A SPECIAL celebration has been held to honour nurses past and present.
Redwall Nursing Home in Northwich marked International Nursing Day by surprising residents who are retired nurses with special gifts.
Two ladies recalled memories of their rewarding careers.
Margaret Riley, 86, cared for a critically injured motorcyclist and ended up marrying him.
Grace Emery, nee Hufton, looked after wounded servicemen and civilians injured in bombing raids during the Second World War.
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She left nursing to get married on the day the NHS was formed in 1948.
Grace, now 102, is a widow and has 14 great grandchildren.
In 1940, she was chosen to be in a guard of honour when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth opened a new hospital in Birmingham.
During the war, she worked through blackouts and air raids and tended to wounded soldiers returning from Dunkirk.
Grace became a midwife and many babies were born at home.
On one night she remembers looking after three women in labour at the same time.
It was a bitterly cold February and she had to travel between the three homes. Fortunately, all three babies arrived safely.
Margaret Riley was born in Northwich in 1936 and left home to train as a nurse when she was 18.
Margaret said: “I met my future husband Mike after he came off his motorbike and was rushed into hospital.
“I can remember one of the doctors shaking their head when they saw him, as if to say, ‘he’s not going to make it’.
“I can remember three different specialists coming in from different hospitals to see if there was anything they could do to help.
“He had gone flying off his motorbike and face first into a fence. The cut started at the top of his face, went straight through his nose down to his chin.
“He actually ended up losing some of his nose. The surgeons did a fantastic job and I was keen to follow his progress to begin with, but we soon became close on a personal level. The rest is history.
“I usually worked on a different ward in the hospital but for some reason that day I was staffed to work in casualty.
"If I hadn’t worked that shift, on that day, I would never have met him. We were married 60 odd years.”
Local nurse Heather Tasson, 91, was invited into the home to receive cards from residents, plants, flowers, gardening gloves and chocolates.
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