Like many women of her generation, L. Jeanne (Burns) Argy pursued a career in nursing because she enjoyed helping people. She enrolled in Niagara University’s College of Nursing just two years after it was established. While the first graduating class numbered two—Marcia Sippel and Constance Sullivan—Jeanne’s Class of 1952 was exponentially larger at 21 students.
Jeanne recalls studying under the college’s first dean, Sister Eucharista Calvey, O.S.F., directress of nurses at Mount St. Mary’s Hospital, who “took good care” of the women in her program. She also remembers attending on-campus basketball games and parties where the NU Fight Song was often sung, and taking trips to Olean, N.Y., for the famous Little Three basketball matches. During her time on Monteagle Ridge, she met Donald Argy, a business major in the Class of 1951, who would become her husband.
After graduating, Jeanne took a position with the local VA hospital, noting that she offered to “work wherever I was needed.” She worked on the orthopedic floor until 1956, when she left her position to marry Donald.
Jeanne worked for several years after that as a public health nurse for the Town of Niagara. She enjoyed the job, she said, especially working with nursing students and teaching new mothers how to feed and change their babies. After having her third child, Jeanne resigned to raise her growing family, but said that her nursing background helped her to care for her children.
Today, she is a proud mother of nine (five of whom are Purple Eagles), grandmother of 31, and great-grandmother of 25 (with one on the way). And one of her granddaughters is now following in her footsteps as a member of the accelerated nursing program at Niagara.
Mikayla Robinson, the daughter of Colleen (Argy) Robinson, ’83, began her studies in May 2024. While she initially planned to work as an athletic trainer, she quickly realized that she would prefer to pursue a career in nursing. She is looking forward to clinical work—and feels prepared to take that on because of the excellent education she is receiving from her professors, she said—and is thinking about working as a flight nurse before continuing her studies toward becoming a nurse practitioner or nurse anesthetist.
“So far it’s been great,” she said of her time in the program, adding that she is looking forward to the start of the fall semester, when the campus will be busy with students and activities.
