2021 Nurses Honorees

The woman was a patient at the time on the fifth floor at St. James Healthcare in Butte.

St. John grew up in Bozeman. A maternal aunt, Sandy Pipinich, played a key role in St. John’s decision to pursue a nursing career.

“I had a really good relationship with my aunt and wanted to be just like her,” St. John said.

That meant becoming a registered nurse.

St. John completed a Bachelor of Science in nursing from Montana State University in 2018.

But it didn’t mean tackling the same types of nursing as her aunt, who has worked as a flight nurse with the U.S. Coast Guard and as a trauma nurse.

The fifth floor at St. James Healthcare serves both surgical patients and pediatric patients.

Adult patients include those who’ve had a knee or hip replaced. Youthful patients are hospitalized for a variety of medical interventions but tend to be generally in good con, St. John said.

“It’s a good balance,” she said. “I really enjoy having a variety of patients.

“Most of the kids we see are pretty healthy and able to go home in a day or so. What I enjoy about the surgical patients is that most of them are motivated to get better and go home.”

The home that St. John shares with her husband, Jace Haynes, and the couple’s 8-month-old child is near the hospital. That proximity has served the couple well during a year when COVID-19 has caused staffing shortages and led to extra work.

“It’s been hard,” St. John said. “We’ve all been working extra shifts and coming in on our days off to help out.

“It’s been tiring,” she said. “A lot of us have felt very worn out.”

St. John said she and her husband like to hunt and hike and that getting outdoors is a key source of stress relief for them both.

Haynes will be teaching biology and anatomy during the coming school year at Powell County High School.

St. John said she has worked with nursing students from Montana Technological University and also with new nurses at St. James Healthcare.

“I like to teach,” she said.

That inclination could motivate St. John to someday pursue a master’s in nursing.

St. John’s father, Mark St. John, works at Bozeman Ford as a sales professional. Her mother, Tracy, owns Stix, a yarn and knitting supply store in Bozeman.

Although Taylor St. John is a Bozeman native, she has family ties to the Mining City. Her maternal grandfather, the late Bob Pipinich, grew up in Butte and graduated in 1960 from Butte Central High School. He later graduated from Montana State University with a master’s degree in electrical engineering.

Meanwhile, inspired by Sandy Pipinich, one of Bob’s two daughters, St. John’s career path led her to nursing.

“I’ve always just wanted to help people,” she said.

St. John once considered working in the mental health field but said she enjoys medical nursing.

And the colleague who nominated St. John is glad she found her way to the fifth floor at St. James Healthcare.

“Taylor made me and my mom comfortable and we knew she would give my mom the best care, and she did,” the colleague wrote.

“I like to stay busy,” Montoya said.

Today, she stays busy working as a registered nurse at St. James Healthcare, where she is focused on cardiac catheterization nursing and interventional radiology.

When and if there is down time, she works elsewhere in the hospital, responding to whichever floor or department needs help. Her varied expertise and tangible nursing skills — gained by working stints as a medical-surgical nurse, flight nurse and in ICU — were cited by the person who nominated Montoya for top nurse honors.

“While on the floor she is willing to share her wealth of experience with her fellow nurses and answer questions, no matter how silly,” the nominator wrote. “During the COVID surge, she was willing to work anywhere [she was] needed to help. Deanna is truly the reflection of what teamwork should be.”

Montoya has a reputation for being able to start an IV when others fail. On one occasion she responded to a call for IV help from a new nurse and recognized quickly that the patient needed a lot more than just an IV. Montoya quickly summed up the aspirating patient’s urgent medical needs as the new nurse listened, awestruck.

“Her mouth dropped to the floor,” Montoya recalled. “I remember being that nurse.”

Montoya said she enjoys teaching and mentoring new nurses whose critical thinking skills are not yet fully honed.

She said that she too had a lot to learn when starting work in cardiac catheterization and interventional radiology. Procedures can include installing pacemakers, performing peripheral artery angioplasties and embolizations, installing central lines, feeding tubes, ports for cancer patients and much more.

“I felt pretty stupid during my first year there,” Montoya said.

The Anaconda native graduated in 1989 from Anaconda High School. She began working at Galen in 1990 and became a certified nursing assistant when the facility offered detox services as well as treatment for elderly diagnosed as mentally ill.

Montoya discovered that she enjoyed providing patient care.

