Missionary Nurse Honored At Laconia Hospital Reunion Class Of 1950

IMAGE: Postcard showing Laconia Hospital and Nursing Home from many years ago.

by Robert Hanaford Smith, Sr.
Weirs Times Contributing Writer

They became teachers, physicians, lawyers, publishers, clergymen, writers, politicians, nurses, and prominent in other occupations and they were men and women who received their early education and training in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. Many were born and raised in this area, and some of them stayed here, but many of them went out from New Hampshire to make their mark on the country and the world.

One of those “theys” was a native of Vermont but was trained to be a nurse at the Laconia Hospital’s School of Nursing. Her name is Olive Kingsbury and her native town, to which she retired after her missionary service, is Cavendish, Vermont.
Though attending Laconia Hospital’s School, Miss Kingsbury also had other connections to New Hampshire because she was the niece of Clarence and Maurice Sawyer of Gilford.After her nurses training Olive went to the country of Vietnam as a missionary nurse with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. She graduated from Nyack College in New York before beginning her nurses training in Laconia.
In Vietnam Olive Kingsbury was involved in medical work, at one time being the director of medical missionary outreach in the province of Plei Ku and the Ban Me Thout area. Her service in Vietnam included work at the leprosarium that had been established in Ban Me Thout to treat victims of leprosy.

Before returning to the States in 1973 on furlough Olive had been doing clinical work, visiting outpatient clinics every four weeks. The Plei Ku province had about 50 to 60 thousand people with only three doctors to treat the whole province.
In 1973 Miss Kingsbury was in the United States on furlough for a year from her missionary work, an event that happened once every five years. While in the states she visited churches to report on her work in Vietnam. Christian and Missionary Alliance Churches had Missionary Conferences each year, and in the Fall of 1973 Olive traveled throughout New York State as a speaker at these conventions.
She did spend some time in that summer staying with her aunt, Mrs. Rachel Sawyer in Glendale. It was in August of that year that members of her 1950 graduating class of the Laconia Hospital had a party in her honor.
This was reported in an article in the Laconia Evening Citizen written by Betty Trask. There were nine members in that class and six of them were at this reunion where Miss Kingsbury was honored. Betty Trask wrote of Olive that “…no one could possess a more cheerful spirit than Olive, who has never changed in the years we’ve known her, even in appearance. Still slim and youthful, she actually bubbles and it’s no doubt her personality does nearly as much for her patients as any medical treatment.”
The nurses’ reunion was held at the home of Mrs. Ben Willis and a cake which was a replica of their commencement invitation, was made by Mrs. Sherman Thompson. With their married names added by Trask, the graduating nurses in 1950 were Olive Bickford Cote, Rena Blodgett Willis, Lillian Brooks Gattermann, Isabel Burrows Sinclair, Daisy Dowse Thompson, Leona Hill Belanger, Virginia Liberty Lewis, Esther Simonds Guasnieri, and Olive Kingsbury. Six of these were at the reunion party.

Miss Kingsbury served in South Vietnam at a time when some areas of the country were already under communist control. She reported having two close encounters with death by the hands of the Viet Cong. In 1968 she was experiencing some health issues and was advised by a United States military doctor to visit a military hospital for tests. The military hospital sent her to a private clinic for treatment because she was a civilian. While she was there the village she came from was raided and five missionaries were killed. Two of those had just sent their children off to Saigon the previous night. Olive returned to the leprosarium three weeks later.
In 1962 Olive had escaped harm when a doctor and two missionaries were kidnapped from the leprosarium and were believed to be used to treat Viet Cong soldiers. Olive reported that many of the Vietnamese people were becoming Christians to the delight of the Vietnamese army, which found the converts to be more cooperative with them.
As you can see Missionary Kingsbury was in Vietnam during the duration of the war years, serving from 1952 to 1975. She then continued her missionary work by teaching at a Bible School in Davao City in the Philippines until her retirement in 1990. Olive continued to correspond with contacts from Vietnam and would report to her New Hampshire friends and relatives about the Christians in that country. She lived on the family farm in her retirement years and passed away on December 11, 2018 at the age of 92.

On a personal note, one of the missionaries that was taken captive in Vietnam was a classmate of mine at Nyack College. Betty Olsen, along with two men, was taken by the Viet Cong and for months nothing was known about their location. It was eventually learned that they were kept caged for a month before being chained together and moved from place to place through the jungle. They were fed but little food and often beaten. One of the other missionaries passed away from pneumonia and after months of traveling through the jungle Betty also passed away from the inhumane treatment. The third, a thirty-three year-old humanitarian worker, lived to tell the story.
For many years in the past I looked forward to the yearly missionary conferences that were held in the Christian and Missionary Alliance churches I was a part of, beginning with the one in Laconia, NH. These usually occurred in the Fall of the year and presented the opportunity not only to learn about the missionary work to promote Christianity to people in other countries, but also to learn about the people and customs, etc. of those countries.

When I was pastoring churches in which we hosted the missionary conferences, I used to take the missionaries to schools and have the missionaries teach the children about the countries in which they were serving. This proved to be a very popular time for both teachers and students.
I expect that if we could trace the work of all the nurses who were trained at the Laconia Hospital in those past days when the school was operating we would find many other interesting stories.
My favorite and only sister Virginia Smith Haas also graduated from the Laconia Hospital School of Nursing after graduating from Laconia High School.