New nurses

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

Blue Ridge Job Corps Center Director Gary Tickles had a vision, and a gymnasium full of people saw it come to pass Wednesday.
Tickles wanted the center to offer curricula in practical nursing leading to the Practical Nurse diploma. About a year and a half ago, the program started with 15 students.
Eleven of them completed the program, and on Wednesday, the center’s first class of nurses graduated to the deafening cheers of friends and family and the pleased smile of Tickles.
“Now we have and additional 15 enrolled who started this past spring,” Tickled said before the ceremony in the Job Corps gymnasium, admitting to a bit of nervousness as well as joy as he waited for the graduates to file into the big room. “Another 15 will start next spring.”
Fifteen is the number recommend for each class by the Virginia Department of Nursing, he explained.
Many of the new nurses got experience at Valley Health Care in Chilhowie whose director of nursing, Becky Dolinger, spoke during the ceremony and called the graduates “role models for future students.”
Valedictorian Yamslee Vega told the graduates, “I respect you all and I’m so proud of you today.”

Salutatorian Jacoya Stoves spoke to overcoming social pressures that one time would have denied people of many cultures and ethnic heritages the opportunities the graduates celebrated Wednesday. “We are not victims by any means. We are all victors.”
The graduates received, pins, diplomas and roses. Then Tickles eschewed speaking from the podium in favor of issuing a more personal decree of their new status. While all in attendance knew what he was saying, only the graduates could hear him as he stood close among them and by the power vested in his office, pronounced them graduates.
The 11 are now nurses—and victors indeed.