Remembering (Ivy) Bartz Schultz MBE OAM

Joan Godfrey and Bartz Schultz, 2001

If you travel about 500 kilometres west of Cairns into the savannah country of the Gulf of Carpentaria, you’ll find the small town of Croydon.

When Bartz Schultz was born there, 94 years ago, memories of the Croydon goldrush were still fresh, Australia was still a fledgling federation, and the horrific wars of the 20th century were undreamt of. Yes, hers was a very long and full life.

Bartz left the Gulf to continue her education in Brisbane at Buranda Girls’ School and Brisbane Girls’ Grammar, and in 1931 began her life-long dedication to her chosen career of nursing at the Brisbane Hospital.

During the Second World War, she volunteered for the Australian Army Nursing Corps and served as a Lieutenant both in Australia and on Bougainville in the 109th Casualty Clearing Station unit.

Her service was such that she was recognised after the war through a Mention in Despatches in 1947, and is still remembered today with great fondness by those who served with her.

Just yesterday, a letter arrived from retired Major General John Pearn, the former Surgeon General of the Australian Defence Force and now Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Queensland. A colleague who served in uniform with Bartz, he recalls her warmth, humility, and quiet leadership.

She was highly respected for the five years of her service until her retirement from the Regular Army in 1946. All who knew her, recall her humble and warm persona which, in an understated way, made more significant her being honoured by the treasured Service Clasp of the Mentioned in Despatches decoration.

He goes on to say:

All members of the Defence Health Service, those of the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Air Force, join together at this time to express our esteem for this good friend and loyal servant of our nation.

Back in civilian life in 1949, Bartz won a Florence Nightingale Scholarship which enabled her to undertake training as a nurse educator with the Royal College of Nursing in London.

After gaining further experience there, she returned to Brisbane Hospital where she had begun her nursing career 21 years earlier.

In 1953, she was appointed Senior Sister Tutor at the Royal Brisbane Hospital School of Nursing and she remained there as a nurse educator for the next 13 years.

Bartz then became the Executive Secretary of the Queensland Branch of the Royal Australian Nursing Federation and served in this role until she retired in December 1976.

But her dedication to nursing did not end there. Because she saw a great need to record the history of nursing in this country, she began to research and write a monumental two-volume history entitled A Tapestry of Service – The Evolution of Nursing in Australia. The first volume was published in 1991, and plans are in train to publish the second.

Bartz is also remembered with great esteem by those who worked with her during this period of her life.

Another letter received yesterday from the Deputy Chair of the Markus Hirschfeld Museum of the History of Medicine says:

All members of the broader community of the history of health, join together at this time to publicly express our esteem for our late colleague, Dr Ivy Bartz Schultz. We recall at this time not only her significant teaching as the Senior Tutor at the Brisbane General Hospital, but her pioneering contributions to the history of nursing in Australia, and in particular her work, “A Tapestry of Service”. Bartz’s scholarship and example in this context hold a special place in the chronology of health history.

During her many years of active nursing, Bartz also served on various councils and committees of nursing organisations, and on the Nurses Registration Board.

She also received many awards and honours during her life.

She was a Life Member of the Queensland Branch of the Australian Nursing Federation and a Fellow of the College of Nursing Australia. In 1977 she received the Distinguished Nursing Service Award from the College’s Queensland Committee, and the following year, was made an Honorary Fellow of the College.

In 1977 she was also awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal, the Red Cross’s highest international award for the nursing profession. The medal is given every two years by the International Committee of the Red Cross to no more than 50 nurses and volunteer aides world-wide who have demonstrated extraordinary courage to help the wounded, sick, or disabled as well as civilian victims of armed conflict or disaster.

In the same year, Bartz received the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal and in the New Year list in January 1978, she was announced as a recipient of an MBE, a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, for her service to health.

But the awards did not stop there.

On Australia Day in 1993, she was awarded an OAM, a Medal of the Order of Australia, for her service to nursing; in 1994, she received the Clarice Mary Gately Distinguished Nursing Award; and in 2000 the Queensland University of Technology conferred on her its highest award of Doctor of the University, honoris causa.

Bartz accepted the invitation to become a Charter member of the Zonta Club of Brisbane in 1971. She was appointed an Honorary Member of the Club in 1991 and until the final year of her life, maintained her active involvement with Zonta and commitment to its goal of improving the health, education, economic, and political status of women and girls worldwide. I am honoured to have been a member of the same club as this exceptional woman.

Hers was an extraordinary life of dedication to the caring profession and quiet determination to see it recognised. She will be sorely missed.

Written and delivered by Judith Anderson for the requiem mass for Bartz at Brisbane’s All Saints’ Church on 4 January 2007, at the request of Joan Godfrey.

JOAN GODFREY’S TRIBUTE

My tribute to Bartz — my special friend for 53 years.

Bartz was characterised by so many things:

• Love of family. She had a Scottish grandfather and a Danish grandmother on her mother’s side, and she was of German descent on her father’s side. She was a loving aunt to her sister’s daughters and closely followed the development of her great-nieces and -nephews.

• She had a wicked sense of humour and loved to tease – especially me.

• As a younger woman she played A-grade tennis and had a low golf handicap. I remember how she lent her golf cubs to one of her students nurses who could not afford to buy any.

• She was interested in people and historical places and made great use of her time overseas when she was studying and again later, as opportunities presented themselves.

• She was fighter for what she believed to be right, and her contribution to improving pay and working conditions for nurses, as well as their education, has not been matched.

• She was passionate about ballet and insisted I take out her subscription to Queensland Ballet for 2007 as she intended to be there.

• She loved visiting art galleries and attended the Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra’s concerts for the years of its existence, and lamented its demise as an entity.

• She also loved the theatre and was a subscriber to the Queensland Theatre Company from its inception.

• In retirement she devoted 25 years to researching the evolution of nursing in Australia, the first volume of her work being published in 1991 as A Tapestry of Service.

Bartz and I enjoyed so many things together – we worked as a team for the benefit of nursing education and we played together, extending our social activities and travel.

We jointly owned a unit at Southport for 29 years where we were able to entertain many friends and visitors from overseas. Bartz also did a lot of her writing there. The second volume of her work is still awaiting publication, but she has placed the manuscript in good hands at the School of Nursing of the Queensland University of Technology.

Bartz’s spiritual life and her beliefs were paramount to her. She loved her Saviour and His Holy Mother, and she found her spiritual home at All Saints’.

On the last night of her life, she was surrounded by a sea of love and prayers, watched over by two of her nursing colleagues who delivered her safely and peacefully to her Guardian Angel, and for that I thank them most sincerely.