The Indomitable Lucile Petry Leone: Nursing's Valiant Leader.

DURING THE EARLY 1960S, one of the most illustrious nurses in the world served at the presidential helm of the National League for Nursing. She was the charismatic Lucile Petty Leone, a woman of enormous drive and talent, who began her official tenure at the League at the outset of what probably became organized nursing's most productive yet controversial decade. Long before that period, Petry already could claim a number of accomplishments, having moved gracefully up the career ladder after graduating in 1929 from the Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing (1). When she entered Johns Hopkins, Lucile Petry had already earned a baccalaureate degree in teaching, with a major in chemistry, from the University of Delaware. "I was fascinated with the physiological aspects," she declared, "but wanted to experience chemistry in human bodies and not in test tubes" (2, p. 9). And she did just that! Between her junior and senior years at college, she spent time in New York City working as a nurse's aide in a small hospital. At Hopkins, she acquired a solid grounding in nursing, but it was research that excited her and sparked a lifelong interest. "What I saw was blazing new discoveries in medical research," she declared. "Every time I walked down the hall, some doctor had discovered something new. This is what I came for!" (2, p. 9).

Born in 1902 in Lewisburg, Ohio, Petry grew up in a home with parents who espoused a firm belief in teaching children responsibility early in life. During summer vacations, she held jobs in a cannery, a dry goods store, and a broker's office (1). She had just turned 19 when her father moved the family to Delaware to accept a …