At 94, Rose-Marie Tarbell-Lyman ’53 still wakes up each day with a sense of purpose.
As a parish nurse in Maryland, she fields phone calls, organizes meals for neighbors, and continues to advocate for a level of care she began learning over seven decades ago.
“Everything I have learned to do began at UVM,” she says. “It gave me a lifetime of knowledge, a career I loved, and the ability to care for others - at home, in the classroom, and in the community.”
Her story begins in the small town of Townshend, Vermont, in a home just next to the post office.
Rose-Marie had little access to formal science education in high school - and even fewer financial resources. But when a recruiter from the University of Vermont presented an experimental five-year nursing program, she saw a door crack open.
“I had been dreaming about nursing since I was six,” she says. “I had my little nurse’s kit. That visit changed everything.”
A New Path: Grit, Guidance, and Gratitude
With a small scholarship and a summer of 12-hour shifts as a nurse’s aide at the Brattleboro Retreat, Rose-Marie arrived in Burlington in the fall of 1948 with almost nothing in her pockets. She lived with host families for her first two years, worked as a hostess in the Robinson Hall cafeteria, and babysat to make ends meet.
“It was hard,” she says, “but UVM watched out for me.” Assistant Dean Wing helped place her with a kind family near campus who treated her with respect. Those early years were intense - Rose-Marie had to repeat a semester of anatomy due to her lack of science background - but she found her stride through persistence, mentorship, and hands-on learning.
Throughout the five-year program, Rose-Marie and her classmates rotated through an extraordinary range of clinical placements: Mary Fletcher Hospital, Butler Psychiatric Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She learned to deliver babies, care for schizophrenic patients, and administer newborn gavage feedings. Her training was rigorous and immersive.
“There were only eight of us in the program,” she says. “But UVM sent us out into the world. They believed in us.”
Moments That Shape a Life
Some memories are etched in Rose-Marie’s mind as clearly as the day they happened: assisting a maternity patient solo on a late-night shift, witnessing the aftermath of spina bifida in a newborn, or dancing with a psychiatric patient at the Retreat before being reassigned to a more "serious" unit.
“That patient just wanted to dance,” she says, smiling. “To me, that was care. That was connection.”
On campus, she became the dorm nurse in Coolidge Hall and a food service hostess at Robinson’s. Her professors and house mothers taught her not just medicine, but social grace, resilience, and responsibility. “We learned to really see people,” she says. “And to listen - deeply."
From Classroom to Career - and Back Again
After graduating in 1953, Rose-Marie began her nursing career assisting with surgery in Springfield, Vermont, while her husband served overseas in Korea. Though skilled in the operating room, she missed the human connection and soon transitioned into public health and later, education.
Over the years, she taught at the Thompson School for Practical Nursing and became a teaching principal in her hometown of Townsend.
“UVM didn’t just teach me how to be a nurse,” she reflects. “They taught me how to adapt. How to teach. How to serve.”
Still Learning, Still Teaching
Today, Rose-Marie continues to mentor young caregivers, including her own granddaughter, now a nursing assistant.
“One of the things nurses must do is replace themselves,” she says. “We need to keep this going.”
As a parish nurse, she helps coordinate blood pressure clinics, meal programs, and phone support for seniors near her home in Maryland.
She carries liability insurance, keeps up with international nursing research, and follows developments in hospice care and elder health. Her motivation?
“Because someone once recruited me, and they did it right,” she says. “So, I keep recruiting. I keep showing up.”
Legacy and Lessons
What does she hope nursing students at UVM today know?
“Follow up with your patients,” she says. “Even just a note or a phone call. That little bit of human contact makes all the difference.”
Asked what’s changed most in nursing, Rose-Marie is quick to answer: technology and time. “Patients go home hours after surgery now. They don’t get the teaching they need,” she says. “But if you listen, if you slow down, you can create a pathway for them. You can change their outcome.”
More than seventy years since she entered UVM’s experimental nursing program, Rose-Marie Tarbell-Lyman remains a nurse, a mentor, and a tireless advocate for care rooted in compassion.
“Everything that UVM gave me,” she says, “I’ve passed on. And I’m still passing it on.”
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