Later, she studied nursing at Montana Tech, graduating in 2001. She became a registered nurse with an associate’s degree and is studying now to nail down a bachelor’s of science degree in nursing.

Her sister, Heather Agostinelli, works as a registered nurse and is employed at the Montana State Prison. Another sister, Debbie Olson, works as a speech pathologist in Spokane. They are daughters of Nona Agostinelli and the late Joe Agostinelli.

Montoya said she found meaning and purpose during her years working in the ICU.

She recalled one patient — a young man who had suffered a severe brain injury in a motorcycle accident.

“It was touch and go,” she said. “He made it, though. I still see him out in the community.”

Another patient had a brain tumor removed and made a dramatic recovery, Montoya said.

But some patients fully recognize that the end is near and often seek a special form of care.

“They just want you to help them die peacefully and without pain,” she said.

One dying man asked for and received a piece of lemon meringue pie, a Coke and a Hershey bar, Montoya recalled.

She said nursing has provided innumerable moments that linger in her memory.

“I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. I love it. It’s a good career path.”

“I don’t think I even know what that means,” Cozby said, smiling. “I think they felt I’d been here so long they needed to slap a title on me.”

As lead clinic nurse, Cozby supervises other LPNs and medical assistants.

The person who nominated him for a top nurse honor observed, “Everyone at the hospital loves this guy!”

Separately, for the Powell County Council on Aging, he makes home visits for elderly or disabled residents who live alone. He checks vital signs, helps his clients manage their medication and more.

Cozby said he becomes close to many home visit patients and experiences a sense of loss when they die.

“It’s very rewarding work, but when they pass away it’s sad,” he said. “Usually, by that point, they’re family.”

Members of Cozby’s own family of origin included his father, the late Rev. John Cozby, the longtime pastor of First Baptist Church in Anaconda, his mother, Myrle, and several siblings. Rev. Cozby died in June 2019 after a long battle with cancer.

Cozby’s immediate family includes two nurses: his wife, Jodi, is a nurse practitioner at Montana State Prison, and his daughter, Nicole, is a registered nurse at the Montana State Hospital at Warm Springs. Another daughter, Marci, works as a pharmacy technician, and a son, Sean, is a mechanic in Great Falls.

Cozby said the ministry would not have been a good fit. His sources of something akin to serenity include fishing (especially ice fishing), playing softball and performing as a comedic or dramatic actor at Cutler Bros. Productions in Deer Lodge.

For example, in the stage version of John Steinbeck’s novella “Of Mice and Men,” Cozby played Lennie, a mentally disabled migrant worker described as bulky.

Two grandchildren offer fulfillment too, he said.

“I don’t sit still for very long,” he said.

Several years ago Cozby learned that small town politics wasn’t a forte either. He served five years as mayor of Deer Lodge.

“That was five years of heartburn,” he said. “It wasn’t a career choice, by any means.”

Yet it’s clear that Cozby loves his adopted home town and the way its residents respond with support when someone in the community is in crisis. During his tenure as mayor he said he and others “were trying to get Deer Lodge moving in a more aggressive way.”

Nursing became a career choice for Cozby after he helped care for an ailing relative and his mother noticed his affinity for caretaking. She urged him to consider joining the health care field.

He completed a degree program at Montana Tech in 1998 and became a licensed practical nurse.

“It was one of the few times I did what my mother told me and it paid off in aces,” Cozby said, smiling.

After enlisting in 2003 in the U.S. Army, Cozby served as a combat medic in Iraq in 2005 and 2006.

He said he did not think related experiences in a war zone changed his approach to nursing once he returned to civilian life.

"I was probably a little grumpier," Cozby said.

From 2008 to 2009 he worked as a medical non-commissioned officer with the warrior transition program at Fort Carson in Colorado.

He said he admired how the Deer Lodge Medical Center and its staff responded during the worst of the COVID-19 crisis. When pandemic restrictions forbade visitors to inpatients, the hospital found ways to allow patients and family members to at least see each other through glass windows or doors.

And Cozby said the nursing staff at this rural community medical facility can match up anytime with nurses working in sophisticated urban hospitals. The rural setting requires skills that are broad and deep, he said.

Cozby said one human quality is paramount for working in health care or living a good life: kindness.

“I tell my kids, ‘You won’t like everybody, but you have to be kind to everybody.”

