Marcia Brenta attended
continued from previous page
HSU right out of high
reside,” he said. “In small towns, that role is all the more important,” he said. “They’re more deeply integrated. There’s more reliance on the role they play,” he said. And part of a university’s contribution is the people it educates and puts into the work force.
school, back in 1970, became a nurse and never left. When she first arrived,
Marcia Brenta
attended HSU right out of high school, back in 1970. She became a nurse and never left. When she first arrived, though, she didn’t think she’d last a month. Brenta grew up in Marin, and had never seen Humboldt County when she decided on HSU. She mused that she probably should have done a little research first, because she was expecting an ocean view from her dorm room. “My first impression was not what I expected,” Brenta said. “The day my parents drove me to Humboldt it was foggy and rainy at the end of summer. I was used to Marin County weather,” she said. Couple that with a bad roommate and being away from home. “I wanted to leave after the first couple of
though, she didn’t think she’d last a month.
photo courtesy of Marcia Brenta.
days,” she said. After a few months, however, like a lot of freshmen do, she made friends and never wanted to leave. “I’m not into the sun anymore,” she said with a laugh. Right after she graduated, Brenta got a nursing job at the county hospital, where she worked for a year. “I always wanted to be a nurse,” she said. “I always just liked dealing with people and helping people out.” She worked with pregnant women for
20 years. “I got to see births and that was pretty amazing,” she said. Now she works as a home-health nurse, where, among her other duties, she helps dying patients and their families prepare for the inevitable. “Helping people die, it’s powerful and life affirming and life changing,” she said. “I’ve dealt with many people who are getting ready to pass,” she said. She makes them comfortable and she comforts their relatives. “We’re all going to pass,” she said. “Getting the family to see that and
to accept it and to move forward, [that’s] very powerful.” She said she’ll probably never leave Humboldt County, despite pressure in the early days from her family to move back to Marin. “I never had the impulse,” she said. “I think we’re going to be here forever.”
Like Brenta,
Kirk Goddard is another person you might not have heard of, but he has been teaching Humboldt County’s kids, one class at a time, for two decades. He is a seventhand eighth-grade social studies teacher at Jacoby Creek Charter School. He came to Humboldt from Ventura County in 1984 to get his degree and teaching credential at HSU. He had been through the area once on a vacation when he was young. “[I had] developed this romantic image of the rainforests and the beaches,” he said. Also,
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18 North Coast Journal • Thursday, AUG. 22, 2013 • northcoastjournal.com