Florence Sophie Schorske Wald ’38
- former dean of Yale School of Nursing, credited as “the mother of the American hospice movement”
After graduating from Mount Holyoke, Florence Sophie Schorske Wald ’38 went on to receive her nursing degree from Yale University in 1941. She then devoted her life to caring for others. She was an American nurse and former dean of Yale School of Nursing, and she was largely credited as “the mother of the American hospice movement.”
During World War II, Wald served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. After the war, she taught nursing at Yale and eventually became dean of Yale’s prestigious School of Nursing. After learning about the hospice movement, Wald went to Europe, studied the movement and then, in 1971, returned to the U.S. to establish Connecticut Hospice, the first hospice program in the U.S.
In her eighties, Wald worked to make hospice available in prisons, noting that this humanitarian act not only aided the dying but also helped rehabilitate the incarcerated. In 1998, Wald was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Class year: 1938
Majors: physiology; Doctor of Humane Letters, 1978