Summoned to staff an emergency surgery, she has 20 minutes to arrive.

“The hardest part of our jobs would be emergency surgeries, middle-of-the-night stuff,” Honer said. “You come in and you don’t know what the case is.”

Is it an emergency C-section? A gunshot wound? Major trauma from a motor vehicle rollover?

She then gets her game face on. Circulating nurses work in operating rooms and continually monitor patients and staff to ensure the surgery proceeds safely. Honer’s tasks can include interacting with patients’ families, who are often distressed about the emergency at hand. She is, in effect, an advocate for the patient before, during and after the surgery.

Such urgent cases can end happily. Or not.

Honer said the losses compel empathy for grieving families and there are times when such feelings bleed into her time at home in Butte. She and her husband, Steve, a police officer for Butte-Silver Bow County, share their home with five children, along with Dawn Honer’s mother and Dawn’s brother.

Born in Corpus Christi, Texas, Dawn moved at a young age with her family to Butte. Her father, Butte native Tony Cleverly, an electrician for Montana Power, died four years ago. Her mother, Francie Cleverly, is a retired respiratory therapist.

Honer said she never gave much thought as a child to a future occupation. In high school she worked as a waitress at Chances “R” Sports Bar and Casino in Butte.

Later, she met Susan Burton, a certified nurse midwife, and Burton encouraged her to consider nursing. Not long after, Honer enrolled at Montana Tech and completed an associates degree in nursing in 2007.

Her first nursing job was at the Montana State Hospital at Warm Springs. Honer said the work there was deeply challenging but also rewarding. She was a “flex nurse” who worked on various units at the state psychiatric hospital.

“I actually loved it,” she said.

She said patients who were admitted in the midst of a psychotic break often improved quickly once they began taking medication again. That was heartening to witness, she said.

“Schizophrenia is an awful disease,” she said.

Ultimately, though, Honer, who was pregnant and working a graveyard shift at Warm Springs, decided to take a job at St. James Healthcare.

She had already learned that nursing asks people in the profession to be enthusiastic, supportive, reassuring and encouraging.

Honer worked on a medical-surgical floor, an orthopedics and pediatrics floor and on a transitional care unit. She also worked for a time in the office of surgeon Dr. Raymond Kaufman, who specializes in medical and surgical care of the face, head, neck and skin.

In reality, Honer just flat out works. A lot. On the day of her interview with The Montana Standard, a Thursday she’d taken off from St. James Healthcare, Honer was preparing to work at Bert Mooney Airport for SkyWest airlines.

She also helps a cousin with her catering business.

“I’m always working,” Honer said, smiling. “I can’t remember the last time I had just one job.”

She said she is grateful she likes her role as a circulating nurse.

“We’re a team in surgery,” Honer said. “Our goal is the same. It takes everyone in the room to make it happen.

“I’m super fortunate because I work with a lot of great, talented people,” she said. “I enjoy my job. I enjoy the other nurses I work with.”

Honer said she felt more than a little mortified to be singled out as a top nurse in the region. She said she prefers to keep a low profile.

But she was willing to take a break between jobs to talk about her nursing work.

Alissa Atcheson grew up in a Butte family known internationally for outfitting and hunting consulting. Her father, Keith Atcheson, joined Jack Atcheson & Sons in the late 1970s.

Although Alissa helped out with the family business during her youth and was herself a hunter, she didn’t see embracing outfitting as a career path.

She graduated from Butte High School in 2004. In 2007, she received an associate’s degree in nursing from Montana Tech.

Nursing became Atcheson’s career path. It meandered for a time before she took a job in 2016 at the Montana Chemical Dependency Center in Butte.

Her work there led to her being nominated for a top nurse honor.

“Alissa is a selfless, skilled and gifted RN who has helped many patients recover from alcohol and drug addictions and helped set them on a new path [with] hope for their future,” the nominator wrote.

Atcheson said she initially took the job at the Montana Chemical Dependence Center because the schedule it offered — two 12-hour shifts — dovetailed nicely with spending time with her children.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to like it at first,” she said. “And then I grew to love it.”

New admissions typically arrive at their life’s lowest ebb, Atcheson said.

“They’re just in a world of hurt,” she said. “They’re people who have lost everything. They are hurt in their hearts.”

Addiction doesn’t discriminate, she said. It can happen to anyone. The center treats people with alcohol addiction, methamphetamine addiction, opiate use disorder and other chemical dependency afflictions.

