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In Memory

Ina Bingham

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In remembrance of Ina Bingham, EUHS school nurse from 1961 thru 1987.

As her son, Mark, I am so touched of all of your kind words of my mother on this site. I had no idea nor did she that she had left such a mark on all of your lives. She passed away on January 25th surrounded by my brother Steve, my daughter, and myself in a room filled with flowers, a candle glowing, and soft easy listening music. It was a great send off to a 99-year-old wonderful mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.

Alter high school; in 1942 she entered a Catholic run nursing school that was annexed to Provenience Hospital in Everett Washington. She graduated as a registered surgical nurse one week after the end of WW11 in 1945. Mom was expecting to enter into the Army Cadet Nursing Corps as so many of her friends had to serve in a battlefield hospital.

She earned the respect and admiration of the doctors and staff witch she worked along side for nine years at the Swedish Hospital in Seattle. This is where she met her husband, Allen of 43 years who was working his way through college as an orderly. In June of 1954 with a young son and a new baby of six months, the young Bingham family migrated to California where she started to work at Exeter Memorial Hospital. She worked her way to head surgical nurse and in the fall of 1961 she switched careers and became the new high school nurse.

Her passion was orthopedic surgery but her ultimate joy was working around the great kids in Exeter school district. It was here she made lasting friends from both the facility and many of the students that passed thru the halls of Exeter High. During these years she helped many students and families, bringing resources to them to improve their home life and to give their kids a better opportunity for an education. She didn’t expect nor did she ever receive the recognition that she deserved. She did this out of a caring heart that she carried with her all through her life.

She was proud to call Exeter her home and displayed this on the license plate of her car. In 2002 she moved to Sacramento and the last eight years I was fortunate that she was willing to live with me in Wilton CA. She stayed true to herself and the code, which she lived by. I never heard her complain of pain or her disappointment that things didn’t turn out the way she expected them to, even to the very end of her life. She treated all of us equally; there was no favoritism whether it was family or the person on the street. If we crossed the line she would call you out, no matter if you were a doctor in the middle of a surgery. If you didn’t follow proper procedure or strayed out-of-bounds, she would let you. Man or beast never intimidated her. She was quite the lady. The graveside service will be held at the Washington Memorial Park in Seattle on February 16th.

UPDATE: The service for Ina Bingham will be at Washington Memorial Cemetery, Seattle, at1 PM, Feb. 16.