Hospital Honors Ageless Helper’s 20-Year Service

Today, Irene Bahn’s 90th birthday, will find her at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks--not as a patient, but as an active volunteer.

In recognition of her work at the hospital over the last 20 years, Los Robles will dedicate a library in her name.

Eleanor Roche, director of volunteer services at Los Robles, said the hospital is recognizing Bahn’s “pioneer spirit, which led to the establishment of the volunteers in this hospital, and her leadership, dedication and loyalty that have helped it flourish and expand.”

These days, Bahn normally works only two days a week. On Mondays or Fridays, she can be found at the hospital’s information desk, answering phones, delivering flowers and chatting with patients.

Bahn said she has reached 90 by “not giving in to illness.”

Her age helps her in the hospital work, she said, because she can tell patients: “Don’t give in. You’re not old. No one’s as old as me.”

“The older patients love to talk and they’re grateful for the company.”

Active in Community

Besides her work at the hospital, Bahn is active in community affairs in Thousand Oaks. She is a board member of the Conejo Valley Historical Society and took part in a 1964 campaign to save the name “Thousand Oaks” when the city became incorporated and was considering a name change.

In appreciation, the city of Thousand Oaks has dedicated an oak tree in her name at the Civic Center. She is also a member of a community theater group and a founding member of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in Thousand Oaks.

“Irene’s not afraid to speak out for what she thinks needs changing, in the hospital and in the community,” said Ron Robertson, the hospital’s chaplain.

“I think of her as a gracious person, kind and gentle. It’s such a pleasure just to be with her,” said Antoinette Pepitone of Thousand Oaks, coordinator for the hospital’s medical staff services who has known Bahn for 20 years.

Bahn became a hospital volunteer relatively late in her full and varied life. As she talked to a reporter in the library that will bear her name, Bahn looked back on nine decades.

In 1895, the year she was born, the Civil War had been over only 30 years, Grover Cleveland was President and Los Angeles was a growing community fragrant with the smell of orange blossoms.

Bahn grew up in Borodino, a rural town in Upstate New York where her father ran a flour mill.

She may have inherited her civic interests from her father, who was active in local politics, Bahn said. “I remember he dragged my mother and I off to vote around 1922,” she said. The 19th Amendment giving nationwide suffrage to women had just been ratified two years earlier, and “we had to take a literacy test to be eligible,” she recalled.

In 1914, Bahn enrolled at Syracuse University in New York, where she joined a sorority, Alpha Chi Omega, and began to learn about suffragettes.

“They were pretty exuberant, back then. They would chain themselves to walls and such” to protest male domination, she said.

Bahn opposed the movement at first. But, as she attended rallies and made friends, her views changed.

A college friendship with Dorothy Thompson, an early feminist who was married to author Sinclair Lewis and became one of the most famous women journalists of her time, also helped sway Bahn.

“Dorothy was politically active on the forefront of the suffragette movement. She was a strong influence on me,” Bahn said.

Most of the men in her class had already marched off to war when Bahn graduated with an English degree in 1918. As one more male friend announced his departure, he suggested that Bahn apply for a reporter’s job he had just quit at the Syracuse Journal, she recalled.

Bahn ran over to the newspaper, where she presented herself nervously to the editor.

“He asked me what qualifications I had and I told him I had worked on my college newspaper,” Bahn said. She got the job.

Bahn began her reporting career covering church meetings and outdoor markets, learning to type along the way. She also met the man she later married, Chester Bahn, who was also a journalist.

The romance “bloomed” along with her career, she said, and she eventually left reporting to raise three children.

In 1936, the Bahns moved to New York where, she said, they were correspondents for “lots” of papers--”we sold bits of news to Western Union and United Press.” Later, Chester Bahn became editor of a film trade publication and was known as “the dean of film critics,” Bahn recalled proudly.

But Chester Bahn did not think highly of women journalists. Irene Bahn recalled a speech her husband made at the inauguration of Syracuse University’s School of Journalism.

She said that, when asked his views about women in the newsroom, her husband said: “I don’t approve of women in the newspaper business. The only one I ever met that was any good . . . I had to marry her to get her out of the business.”

Few Regrets

Irene Bahn didn’t return to journalism after the birth of her children, but maintains she has few regrets. “I enjoyed it while it lasted,” she said.

Channeling her energy into other outlets, Bahn did publicity for businesses and was active in her local PTA chapter. She also started doing volunteer work at the South Nassau Community Hospital on Long Island, N.Y.

In 1961 the Bahns moved to Thousand Oaks, then a rural community. When her husband died a year later, Bahn “joined everything going” to help her through the difficult time that followed.

It was during this period that Bahn founded and became president of a volunteer auxiliary of the Conejo Valley Hospital. When the small, 20-bed hospital closed in the late 1960s, the auxiliary moved to Los Robles, Bahn said.