When new admissions encounter staff who greet them without judgment, it can increase the odds that a patient will remain in treatment, Atcheson said.

“I’ve had patients tell me, ‘Oh, my gosh, you were the only reason I stayed.’”

Atcheson had previously worked for Rocky Mountain Hospice. She found rewards too in this end-of-life work.

“I loved it,” she said. “I loved being there for families. And being there when the person takes their last breath is so inspiring.”

Less inspiring for Atcheson was working in nursing management. For a time she was director of nursing at Copper Ridge Health and Rehab, a skilled nursing facility in Butte.

“It became too much for my family,” Atcheson said. “And my favorite thing is working directly with patients.”

Her first job out of nursing school was with St. James Healthcare, working as a floor nurse on the transitional care unit. Atcheson said she wanted to learn basic, hands-on nursing skills.

The skills she learned growing up in the Atcheson family were quite different.

Jack Atcheson & Sons was founded in Butte in 1955 by Jack Atcheson Sr. and his wife, Mary Claire. He operated a taxidermy business but also booked hunting trips worldwide for clients.

The website for Jack Atcheson & Sons reports that Keith Atcheson “guided his first client at the age of 16 to a successful bull elk hunt.”

Alissa Atcheson said she treasures memories associated with a family hunting camp in eastern Montana and helping her father and her step-mother, Nicole Atcheson, around the camp.

“It was an awesome experience,” she said.

But Atcheson said her interest in participating in the family business waned over time.

“I basically knew I wanted to do something to help people,” she said. “I wanted to take care of people at their most vulnerable time. It’s a natural high to be able to help someone.”

“They're really honest,” she said. “And funny.”

The question was whether to pursue a career in education or healthcare.

As a junior in high school, Yates had a life-changing experience, entering a program shadowing personnel at the local hospital.

At 17-years-old, Yates saw what few outside that world get a glimpse of.

In the cardiac lab, she saw a patient with an irregular heart beat shocked back to regular with a cardioversion. She saw babies born. She saw X-rays. In the lab, she saw a severed finger ripped off in a boating accident, the tendons still dangling off it.

“I also saw sad things, which I think was kind of eye opening to what nurses do. Because there are sad things that happen. You see people die," she said.

Sadness is a test for nurses, and Yates passed.

“It felt like kind of a calling. Everything about it felt right,” she said.

Yates learned she wouldn’t have to give up on teaching to become a nurse. After the nurses she tagged along with performed the hands-on work, they taught patients how to take care of themselves on their own.

Working as a school nurse turned out to be the perfect combination of her passions, and she ended up in the town her husband, grandparents and great-grandparents all hailed from.

“Butte's special," she said. "It's a tough town, a hard working town with really special people in it. I learned that really quickly."

With her husband, Zac Yates, she raises her three girls, aged 12, seven and four, in the Mining City with pride.

The pandemic expanded the daily duties of school nurses — they work closely with the Butte-Silver Bow Health Department to track COVID cases and perform swab tests. They manage quarantine, and do contact tracing.

Yates has long advocated for her students — making sure they have the opportunity to eat healthy and home and at school, for example. Her role as advocate expanded during the pandemic, too.

All those rules — masks, hand washing, social distance — they make a difference in the community, at schools and at home alike.

School nurses became quarterbacks calling the plays to keep people safe. In endless conversations with parents about COVID protocol, Yates learned a great deal.

“People are going to have different views and ideas. And my views aren’t always the correct views. And so I really wanted to be respectful of that this year," she said.

Having respect and dignity for people regardless of their views is what makes conversations effective, Yates said.

The new responsibility has been immense. To make sure she meets it at her best, Yates gets off work, straps on her shoes and takes to Butte’s trails.

“I'm a runner," she said. "That helps my mind sometimes. Because with kids, you go home and think about and worry about them, and it's hard to disconnect sometimes. So taking care of myself is important. I think running and being outdoors helps a lot with that kind of stuff.”

Yates was honored by the Montana Association of School Nurses’ with the School Nurse of the Year Award in 2020. When she learned she was also selected among southwest Montana’s outstanding nurses, she wanted to make sure she told it how it is — the way kids do.

“I'm highlighting what we all did together. This was not me solo,” Yates said.

The school district has cared deeply for its nurses, Yates said, and that’s driven her to do her best.

