Ruth "Dolly" Joern, ARNP
Beloved by family and community, a trusted adviser, motivator, mentor, advocate and activist for a healthier, kinder and more just world
As we approach Dolly’s birthday during this socially distant year, we wanted to reopen this space to connect and share memories virtually. We’d love to see your photos and read your Dolly stories as we remember her. Dolly always took special delight in the cards and calls from friends and family – and shared every edible treat that came through the door – even the chocolate! She made it easy to sit a spell and just chat, share the day’s trials and tribulations, and always close with a smile and a hug.
And so we'll do here.
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March 7, 2020 / Obituary
Ruth Dorothea “Dolly” Joern, ARNP, a retired women’s health care Nurse Practitioner in Mount Vernon and, earlier, Bellingham, died on Saturday, March 7, at Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue of complications from a heart valve procedure. She was 92.
Dolly was a motivator, mentor and advocate for patients and a champion of her profession at critical times for legislative and community action. Physicians called her inspirational, citing her breadth of knowledge and creativity in medicine, her trademark collaborative approach and her effectiveness as an educator. Nursing colleagues described her as a pathfinder, change agent and professional and personal mentor. She was an advocate for women’s healthcare and the then-new advanced-practice training for nurses in women’s health—nurse practitioners.
Following her own training as a nurse practitioner in 1976, she was among the very first pioneers of the designation in Washington, license No. 0006, with prescriptive authority. Initially certified by the Nurses Association of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (NAACOG) and the American Nurses Association, she was certified in 1980 as a Women’s Health Care Nurse Practitioner (WHCNP), when that specialty designation became available. Dolly helped drive to passage legislation protecting the confidentiality of nurse-patient communications in 1985. In 1993, she was the nominee from Planned Parenthood to sit on the Washington nursing commission.
Dolly Joern was born in 1927 in Sioux City, Iowa, to parents who had immigrated to the U.S. earlier in that century from Eastern Europe. She was the eldest in a family of five children. When her family relocated to Pasadena, California, she completed high school there and entered nursing school. She began her nursing career as an RN in 1945 as a member of the U.S. Public Health Service Cadet Nurse Corps, and later in Gynecorps, Washington State’s first training program for nurse practitioners in women’s health. Dolly worked at hospitals and women’s healthcare clinics in California, Louisiana and Bellingham before settling in 1980 in Mount Vernon. As head nurse in obstetrics at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Bellingham in 1960, she launched the first classes for prospective parents and made headlines for the groundbreaking policy of permitting fathers in the delivery room.
In 1980, she joined physician John Knudsen in founding the Mount Vernon Women’s Clinic. Over the years, thousands of women were her patients, frequently including multiple generations of the same family. She retired from clinical practice at age 85, after 37 years as a nurse practitioner and 65 years as a nurse and caregiver.
In her letter announcing her retirement from Mount Vernon Women's Clinic, July 26, 2013, she wrote:
Dear Friends,
I'm writing to let you know that I think the time has come to leave my second home. It has been a great 33 years and I will miss you all terribly, but it is time to be home with my dog and cats, read until midnight, and sleep in. I have so appreciated the honor of helping you (I hope!) with your healthcare. For some of you it's been through many of the transitions of life -- school, marriage, birth, PMS, menopause -- and through my personal transitions as well. I'll miss hearing all your news! Please say 'hi' whenever our paths cross. Thanks for being such a huge part of my life.
Love & hugs
Dolly
In the ten years that followed, she did all of those things, and continued to enjoy crossing paths in chance encounters with so many whose lives she touched -- including former patients as well as their husbands, sons, siblings and parents who shared their stories and updates with her wherever they met. She always insisted she was "nothing special" but everyone who knew her insisted otherwise.
Dolly had a lifelong love of animals and was a fierce advocate for the fair and humane treatment of all animals. During her lifetime, she adopted cats and dogs, and was always alert for strays who needed care and homes. She was also passionate about environmental concerns and social justice, and was an active supporter of those organizations that champion both. Dolly believed in the importance of a free press as essential to democracy, and felt community journalism plays a vital role as well. She was proud that her son and daughter-in-law were journalists, and that her grandchildren, as adults, were on career paths of service in health, environmental law, and higher education fostering intercultural communications and student exchange programs.
Dolly is survived by the extraordinary community of loving friends and colleagues who enriched her life, and by her loving family: sister Roberta Weil and brother Norman Shapiro, both of Hawaii; her son and only child, Steven Weiner and daughter-in-law Teresa Barker Weiner, of Beaverton, Oregon; three grandchildren, Aaron Weiner (Lauren) of Long Grove, Illinois, Rachel Rau (Kristen) of Hamburg, Germany, and Rebecca Barker of San Francisco; and three great-grandchildren, Leyna and Aden Weiner, and Juna Ruth Rau. Dolly’s larger extended family included two half-sisters, Betty Henigman of Israel, and Robin Walker of Harmon, Utah; her niece Martha Decherd of Portland, and nephews Michael Weil of Berkeley, California, and Raymond Weil of Shelbourne Falls, Massachusetts.
Dolly's dog Lilly, her small but loyal rescue companion of many years found a new, loving home among friends.
At Dolly’s request, no formal services are planned. A community gathering to celebrate Dolly is being planned for a later date. In lieu of flowers, donations in her name are encouraged to Planned Parenthood, Skagit Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Services of Mount Vernon, the Skagit Audubon Society, SPOT (Saving Pets One At A Time), in Burlington, the Northwest Center for Animal Help (NOAH) of Stanwood or the Mount Vernon Public Library. Other organizations she actively supported included the ACLU and the Sierra Club.