Joyce Gimmestad hoped to reach 90 before retiring from being a nurse. Still, she retired on June 22, at 88, due to a rare eye disease that will eventually cause her to go blind.

Gimmestad developed macular degeneration, which she said led to Charles Bonnet syndrome, whose main symptom is visual hallucination. She said she had to retire for her safety and that of her patients.

She received her nursing license in 1954, right before her 18th birthday, after one year of nursing school. Until her retirement, she worked full-time, about 50 to 60 hours a week, at Twin Cities hospitals and care facilities, and even throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

70 years of nursing

Gimmestad grew up in Herman, Minn., a town of 400 people about 175 miles northwest of St. Paul, in a family of 11 children. At the time, she wanted to attend nursing school at Ancker Hospital in St. Paul, but the tuition — which was $385 for a three-year course — was too expensive for her family. Instead, she went to Swedish Hospital in Minneapolis, which she said was a $65 all-inclusive cost for a year of nursing school, room and board and uniforms.

When she entered training in the 1950s, her family lived on a farm and didn’t have a phone, causing her mom to worry while Gimmestad was away in the dormitory.

“I said, ‘As long as I can walk and talk, I’ll be fine,’ and well I’m 88 years old and I can still walk and talk, so I feel I’m OK,” Gimmestad said.

She previously worked at Swedish Hospital, Ancker Hospital and Midway Hospital until they closed, did private duty and worked at St. Mary’s until landing at The Villas at New Brighton for the past 12 years.

She said she felt good enough to work and hoped to reach 90, but her eye condition changed things for her.

“I got to the point where I couldn’t see the computer anymore, and I said, ‘That’s it, I gotta quit,’ ” Gimmestad said.

As she reflects on her time in the industry, she said a significant change for her was the nurse-patient relationship and the doctor-nurse dynamic. She said she feels that nurses were more accommodating with patients — including giving them backrubs — when she started, and when the doctor came into the room, the nurses stood at attention.

She was very loved at The Villas at New Brighton, according to her daughter and a past coworker.

Her oldest daughter, Sue Rothstein, said she’s always known her mom as hard-working and go-getting.

“She wants everything done yesterday,” Rothstein said.

Rothstein attended Gimmestad’s retirement party in June and said she remembers her coworkers and patients speaking fondly of her.

“This guy was in a wheelchair, he got up and said some words and all of a sudden he just went flying over and hugged her and said, ‘We’re gonna miss you,’ ” Rothstein said.

Joyce Smith, a coworker of Gimmestad at The Villas at New Brighton, said she worked with her for five years, including throughout COVID-19. She said Gimmestad, who was on the night shift, was always hard-working.

“She was always busy, didn’t sit down and was always up doing stuff for the residents here,” Smith said. “For her age, she was really on the go.”

Smith said working through COVID-19 was stressful for many health care workers, and the isolation gear made their job more difficult.

“That was a scary time with people getting COVID, some of the residents died and a lot of the staff were scared to come to work, but not Joyce,” Smith said.

A life well-lived

Gimmestad is still part of a big family with three kids, six grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. Many of them are in college, and she said the cost difference from her time continues to amaze her.

She had a long bucket list that she’s completed over the years, the last and most recent item being skydiving.

Some of the others on her list included going to Disney World, crashing a wedding, winning a dance contest and driving a race car. She went skydiving two years ago, at 86, and was featured on TV on KSTP 5. She said she hopes to go again soon.

Gimmestad owned a flower shop for 25 years while working as a private-duty nurse. She said she would bring flowers to work often and enjoyed making corsages and bouquets from the flowers she grew. She sold the shop in 1998 to focus on other ventures.

Gimmestad said she received recognition from the U.S. House of Representatives for her work during the past 70 years.

“I was so shocked when it came in the mail,” Gimmestad said. “It was this beautiful American flag and this paper explaining what I did and how old I was. It was really nice.”

When renewing her license last fall, officials with the Minnesota Board of Nursing said they believed she is the only nurse at her age working full time. For the last eight years, she has been considered the oldest working nurse in Minnesota.

“It’s pretty amazing when you really think about it to work in this profession, which is so hard and people leave it all the time, and she stuck with it for so many years,” Smith said.