3 minute read
The Journey to Serving
By Cyndi (Burrows) Lamb '74
Life experiences often shape who we are and who we become. For Jeannie Halsey Gunter ‘89, this couldn’t be more true. Enrolling at Southern Nazarene University in the fall of 1985, the young girl from Anadarko, Oklahoma arrived on campus knowing no one. Jeannie shared, “My first semester was a rocky time for me, yet it eventually led me into my future.”
When Jeannie left home that fall, her stepdad, the man who had raised her, had re-entered alcohol rehab for the third time. Then two days before Thanksgiving, her mom arrived unexpectedly on campus to drive her back home as her biological dad had been diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. He died three months later. While she acknowledges the turbulent start to her college experience, Jeannie also remembers with gratitude the love and support she felt from her RA, fellow Chorale members, and professors, especially Dr. Rex Tullis.
Like many students, Jeannie struggled to decide on a major. Her main interests were music, nursing, and early childhood education. She felt drawn to nursing, yet most of the classes were in the afternoon. That posed a problem since Jeannie knew she had to find a job. Because of that, she made the decision to pursue early childhood education.
At the end of her sophomore year, Jeannie married Michael Gunter ‘85, and the couple moved to Stillwater so her new husband could finish his engineering degree at OSU. His first job took them to Atlanta. During this time, the desire to go into nursing only increased for Jeannie, and she continued to acquire her prerequisites. Two years later, they returned to Oklahoma City, and she entered the nursing program at SNU coming full circle.
Following her graduation, Jeannie went to work at Mercy Hospital in oncology. She had never forgotten her experience as an 18-year-old trying to make sense of her father’s illness. “I had so many questions back then. No one talked to me about what was going on with his cancer. It was such a confusing time. I think it [was] watching my dad die and having no one to explain what was happening that solidified my decision to be a nurse.”
For the next 18 years, along with raising a family, Jeannie worked part-time on the cancer floor. Every day, part of her job was to dispense medication. However, she also made it her goal to dispense information, warmth and encouragement, things she had never received when dealing with her father’s diagnosis.
In 2008, in a stunning turn of events, Jeannie’s husband was diagnosed with stage IV kidney cancer. As his health declined and he could no longer work, Jeannie moved into full-time nursing. Although a difficult time, this experience took her abilities to connect with patients to a new level, allowing her to share a unique perspective with them - as a cancer-patient caregiver.
Today, Jeannie is a lead nurse at Mercy Coletta Cancer Center in Oklahoma City and helps shepherd younger nurses, passing on her experience, wisdom and compassion to the next generation. While Jeannie believes she received a superior education at SNU, she also believes she received a greater gift, a commission. “There are many places you can learn to start an IV or drop an NG tube, but it takes a special place to instill in you the idea to approach your work as a mission.” This is a mission Jeannie carries out each and every day.
