Yvonne Bost Pickett Nursing Endowed Scholarship

Born in New Orleans, LA, Yvonne Bost moved to Vandalia, IL, before starting school. She always knew she wanted to be a nurse, a career that fully engaged her mind, body and spirit. She attended MacMurray College in Jacksonville, IL, for two years before transferring to Washington University nursing program in St. Louis, MO. There, she studied with many nursing instructors who were trained during WWI. After graduating from the five-year program with a bachelor’s degree in nursing education and a registered nursing degree in 1938, Yvonne went to work at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. In March 1941, she sailed for the Territory of Hawaii to work at Queen’s Hospital in Honolulu. On Dec. 7, 1941, she woke to news that the Japenese were bombing Pearl Harbor. Although it was her day off, she put on her uniform and went to work, finding that the lobby of the hospital had been turned into an extension of the emergency room to receive civilians wounded in downtown Honolulu. She helped there before she was told to go to her regular job on the women’s floor. Three days later, she went to the Naval Hospital at Pearl Harbor to visit U.S. sailors wounded in the attack. She later became the assistant director of Queens Nursing School, working there until May 1945 when she returned to St. Louis to marry Frank J. Pickett. They moved to Bozeman, MT, in the late 1940’s, where they raised three children. Yvonne died in Bozeman at the age of 101 in 2017. In 2018, Mary Pickett Parker established the Yvonne Bost Pickett Nursing Scholarship Endowment at Montana State University Billings to honor and memorilize her mother and her dedication to the nursing profession.