It started with a wish
Items from Katie Smith’s collection
Local nurse, author and civic leader Katie Hart Smith donates a nursing artifact collection to inspire students to pursue their passions.
O
ne day in 2016, the GGC Center
for Teaching Excellence committee
gathered to discuss a collaborative re-
search project between the college and the Lawrenceville Police Department (LPD). Attendees included Jeff Smith, LPD
captain and part-time GGC criminal jus-
tice instructor, Dr. Sharon Grason, director of nursing, and several nursing students.
During the meeting, Grason expressed
a “wish” for an old nursing cape to be showcased in the Allied Health and Sciences Building.
Upon returning home that evening,
10
I
Ge orgia Gwinn et t C ollege
Jeff mentioned this wish to his wife, Katie
She wanted to become a registered nurse,
donation that will inspire GGC nursing
experience a life well-lived.
Hart Smith, setting in motion a unique students for years to come.
For Katie, health care is a three-genera-
tion tradition. Her grandmother, Orvada “Gigi” Killion Isensee, is a legendary figure in her family.
Isensee was a strong-willed young
woman in 1924 when she defied her
father’s orders to stay on the family farm in southern Indiana, marry and have
children. She knew that an education was the key to breaking the chains of poverty.
serve others, travel the world and
“She secretly applied to nursing school
at Methodist Episcopal Hospital in
Indianapolis. She and her mom sewed
her nursing uniform during the day, and hid it away in her hope chest at night,” Katie said. “One day when her father
came home off the fields, she was gone. As a result, he disowned her.”
Isensee’s determined decision forever
changed her family’s trajectory. Katie’s mom also worked in health care and
