Gretchen Kuempel • Pflugerville

Gretchen Kuempel • Pflugerville

By William Gest Friday, 05 December 2008

In Gretchen Kuempel’s 21 years as a school nurse in Pflugerville schools, she had the opportunity to be a part of the lives of thousands of students. A witness to both triumph and tragedy, she was an integral part of the district throughout her career, culminating in her Texas School Nurses Organization School Nurse of the Year award in 1998.

For Kuempel, school nursing is about advocating for students and adapting to a unique set of challenges every day.

“Another word I use for school nursing is ‘triage’, because you don’t ever know what’s going to walk through the door,” she said. “It could be a paper cut, or it could be a severe laceration.”

Kuempel was born and spent the early years of her life in Taylor, where she attended a small parochial school. She later graduated from the Seton School of Nursing in 1958, specializing in maternity nursing and eventually returning to Seton to work in obstetrics.

Among the highlights of her early career was helping deliver one of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s grandchildren in 1967. Security procedures required Kuempel to be on call for two months before LBJ’s pregnant daughter, Luci, was due to have her baby. Once Luci’s labor began, Kuempel had to pass through three different checkpoints and do her job with the Secret Service scrutinizing her every move.

“There was a Secret Serviceman every 6 feet,” she said. “I felt very important.”

In 1971, Kuempel earned a master’s degree from Yale University and married Max Kuempel of Pflugerville soon after. The couple settled in his hometown in 1972, and she returned to Seton Hospital to pioneer a program that encouraged fathers to be a part of the delivery process, a new idea at the time. After the birth of her children Matthew and Gretchen, Kuempel was a stay-at-home mom for several years.

In 1980, the year that the younger Gretchen was to start kindergarten, a friend told Kuempel that Pflugerville Elementary was looking to hire its first school nurse. After a three-hour interview, Kuempel was hired to work at the school her daughter would attend.

During her tenure working in Pflugerville ISD, Kuempel witnessed sweeping changes in both her profession and her community. The nurse who had been hired to treat scrapes, bruises and tummy aches began to see children needing treatment for diabetes, asthma and Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. Kuempel also helped high school students who were abusing drugs, and she formed a class for teen parents.

“When I left, I was giving 40 medicines a day,” she said. “The type of problems kids have has changed drastically.”

The Pflugerville community changed as well. The school district that served about 1,600 students in 1980 when Kuempel was hired served more than 15,000 students in 2001 when she retired. Kuempel oversaw the expansion of the district’s nursing program to serve this large population, always encouraging administrators to hire RNs, or registered nurses, over less-qualified professionals.

In retirement, Kuempel continues to advocate for school nurses and remains active in her church, community and family, which now includes four granddaughters.

Despite the changes growth has brought to Pflugerville, Gretchen and Max Kuempel have no plans to spend their retirement anywhere else.

“We just belong,” she said. “I really can’t think of living anywhere else. This is home.”