'Nurse's nurse'; helped open Central DuPage Hospital

When it came to Central DuPage Hospital, Doris R. VanDerHeide could be considered the queen mother of nursing.

Decades after retiring from the Winfield hospital as its head of nursing, peers many years younger than herself would still visit Mrs. VanDerHeide to reminisce about the founding years of Central DuPage.

"They'd almost ask about her in quiet reverence," said Joe Benson, president of Wyndemere Senior Living Campus in Wheaton. "She was so well known and respected."

Mrs. VanDerHeide died Saturday at Wyndemere. She was 89.

Among her most notable accomplishments involved helping to open Central DuPage Hospital in 1964 after its conversion from a tuberculosis sanitarium. Within two years, she rose from an afternoon shift nurse to the hospital's director of nursing.

During most of her 19-year career at Central DuPage, Mrs. VanDerHeide oversaw the hospital's nursing staff -- which made up roughly half the hospital's total employees -- as it grew from a 70-bed hospital to its present-day size of 361 licensed beds.

"She is a unique blend of no-nonsense as it relates to patient care, a stickler for quality, and a compassionate and caring person," said Jim Anderson, the hospital's founding president. "Her fingerprints are all over the character of nursing at Central DuPage."

As a testament to that influence, Debra O'Donnell, the hospital's chief nursing officer, said she was compelled to meet with Mrs. VanDerHeide after she was first hired at Central DuPage.

"She was committed to the vocation of serving," O'Donnell said, "often being described as a 'nurse's nurse.' "

Mrs. VanDerHeide was born May 17, 1918, in downstate Pekin. A graduate of St. Francis School of Nursing in neighboring Peoria, one of her first jobs was as a medical director for Caterpillar. Within two years, she became superintendent of Pekin Hospital.

She married Richard E. VanDerHeide in 1941, and five years later, the couple moved to Alexandria, Minn., where Mrs. VanDerHeide worked as a surgical nurse at a county hospital.

Mrs. VanDerHeide is survived by a brother and several relatives. Services and burial will be in her hometown of Pekin.