‘Cheering’ dedication: After 52 years, woman retires from Brooks-TLC

Nancy Morey stands with Julie Laporte, case manager RN.

After 52 years at the Brooks-TLC Hospital System in Dunkirk, Nancy Morey is finally hanging it up.

“It’s about time,” the 76-year-old joked.

Originally from South Dayton, Morey has spent most of her life dedicated to Brooks Hospital, working in a variety of roles, including being a unit nurse, supervisor, and has recently been working in case management and utilization. Morey said while a lot of people training to work in hospitals now move around to different facilities, she did all her moving within Brooks.

“The young people of today move around from facility to facility, while I did all my traveling in Brooks Hospital,” Morey said.

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Brooks-TLC Hospital System surgery nurses with retiring nurse Nancy Morey at retirement reception.

Morey made the decision to go to the University at Buffalo for nursing school upon graduating high school at Pine Valley. When she graduated, she moved to Kentucky where her husband was finishing school at Murray State, while Morey worked at Calloway County Hospital for two years. When her husband was done though, they moved back to Fredonia, where she has lived and worked ever since.

Morey’s career has not only been based on the needs of the hospital, but also based on the needs of her family. In 1990, Morey’s husband passed away, leaving her to take care of her three daughters. Morey’s career choices heavily factored them into the equation.

“Everything I did was done for the needs of my family,” she said. “When I worked the 3-11 shift, it was what was beneficial for the family at the time.”

Morey said her career offered many great experiences and rich rewards, whether it was from bedside nursing or community involvement, and never really struggled with keeping up with the ever-changing nature of the job.

“It is a continuous learning process, there can always be a road block,” said Morey. “Whether it be physical or emotional or it can be with patients, or a family’s understanding of what is happening.”

Submitted Photos Nancy Morey and her daughters at the Brooks-TLC Hospital retirement reception honoring her. From left are Cara Morey Gould, Heather Morey Foley, Morey and Stephanie Morey Barone.

She also got to experience the rapid advancement of technology, completely and consistently changing how Brooks Hospital operated. Morey said that something like a gallbladder operation used to take over a week to recover from, and now they release people in about seven hours. The other aspect of the technological boom is computers themselves, which have completely shifted how things like medications are dosed, making the process much more scientific than it was.

“I’m not of the age where I’m used to having computers or sometime of computerized device in my hands 24 hours a day,” she said. “Computerization is a big change. The technology used here with the administration of medications and how doses are calculated are greatly scientific

Now that her time at Brooks Hospital is coming to an end, Morey said she’s excited to spend time with her daughters, two of whom live down south in Georgia and South Carolina. Now that she has grandchildren, she’s excited to see some of their events.

“I’m missing a lot of soccer games, basketball games, choral concerts that I’ve been used to going to,” she said. “So, I will be glad to be a member of the cheering crowd again.”

Morey also said working in a small community has been incredible for her, and helped support her during the time her husband was ill, and she couldn’t have asked for more support from the Dunkirk or Fredonia area, or Brooks Hospital itself.

On her way out, Morey was met with a retirement reception at Brooks Hospital on Thursday afternoon at the hospital’s cafe.

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