And the pandemic put a spotlight on nurses far and wide. That’s a very good thing, Yates said, because none of them can do it alone. They rely on each other and the support of the community.

“It takes a team,” she said.

A colleague at St. James Healthcare who believed Barres should be recognized as one of the region’s top nurses reported that Barres has a “contagiously cheerful personality” that improves morale for staff and patients alike.

And this certainly was a year when a measure of cheer was welcome as medical staff in the region and their patients coped with the challenges of COVID-19.

One physician at St. James Healthcare refers to Barres as “Holiday Hollie” because of her positive energy.

Research has shown that a positive attitude among caregivers can facilitate healing for patients and boost staff morale.

Hollie Barres grew up in Deer Lodge and graduated from Powell County High School. Her father, Garry, worked as a farrier, a taxidermist and beekeeper. Her mother, Diane, returned to school at age 32 and became a pharmacist.

Years later, daughter Hollie decided to go back to school at the same age.

“That’s when our brains matured,” Barres said, smiling.

And a mature brain was needed as Barres entered the challenging nursing program at Montana Tech. She graduated in April 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in nursing.

“It’s an amazing program,” Barres said. “They really set you up for success in the outside world.”

She waded as a new registered nurse into the turbulent world of patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Barres hired on at St. James Healthcare and works on the hospital’s third floor, a medical floor where patients may have cardiac issues or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or a host of other conditions.

Her path to a nursing career started in a setting where patients have four feet. She worked for several years as a veterinary assistant at VCA Amherst Animal Hospital in Butte.

“I realized I liked the healing aspect of veterinary care and that I really liked people,” Barres said.

“When I was young I didn’t think I was science-minded,” she said. “But I found my calling and it has been a real driver for me.

“It helps too when you’re a little bit older because you’re more focused,” Barres said. “When I was 18 I never would have made it through nursing school.”

One big boost during her time at Montana Tech was support from family.

“My family was nothing but supportive,” she said. “I would not have been able to do it without them.”

A key stress reliever for Barres is an activity renowned for its ability to focus the mind on clear, rushing streams, birdsong and rising trout.

“I fly fish a lot,” she said. “That keeps me happy.”

Barres said her work at St. James Healthcare has been rewarding in a host of ways.

“The relationships I have built with co-workers have been outstanding,” she said. “Especially during COVID, we couldn’t have done it without each other.”

She said relationships with patients and their families have offered other enriching experiences. On the occasions when a patient and their family wrestle with the approach of death, the family often needs particularly strong support from the nursing staff, she said.

Barres said she can envision more school. She has her eye on a master’s degree in nursing education and is considering also becoming a nurse practitioner.

When Barres first learned she’d been chosen for a top nurse honor she said she reacted with goosebumps.

“I love what I do so much,” she said. “And it’s such an honor to work with such a great group of nurses.”

The colleague who nominated Barres wrote, “[Hollie] can make a patient laugh in a heartbeat and advocates for the best for everyone.”

“She is one of the most honest, humble, kind and hard-working individuals in our school district,” her nominator observed.

Nielsen’s penchant for perpetual activity started early. She grew up on a “hobby ranch” in Oregon where her father, P.D. Ristau, trained Appaloosa horses.

“I worked mucking stalls, bucking hay and hauling wood,” Nielsen said. “It was a very active childhood.”

Her first paying job was as a sales associate at the Kmart in Grants Pass, Oregon. Nielsen owned her first business at 19. She rented space with a chiropractor and worked as a certified and licensed massage therapist for injury rehab.

Nielsen wasn’t necessarily destined to choose nursing as a career path. But there clearly was a familial inclination in that direction. Her maternal grandmother was a nurse. Her mother, Susan Ristau, was a nurse for 45 years, with 42 years spent in an emergency room. One sister-in-law worked as an obstetrics and pediatrics nurse. Another works as a medical-surgical nurse at St. James Healthcare in Butte.

“So, it’s kind of in the blood,” Nielsen said.

Another understatement.

P.D. Ristau had dreams of becoming a veterinarian. He was studying toward that goal. But he was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in Vietnam, an experience he doesn’t talk about, Nielsen said.

He stays busy with a host of interests and vocations, serving as an insurance agent, working as a builder/contractor, carving wood and painting murals.

“He’s building his retirement home right now. He loves it so much. He’ll just work forever.”

