INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) - Riley Hospital honored some of its own today with one of its best sitting in the front row to watch.
You may not know the name Margaret Martin, but you have most likely benefited from her work.
It is hard to imagine a day when parents had to drop their children off at Riley's front door and leave. Margaret Martin couldn't imagine it so she changed it.
"I think the thing I enjoyed the most is letting parents visit their children and be with them more," Martin recalled.
"They dropped them off at the front door and they couldn't stay all night," said Pam Rappaport. Rappaport worked with Martin.
"We changed that in two days," the 97 year old Martin said with a chuckle that brought laughter from those around her. "Then you started the parental care unit where parents could stay around the clock," Rappaport added.
She was a pioneer, launching the nation's first parental bedside program. That is also why there is a nursing award in her name given annually at Riley Hospital-- The Margaret Martin Award.
"It's fun to talk to my staff and say, "I know Margaret and you are a Margaret Martin nurse,'" said Kathy McGregor, another Riley nurse who worked with Martin.
The prestigious award has been given in her honor since 1985, but today she was in the front row.
"There is nothing new in the work we do here, and the way we do it takes initiative and heart, and takes courage," Ronan St James said during the ceremony.
Martin got to see the nurses of today and tomorrow follow in her footsteps.
"Being a nurse at Riley may require us to leave a piece of us behind, ask us to leave a piece of us behind, to give a piece away," St James continued. "Margaret exemplified what a pediatric nurse should be. Her caring and attention to the children...it is important we continue on with that legacy," said Elizabeth Paxton. Paxton now Chief Nursing Officer at Riley--the same position Martin once held.
The Riley Award winners couldn't wait to get their pictures taken with Martin, and the same goes for those nurses who were lucky to work with her.
"Margaret was my mentor, my surrogate, my mother. The one I went to when I thought I couldn't do another day in nursing," Sally Haverstock chimed in.
Margaret Martin did not have any children of her own, but her co-workers say her babies were her Riley patients.
