Wilson credited with saving Lufkin health care system

Lufkin's former congressman, Charlie Wilson, is remembered for many things, but to the local health care community he is considered a hero.

Nearly 30 years ago the two Lufkin hospitals were struggling to find and retain nurses, recalled Millicent Irish who earned her nursing degree at Northwestern State University in Louisiana and pursued graduate work at Stephen F. Austin State University and The University of Texas. When Irish followed her husband, Jack, to his job with Texas Foundries in Lufkin, she found that both local hospitals were desperately recruiting nurses from Beaumont, Louisiana and other distant places.

So when the community opened Angelina College in 1968, it looked to the Nursing Division as an answer to its nursing shortage crisis, she said.

However, the nursing school had to scramble to find places around town for its class of 15 students to meet, she said. Once, the class met in the same building where people went to pay their water bill, and quite often in the middle of class someone would come in and try to pay one of the students, she said.

As the second director of the new nursing school, Irish worked with college president Jack Hudgins in writing a application for a federal Health Education and Welfare grant that would enable construction of a dedicated nursing school facility on campus. The grant took a year to write, and while HEW representatives met with her and college officials about the proposal several times, they never gave any hope of it receiving funds, she said. When their grant application became bogged down in the congressional quagmire, Irish said she called upon Wilson.

After explaining the town's predicament, Irish said Wilson instructed her to immediately board a plane and fly to the nation's capital where he personally led her through the grant process, going from one office to the next.

Thanks to Wilson's intervention, she said, Angelina College received the very last building grant issued through the HEW program. As the $800,000 award stipulated the community reciprocate $300,000 in matching funds, and increase enrollment to 130 students, the community passed a bond election, which led to the building being completed and dedicated in 1976, she said. Since then, the program has evolved into the Angelina College Health Care Program which includes specialities in radiology, respiratory therapy, and emergency medical service, she said.

Irish, who joined the Angelina College staff in 1968, served as director of the nursing school and then the health care program from 1972 to 2003. Since its inception, the program has graduated more than 2,000 nurses, she said.

"If it had not been for Charlie Wilson, we probably would not have a nursing building today. It has had a tremendous impact. A large percent of nurses coming through Angelina College remain in the area and staff the hospitals," she said. "If it had not been for this, I believe we would have had to close the doors of the hospital — as far as nurses were concerned.

"Charlie is a hero to Angelina County," she said.