In the nearly six decades since Joyce McMurrain arrived at Kennestone Hospital, she has helped deliver more than a thousand newborns. Sometimes, simply holding a mother’s hand. Sometimes, delivering the baby herself.
And always as a labor of love.
That might sound like a cliché to most people, but it’s the only way to explain how this love affair could’ve begun.
It wasn’t a head thing.
It was in the heart.
And you might say in McMurrain’s blood.
She was 14 when she sensed her purpose in life was to help others, and when watching her cousin Marlene pursue a nursing career, she decided nursing was a great way to make a positive impact in another person’s life.
She knew then it took a special person to dedicate their lives to the care of others. She wanted to do the same.
And so when she graduated from Fort Cherry High School in her hometown of McDonald, Pennsylvania, McMurrain enrolled in Capital City School of Nursing at D.C. General Hospital, Washington D.C.
She graduated from the three-year diploma program in 1964, the year after she married her high school sweetheart Wendell McMurrain. While he served abroad nine months in the Navy, she worked a short time at that 1,000-bed teaching hospital before the two of them moved to Norfolk, Virginia, and she became a staff nurse in the maternity ward at a small Catholic hospital.
They pulled up stakes once more for better opportunities in Marietta.
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Wendell McMurrain took a job at Lockheed. Joyce, it turned out, had her choice of two jobs at Kennestone — an evening shift in pediatrics or a day shift on the maternity unit.
McMurrain chose the latter. With just one car, she could drop her husband off at Lockheed and still clock in on time at the hospital.
It was the perfect match.
At Kennestone, she returned to her first love, supporting and caring for women giving birth.
“I certainly was pleased,” she said. “It blended well with my home life.”
It was 1965. McMurrain was 22. Kennestone just 15 years old.
In the nearly six decades since their paths first crossed, a lot of change has come.
Kennestone, once a single building with just 105 beds, has grown into a 633-bed complex that includes four patient towers, offering outpatient surgery services like radiation therapy and same-day surgery.
In 2004, the hospital expanded its cardiac services to include open-heart surgery and two years later became the first hospital in Georgia to introduce advanced cancer treatment using CyberKnife robotic radiosurgery.
McMurrain, a grandmother of three, has been there through every change and new building. And though she has held many titles since 1965, she is perhaps best known as Kennestone’s unofficial historian.
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She remembers, for instance, when fathers weren’t allowed in the delivery room, when mothers received “twilight” sleep through deliveries and when their hospital stays decreased from five days down to one.
By the mid-’70s, when women wanted more control over their bodies and their birthing experience, the hospital shifted to a more family-centered care model in which moms could labor, deliver and recover all in the same room.
Credit: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
According to McMurrain, the hospital’s maternity center was one of the first to implement couplet care allowing families to stay together and bond with their newborn so they get used to changing and feeding their baby with the support of the nursing staff before going home.
“Those were exciting times,” she recalled.
At every turn and bend in the road Kennestone took, McMurrain was there. The same has been true in her own life, especially in big moments.
Three years after arriving at Kennestone, McMurrain gave birth to her son Wendell there. And starting in 1998, when Kennestone opened its women’s center, each of her three grandchildren was born at the hospital.
“Ms. Joyce is a true legacy,” said Mary B. Chatman, executive vice president of Wellstar Health System and president of Kennestone. “She was one of the first team members to work at Kennestone. She now uses her wisdom to shepherd our new nurses in their new careers. We are all inspired by her.”
Last week, Kennestone celebrated its 70th birthday. On June 25, McMurrain will mark her 77th birthday.
“It’s been quite an adventure,” she said. “Full of challenges, opportunities, and changes.”
In many ways, McMurrain owes much of her longevity at the hospital as much to her nursing skills as her willingness to navigate those changes. She took on special projects with as much fervor as she did nursing and supervisory positions, each time learning as much as she taught.
While it has been rumored and seen in print over the past 10 years that she was retiring, McMurrain told me last week — no way.
“I haven’t set a date,” she said. “I love what I do and am still very committed to this wonderful organization, which keeps growing and expanding its vision.”
Between me and you, 2025 might be the year.
Kennestone will turn 75 that year. McMurrain just 82.
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