Centennial celebration: Longtime Canonsburg Hospital nurse celebrates 100th birthday
Townview Health & Rehabilitation Center’s activities room was filled on Monday with the festive trappings of a birthday celebration: balloons, signs, and a cake.
All befitting the woman of the hour.
Aggie DeJohn, a retired nurse whose career spanned more than 40 years – including 3 ½ decades as a beloved ICU nurse at Canonsburg Hospital – celebrated her 100th birthday surrounded by family, friends and staff members at Townview, the former Canonsburg General Hospital where she now resides.
AHN Canonsburg Hospital Director of Nursing Jamie Price and Chief Nursing Director Joy Peters presented DeJohn with a 35-year service pin and a giant card signed by hospital staff members.
“God bless them, they thought of everything,” said DeJohn, who wore a bejeweled tiara atop her snow white hair and exchanged hugs with staff and guests.
The day before, generations of Koliches and DeJohns gathered at a celebration at North Franklin Fire Hall to fete the centenarian.
“It’s a wonderful thing. For anybody that celebrates 100 years, it’s special. She has more energy than you and me put together. She’s still the kind and gentle soul she’s always been, and she still has her ornery side,” said Chris DeJohn, DeJohn’s youngest son, who attended both events.
Throughout her nursing career at Canonsburg Hospital, DeJohn worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, first at the old hospital on Barr Street, and then at the current AHN Canonsburg Hospital on Medical Boulevard, where she served as one of the first nurses in the ICU when the hospital was built in 1983.
“I loved being a nurse. I tried my best to be kind to everybody and give them the help that I can. Being an ICU nurse, a night shift nurse, was interesting, and doctors and patients depended on you,” said DeJohn.
DeJohn, one of six siblings, was born and raised in Strabane. She graduated from Chartiers-Houston High School’s first graduating class in 1942, and after hearing on the radio about a government program that would cover the cost of nursing school, she enrolled in Canonsburg Hospital’s nursing school.
She worked at West Penn Hospital for several years, and in 1958 took a nursing job in the ICU at Canonsburg Hospital, where she remained until her retirement in 1993.
The career choice was a perfect one for DeJohn, whose compassion and cheerfulness endeared her to patients and co-workers.
“Aggie was an excellent nurse. I learned so much from her over the years,” said Dawn Grim, who is a nurse in the PACU at AHN Canonsburg and worked with DeJohn in the ICU, where DeJohn had served as her preceptor. “You won’t meet a kinder person. She was very dedicated to nursing, and the patient always came first for Aggie. She cared about her patients. Her assessment skills were phenomenal, and she gave me a lot of pointers that helped me throughout my career. She was always willing to jump in and help anyone. I was blessed to have her as a mentor and to work with her. She was a person you just wanted to know and be around.”
DeJohn’s nighttime work schedule prevented her from getting much sleep.
After finishing her shift, DeJohn would get her three sons off to school and her late husband, Mario, off to work before going to sleep from 9 a.m. until noon. Then, she’d do house chores until the boys came home, and go to bed around 9 p.m., catching an hour or so of sleep until she had to head into the hospital.
Chris, a paramedic for Ambulance and Chair EMS, said his mother, a devout Catholic, “was always a caregiver.”
“Both my mom and my dad’s attitude was to take care of everybody. Anyone who needed help, my mom would be there in a heartbeat. If someone needed a hand, or someone to talk to, even her nieces and nephews, they’d call her,” he said.
As a nurse, Chris said, DeJohn had those same qualities.
“Mom made sure people were physically and mentally well. She was always willing to listen and always there for a patient if they needed someone to talk to,” he said.
Her nurturing also extended into the kitchen, where DeJohn “cooked up a storm,” said Chris.
“When I worked (in Canonsburg), my crew members would fight over who’d come with me when I stopped by Mom’s house because she had to feed everybody. She was a very good cook and she loved to cook and host people,” said Chris. “If you walked out of our house hungry, it was your fault.”
DeJohn also loved to bake, and said her favorite item to make was pizzelles, and she’d bake them by the hundreds for weddings, parties, and Christmas.
DeJohn was born in 1925, when Calvin Coolidge was president, the Pittsburgh Pirates won their second World Series, a new car cost $250, and a dozen eggs was 47 cents.
While raising her family with her husband, Mario, to whom she was married for 56 years before he passed away in 2006, she has seen first-hand the advances in technology, medication, and patient care.
And DeJohn is still a nurse at heart.
“If I wasn’t so old, I’d still do it,” she said, smiling. “I’ll be out there and I see a patient and I think, ‘Oh, if I could just help them a little bit.”
DeJohn doesn’t know if there is a secret to reaching the 100 milestone – and, more importantly, leading a life well-lived.
“You live well, you eat well, you sleep well, you behave. Work every day, do the best you can, keep yourself in order and neat,” she said. “It’s been a nice life. You need seriousness along with fun, and you just have to cope with things.”
Another key, she said, is to “keep moving.”
She still walks one mile a day, briskly navigating the second-floor hallways aided by a walker.
And what is most important to her?
“I believe just being with family, and knowing my family is well and doing what I can to keep the family together,” she said. “That’s what matters.”