Nielsen’s life bustles a bit too. She is trained in legal nurse consulting and is certified in nutrition. She teaches CPR and first aid as an instructor for the American Heart Association.

Nielsen is currently engaged in continuing education in forensic nursing and is preparing to take an exam to become a Nationally Certified School Nurse.

“And I am toying with the idea of pursuing a pediatric nurse practitioner degree,” she said. “I’m always looking for the next new thing to do.”

Not to mention that Nielsen and her husband, Thomas, a power line foreman for NorthWestern Energy, have two teen-aged daughters in school in Anaconda.

When the couple first moved to Anaconda in 1999, Nielsen wasn’t sure she’d want to stay.

“I teared up when I saw that big black hill coming into Anaconda,” she said, referencing the slag pile near the former copper smelter.

But Thomas, whom Nielsen described as an avid bowhunter, ice fisherman and fly fisherman, loves the area, she said.

Nielsen studied nursing at Oregon Health Sciences University, completing a bachelor’s of science degree in 1999.

Her first nursing job was at the Community Hospital of Anaconda, working as a floor nurse and in the ICU. She then spent 10 years at St. James Healthcare in a diverse array of roles. Later, she worked as a public health nurse in Anaconda and as a substance abuse prevention nurse.

“I have a very well-rounded repertoire of skills to draw from, which I think is perfect for a school nurse,” Nielsen said.

Her public health experience was helpful when COVID-19 required an unprecedented collaboration between the schools and the Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Public Health Department.

Nielsen said the pandemic’s effects on students, including restrictions on developmentally important activities with peers, have taken a toll.

“We’ve seen a rise in depression and anxiety,” she said.

Nielsen said she feels frustrated on occasion because her time is stretched so thin. But the work still feeds her heart, she said.

“I just love kids.”

Ellingson had worked during high school as a sandwich maker at Helena’s Staggering Ox. She envisioned a different career path.

“It was either go to Dillon and become a teacher or go to Butte and become a nurse,” Ellingson recalled. "I decided Butte was more of a fun town.”

She enrolled at Montana Tech and in 2010 completed an associate’s degree in nursing.

Ellingson worked initially for Acadia Montana, a Butte-based residential psychiatric treatment center for children that closed in 2019 amid controversy about the facility's use of chemical restraints and seclusion.

She then worked at the Montana State Hospital at Warm Springs, spending time on the D-unit, which focused on treating mentally ill patients who had criminal charges or convictions. After taking maternity leave, she did not return.

Ellingson works now at the clinic at St. James Healthcare and is the nurse for Dr. Kathren McGree, a family practice physician. McGree is celebrated for her ability to listen to patients and her willingness to do so.

These traits she apparently shares with Ellingson. The person who nominated the registered nurse for a top nurse honor clearly thought so.

“Morgan remembers every item in a person’s care and remembers the person,” the nominator wrote. “She returns every call and collaborates with Dr. McGree about every issue. The respect that Morgan has for her clients shows through each contact.”

Ellingson said she deeply respects McGree, who delivered two of her three children.

“I just really look up to her, as a doctor and a person and a mom,” she said.

And Ellingson clearly values the patients served by McGree’s practice.

“You get close to people over the years,” she said. “You know their struggles and when they have good things going on.

“It’s nice to be the person they trust to call. Health isn’t something people always want to talk about. It can be embarrassing,” Ellingson said. “I try not to talk down to people. I try to avoid a lot of medical terminology. I try to explain things.”

She fielded a host of questions this past year from patients concerned about COVID-19, potential symptoms and vaccinations.

Ellingson said the office tries hard to honor patients’ schedules by getting them in to see the doctor at their appointed time.

“It kind of stresses me out when we get behind,” she said. “But it’s bound to happen because Dr. McGree is so thorough with her patients.”

One of Ellingson’s forearms displays a tattoo of a series of Roman numerals. The ink refers to her wedding anniversary. In 2013, she married Bryan Ellingson, a police officer with Butte-Silver Bow County. Their children are Blake, 6, Grant, 5, and Mollie, who is nearly 2 years old.

McGree’s family practice serves pregnant women and babies, among others.

Ellingson said the babies are her favorites.

“It’s cool to see kids grow up,” she said. “Going through all these milestones with people is really rewarding.”

Ellingson occasionally works as a travel nurse, a gig that tends to offer high wages. She said the family is trying to pay off a new camper.

