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By j. e. McCullough
Rappahannock News Special Writer
“I’d like to go out the same way I came in,” says Frances Thornton, Rappahannock’s first and only public health nurse who retired last month after 36 years.
And that meant without fanfare, fuss or hoopla. When her friends and peers planned a retirement party at Panorama, she declined to participate. But the organizers were insistent — after all, she’d outlasted nine health directors, nine sanitarians and seven clerks in her 36 years on the job.
“I don’t think many people in this county really know how much she did,” said Mary Botts Quaintance, former elementary school principal and teacher who worked with Mrs. Thornton to improve the health of Rappahannock’s children. “Her duties went far beyond those of a normal public health nurse.”
Mrs. Quaintance was given the task of persuading the reluctant retiree to be the guest of honor at the party. The choice was perfect — Mrs. Quaintance had been the public health nurse’s seventh grade teacher. “Frances gave in because she said whenever I looked over my glasses at her, she had to do what I ordered,” Mrs. Quaintance said of her former student.
Although she graduated from the University of Virginia’s nursing school, nursing was not her first field of employment. Instead, she
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