Another Over-60 Beginning Nurse

Thank you for your article on the 62-year-old former banker who is now a registered nurse.

I graduated from the Vocational Nursing Program at Glendale Community College on Jan. 28, just 24 days before celebrating my 61st birthday. I hope to become a registered nurse by the time I am 62 or 63.

I was a professional dancer and a skater in my teens. I started college at the age of 42 and received my associate in science degree after attending college at night for many years.

For nine years I worked as an animation painter for Hanna Barbera. When all of our work was sent overseas I qualified for state assistance to train for vocational nursing.

California has a wonderful program to help people who have lost their jobs due to work sent overseas or technological changes.

I will never be able to thank the state enough for giving me the opportunity to attend vocational nursing school. To lose a job at age 60, and know that the entire industry has left the country, is devastating. Hundreds of motion picture screen cartoonists are out of work.

In April I take my state board examination. Meanwhile, I have just received my interim permit to practice as a vocational nurse, so I will soon be making the rounds, looking for work, but work with a future.

Most of those in my class were in their early 20s, some were 30 or more and one or two were 40. Our class president turned 19 a month before graduation. I must say they always made me feel welcome, although amusing things happened in the hospital area when patients, their families or doctors would mistake me for a head nurse by virtue of my age. I was even mistaken for an instructor more than once.

ELEANORE KEENAN LOGAN

Van Nuys