“We’re into camping. I like just being outdoors,” she said.

She said her extended families have cabins at Canyon Ferry and Lincoln.

Her father, Jack Donnell, has worked as a laborer. Her mother, Cindy, has worked in real estate.

“They’re really proud of me,” Ellingson said. “I wasn’t like the best teenager. I think they are very proud of how my life has turned out.”

Peggy Kilmer acknowledged that shyness is a personal trait. This reticence is suggested by her soft-spoken speech. She said she enjoys working in surgical services for St. James Healthcare. Her duties can include comforting patients in the recovery room. And someone emerging from anesthesia, perhaps with post-operative pain, is unlikely to want a boisterous extrovert tending to their tender needs.

Soothing should follow suturing.

One of Kilmer’s patients wrote, “I awoke to this soothing voice, which comforted me the rest of the afternoon. What a blessing.”

Kilmer came late to nursing work.

“I had known for a long time that I was drawn to the nursing profession, and as my children were getting older and I was looking to return to work, with the support and encouragement of my family, I pursued this dream at the age of 48,” she recalled.

Kilmer said Lauri Lockett, a registered nurse and her husband’s aunt and her friend, “paved the way for me, by her example and her confidence in me.”

The late bloomer graduated from the Montana Tech School of Nursing in 2012. Some 28 years before she had graduated from Montana Tech with a bachelor’s degree in engineering science.

Motherhood and parenting intervened and Kilmer never worked as an engineer. She discovered during the child-rearing period between degrees that she was drawn to a helping profession.

Kilmer was born and raised in Butte, the third of five daughters born to Danny and Mary Kane. Danny Kane, born in Butte in 1925, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He later worked for the Anaconda Co. and then as an inspector for the Butte Water Co.

Kilmer graduated from Butte Central High School in 1980. She is married to Jimm Kilmer, justice of the peace in Butte-Silver Bow County. They have five children.

“We chose to raise our family [in Butte], surrounded by family and friends, and have always appreciated the wonderful people of Butte and the opportunity to live and work here,” Kilmer said.

Today, one daughter works as a registered nurse in Missoula. Another is in nursing school at Montana Tech.

For Kilmer, returning to college in middle-age presented challenges. One was adjusting to the more sophisticated demands of computers.

“I hadn’t worked a lot on computers at that point,” she said.

Kilmer said she is a grateful employee of St. James Healthcare in surgical services.

“I have been supported by wonderful mentors in this department and will be forever grateful for the knowledge, experience and friendship that is so freely shared,” she said.

Feedback about Kilmer’s work with patients suggests that she freely shares her full attention.

“It is a great privilege of mine to be present with people at a time when they are vulnerable, often physically and emotionally,” she said.

“I hope every day that I am present for my patients with the singleness of purpose that their well being is my sole concern — providing competent care, comfort and compassion and helping to share the burden of their suffering,” Kilmer said.

“I cannot put into words the rewards that being available for others in this capacity bring to my life,” she said.

Kilmer said she feels both honored and a little unworthy to be selected as one of the region’s top nurses.

“I feel all my co-workers are more deserving,” she said.

Quietly.

Evans, who works for Montana Orthopedics, volunteered for six weeks last spring in the emergency department of Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn. New York City was reeling as COVID-19 became a life and death reality for the metropolis.

“I went at the height of the pandemic,” she said. “I just kind of got the feeling I needed to go.”

On her first day at Coney Island Hospital the emergency department overflowed with patients, Evans said, including some who had died but had not yet been removed because of the overwhelming demand for care.

“I saw a lot of death there,” she said.

Accepting the temporary volunteer post required Evans to leave behind her husband, Levi, and their two young sons, as well as her mother, Nadine Eickbush, director of nursing at the Southwest Montana Veterans Home in Butte.

“My family was really supportive,” Evans said.

Her boss at Montana Orthopedics, Dr. Michael Gallagher, gave Evans a leave of absence to allow her to take the volunteer post.

During Evans’ six weeks at Coney Island Hospital seven staff members lost their lives due to COVID-19.

When she returned to Butte she realized that the pandemic’s full reality had not yet dawned on the Mining City. She saw many people who weren’t wearing face masks and heard others who dismissed the pandemic as a hoax.

Born in San Diego, California, Evans grew up in California and Utah.

