She was known as the “Mother of the Children’s Center,” but her friends and colleagues say it’s more precise to say that Mildred Pauline Hesterberg, who died surrounded by her children and grandchildren on March 4 at age 92, was the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center’s heart and soul.
“Polly was a touchstone for me,” says Lisa Phifer Smith, who served as Director of Nursing at the Children’s Center from 1988 through 2008. “You only had to meet her once to understand. She was so serene and pure, so humble, yet so influential. You’d watch her interact with children and their families and think, ‘Yes! This is why I became a pediatric nurse.’”
Born in Creagerstown, MD, on April 21, 1929, Polly Hesterberg is perhaps best known for her tireless and effective advocacy for parents — that they be allowed to “live in” with their hospitalized children, a groundbreaking practice essential to what is now known as patient- and family-centered care.
“When Polly began her career, parents were only allowed to see their children during very limited visiting hours,” explains her longtime pediatric nursing colleague and close friend Carol Matlin. “Polly was always focused on the needs of children and she had this uncanny ability to see through their eyes. And what do hospitalized children need more than having their parents at their bedside?”
Hesterberg began her career at a time when nurses were expected to stand when a doctor entered the room, but she was never intimidated, Matlin says. “A lot of us were, but she had this grace and wisdom that just compelled even the most formidable physicians to listen to her. She may have been small in stature, but she was a giant when it came to advocating for patients and their families. She was a role model for me and for every nurse lucky enough to work with her.”
Hersterberg came to Johns Hopkins as a nursing instructor in 1961, left from 1966 to 1968 for the birth of her two children, then returned in 1968 as the first Living-in-Coordinator for the Children’s Center. When she retired in 1999, Phifer Smith commissioned an oil painting — the first portrait of a Children’s Center nurse ever commissioned.
“It was audacious, but everyone supported it,” Phifer Smith says. “Medical residents told me she’d taught them how to talk to parents and made them better pediatricians.”
Hesterberg’s daughter, Lisette Stamato, who also worked as a pediatric nurse at the Children’s Center, says that she learned from her mother “to be tender, not only with children, but with their parents, grandparents, whoever was at the bedside.” And her mother taught her to revere Hopkins. “It is an incredible institution, and the only place I’ve worked where nurses are treated as full and equally respected members of the medical team.”
To make a gift, visit secure.jhu.edu/form/children and choose “in memory of” Polly Hesterberg.