any medical assistance, her knowledge has managed to provide insight to physicians decades her junior. In between tasks, she regales doctors with fun facts about medical practices from her early years as a nurse — like alcohol baths to reduce a fever.

Despite leaps and bounds in medical advances since she graduated from nursing school nearly 70 years ago, the need for people like Ketelsen has stayed the same. Staff appreciation of her work, expressed on a daily basis, is part of what kept her coming back.

“Corinnie is indispensable,” Manderscheid said. “There’s so much work that has to be done on a day-to-day basis, and it’s a lot of those little things we don’t always get to.”

With a sharp wit, Ketelsen still carries great humility — being called indispensable still is enough to make her blush, even as a non-agenarian. Asked how she kept up with the pace of the department, she joked that she wasn’t sure she did.

Her co-workers beg to differ.

As a liaison bridging multiple generations buzzing around a department that brings new life into the world, her impact has gone well beyond that of a diaper changer. Though she has had less interaction with parents since COVID-19 changed how the department operates, parents have taken notice.

“They see her as a grandma. We can all kind of relate to grandma being that nurturing figure,” Manderscheid said. “They know she’s taking good care of them … that helps calm their fears when they’re needing to be separate from their newborn.”

The volunteer credits her ability to be flexible — a requirement for all staff in the department — in keeping her young.

“It keeps you interested and refreshed,” Ketelsen said. “Reading is great, watching TV is fine, but the interaction is very important, and you have that in the nursery.”

In addition to the 2019 award, Ketelsen received the 2006 President’s Life Call to Service Award, the 2012 Adult Spirit of St. Luke’s Volunteer Award, and the 2021 Iowa Governor’s Volunteer Award.

As volunteerism rates in most places continue to decline significantly from the levels they were at when Ketelsen started volunteering, she encourages others to follow in her footsteps.

“I encourage anybody to help, no matter what the job is,” she said. “I can’t stress enough how fulfilling it is to do something that someone professionally doesn’t need to do. You don’t have to be a professional to change diapers.”

As far as she’s concerned, anything done to make someone’s day better is time well spent.

Comments: (319) 398-8340; elijah.decious@thegazette.com

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