Worked as orthopedic nurse, dedicated to friends, family

As officials with Northwest Community Hospital prepare to mark the institution's 50th anniversary, they are touting the hospital's standard of care from its early days to the present.

One of the early employees reflecting that standard was Jane Larson, a registered nurse who began working on the hospital's front lines less than a year after it opened.

She worked in its casting clinic, alongside orthopedic surgeons Otto Bouc and Stuart Kortebein.

Hospital officials say that next to the obstetrics department, orthopedics was one of its busiest areas, treating the growing numbers of families moving to the Northwest suburbs.

"It was the emergency room for broken bones," says her only daughter, Deborah Poat of West Milford, N.J.

Mrs. Larson, who lived in Arlington Heights for 48 years, and worked in orthopedics for more than 15 years, died Wednesday. She was 87.

For most of her life, she was better known as the wife of Martin Larson. He is one of the founding faculty members of the University of Illinois at Chicago and has been a board member of Paddock Publications, publisher of the Daily Herald, for the last 30 years.

"Theirs was a complete love story," Poat adds. "She was totally devoted to my father."

They met at Silver Lake Country Club in Lake Park, Iowa, where Larson ran the clubhouse and bar.

"Her aunt and uncle were members," Larson says. "They came in one day with her, and we looked at each other across the bar. It was love at first sight."

They were engaged within a year, and married in 1942, during a three-day leave from the Army during World War II.

When he returned from the war, Larson was hired to teach economics at the University of Illinois' new two-year branch campus, its Chicago Undergraduate Division, set up on Navy Pier to accommodate the big number of returning veterans.

Mrs. Larson began her nursing career at St. Therese Medical Center in Waukegan, while she raised their daughter and when the couple lived in Lindenhurst. Their home for the last 48 years has been in Arlington Heights, where family members says Mrs. Larson was nearly as devoted to her neighbors, as she was to her own family.

"If there was ever an emergency, she was the first one to be called," her daughter adds. "Her generosity, even to total strangers, knew no bounds."

Just last year, however, her husband did a reverse spin on that generosity, presenting his wife with a shiny red Mazda Miata convertible. At the time, she was 86, and yet family members say, she loved driving her sports car - with the top down.

Besides her husband and daughter, Mrs. Larson is survived by three grandchildren and eight great grandchildren. Services have been held.