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DUKE APPRECIATION The recognition and celebration of Duke faculty and staff returns in May with a blog and ice cream social with music on West Campus Quad.
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TRULY PRESIDENTIAL Winners of the Presidential Award for outstanding service were announced in April. The awards are among the most prestigious honors for faculty and staff.
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SUSTAINABLE DUKE Are you among the 5,500 Duke community members who have pledged to make changes to reduce emissions at Duke? If not, pledge now.
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May 2010
Family Ties DUKE’S WORKFORCE INCLUDES MANY FAMILIES WHOSE EMPLOYMENT TIES SPAN GENERATIONS hree tiny note cards hang on a wall behind Kristy Chu’s desk in the School of Nursing. They are a daily reminder of her family’s Duke connections. “Chu is a fourth generation employee: her parents, grandmother and two great grandparents worked at Duke. The cards, reproductions of hand-painted scenes of Kilgo Quad, Duke Chapel and other buildings, belonged to Chu’s grandmother, Ira Mae Wethington, a nurse’s aide in the 40s and 50s. Chu’s mother, Rena Wethington, framed and hung them in her office. She passed them on to Chu when she retired from Duke in 2005 after 27 years. “I always knew that Duke would be a good place to work,” Chu said. “Mom and Dad always told me Duke wasn’t going to close its doors. It was a secure working environment.” Chu is among many families for whom working at Duke is a tradition. There’s Gwen Rogers, who followed in the footsteps of her mother. And there’s the Childers family: four sisters who currently work at Duke. “Duke staff are our best recruiters,” said Sally Allison, assistant director for Duke Recruitment. “When you feel so good about where you work that you want your family to experience that, then that is some of the best proof of the value of working here.” When Chu’s mother phoned in 1998 to tell her the School of Nursing needed a staff assistant, Chu drove from Chapel Hill during a lunch break from her receptionist’s job at a realtor’s office to apply. When the offer came, she took it, and her career blossomed. “I’ve been able to work my way up from clerk five to administrative assistant – all here at the School of Nursing,” she said. Chu’s father, Don Wethington, was delighted that his daughter joined Duke. The valuable benefits lured him to Duke as a carpenter in his 40s. He had worked for local businesses but was beginning to worry about his future. “I was lucky enough to get a job at Duke,” he said. “Better pay, a retirement plan, medical insurance. I was happy to stay until I retired.” During his 21 years at Duke with Engineering and Operations, Chu’s father helped renovate Duke Clinic, where he had spent evenings as a boy waiting for his mother’s nursing shift to end. He also followed in the footsteps of his grandparents, Lilly and Clarence Mangum, both of whom retired from Duke in the 1960s. Family lore says Lilly was a housekeeper, and Clarence sterilized operating room instruments soon after Duke Hospital opened in the 1930s. Chu didn’t know about her great-grandparents’ Duke connection until she researched the history of the note cards. “I guess we didn’t ever really talk about the family connection to Duke because it seemed so natural,” she said. “Duke has just always been there, always a part of our lives. I can’t imagine life without it.”
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>> See FAMILY TIES, BACK PAGE Top Photo: The sisters in the Childers family have almost 100 years of combined Duke service. Left to right are Lou Ann Mitchell, Nancy Terry, Jane Delionbach and Joan Riddle.
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Kristy Chu, left, a School of Nursing administrative assistant, is a fourth generation Duke employee. She followed (clockwise) her parents, Rena and Don Wethington; grandmother, Ira Mae Wethington (with husband Milton); and greatgrandparents, Clarence and Lilly Mangum.