She studied nursing at the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, both as an undergraduate and graduate. In 2018, she completed her doctor of nursing practice degree. Her husband also attended the University of Mary. He played and coached soccer at the school and also coached soccer in his native Wyoming.

Evans’ father, John Smith, lives now in Pennsylvania with Evans’ stepmother. He once drove an 18-wheeler and worked for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

But it was Evans’ mother who inspired her to pursue a career in nursing.

Evans said she sees nursing as a calling, as a summons to help people. She has balked at being called a hero for her time last April and May on the pandemic’s front lines.

The person who nominated Evans for the regional top nurse honors observed, “Brooke has unselfish concern and devotion for the well-being of others…Brooke does so much more than just take care of people. She is part teacher, part motivational speaker and part therapist.”

An article in “Momentum,” the University of Mary’s magazine, celebrated Evans’ volunteer service last year in New York City. She said her service at Coney Island Hospital was not heroic.

“If you go into the medical field, you go for a reason, and that’s to help people,” she told the magazine.

Evans added that she felt called to volunteer.

“Hopefully I impacted a lot of people and helped them when I was out there,” she told the magazine. “It changed my outlook on a lot of things in life.”

In a typically teeming and boisterous city rendered eerily quiet by COVID-19 shutdowns, New Yorkers launched a new tradition last spring to honor healthcare workers, first responders and other essential workers. Every evening, when the clock struck 7 p.m., Big Apple’s residents whooped, clapped and cheered to demonstrate appreciation for people on the front lines of an unprecedented crisis.

Evans said these nightly affirmations were heartening to hear.

“I like talking to patients, getting to know them,” she explained. “Everyone has a story to tell.”

For Sheehan, nursing is in her DNA, but it took some time to take that final step.

“I started off in pre-med, switched to pharmacy, but later decided to go into the nursing program,” she said.

Her mother, Teri Hunt, was a nurse at St. James, working in the intensive care unit for 45 years. The mother-daughter duo not only chose the same career path, but two years ago, Hunt was named one of the top nine local nurses.

As a young girl, Sheehan was able to watch her mom in action a few times during the annual Take Your Daughter to Work Day.

“I liked hanging out at the nurses’ station,” recalled Sheehan.

The Butte High graduate earned her associate’s degree in 2007. Ten years later, she had her bachelor’s degree, graduating from the nursing school at Montana Tech.

Sheehan’s mother retired in 2020, but that retirement was short-lived. She returned to help with COVID-19 screenings and is now administering the vaccine at the ongoing clinics. The medical bug hit her younger brothers, too, both of whom work at St. James. Matt Hunt is a telemetry technician, while Jake Hunt is a pharmacy intern.

Coincidentally, the facility is also where she met her future husband, Kurt Sheehan, a Butte-Silver Bow County firefighter.

Before becoming a nurse, she was the emergency room’s admitting clerk and met Kurt, who was working with local emergency medical technicians.

“Most of my adult life has been tied to this hospital,” laughed Sheehan.

To say Hunt is proud of her daughter would be an understatement.

“I am bulging with pride,” said Hunt. “Stacey is an excellent nurse.”

For Sheehan, working during the pandemic has been, at times, difficult. More so, from October through December of last year, when the virus was much more prevalent and affecting so many Butte residents.

According to Sheehan, every nurse was busy at St. James, but those working in the emergency room and ICU were at times overwhelmed.

“When I could,” explained Sheehan, “I would go down and help alleviate some of the burden.”

The need to lend a helping hand does not surprise Sheehan’s mom, who has witnessed her daughter’s work ethic firsthand.

Hunt is also proud of her daughter’s involvement with the Montana Nurses Association.

“She understands the stresses of the job,” said Hunt.

The highlights of nursing are many and varied for Sheehan. She enjoys the daily interactions she has with her patients and is thankful for the rapport she has with them.

The downside is some of those patients have been family and friends.

“It pulls at your heartstrings a bit more when you know the person,” she said.

It’s been 14 years since Sheehan first donned a nursing cap. Looking back, she has no complaints and is thankful for the experiences, whether it be in the emergency room, ICU, or in the cardiac unit.

Throughout her daughter’s career, Hunt has always been amazed at how caring and helpful her daughter is with her patients.

“She is a very kind person,” said Hunt.

As for Sheehan, the secret to her success is simple.

“I do enjoy my job,” she said.