Marblehead - In ceremonies at North Shore Medical Center, a nursing station in the Center’s planned new intensive care unit (ICU) was dedicated to Marblehead resident Louise Spiess. A donation from Louise Spiess’ four children, including Marblehead residents Gary Spiess and Barbara Spiess Miller, made the nursing station possible.

The family’s decision to dedicate the facility to their mother honors Louise Johnson Spiess’ lifelong commitment to nursing and the education of nurses. Although Louise Spiess actually began her own nursing education in 1937 at Ohio University and, later, at Toledo Hospital School of Nursing, raising a family intervened, and Louise didn’t realize her full dream until 1976, when she received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Salem State College at the age of 56.

Louise Spiess was an assistant instructor of nursing at the Salem Hospital School of Nursing from 1973 to 1975. From 1976 until her retirement in 1982 she was a nursing instructor at North Shore Community College, and well after retirement she continued to volunteer in the emergency room at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital.

Louise Spiess with her family at the dedication at North Shore Medical Center.