They slept in large rooms, a dozen beds to a row. They hitchhiked so they could stash back their dime bus fares to buy fried bologna sandwiches at a nearby bar they weren't allowed to enter. They snuck out to date or get their ears pierced, risking suspension or expulsion.

And they worked, long, long days sometimes 16-hour shifts at Knoxville General Hospital, caring for the sick, the wounded, the contagious, black and white, poor and prominent alike.

These are the memories of Jo Ella "Jody" Tipton McCall and Mary McCall McNamara, and hundreds of the other nurses who came from rural counties and even other states to attend the Knoxville General Hospital School of Nursing in Old North Knoxville.

McNamara's daughter, Billie McNamara, is determined that their memories be preserved through a recently launched effort.

McCall and Mary McNamara met and roomed together at the nursing school, which was in a large house adjacent to the hospital on Cleveland Place, near where Knox County Health Department now sits. Mary persuaded Jody to start writing her brother, an enlisted man serving in Korea, and by the time the women were full-fledged nurses, they were sisters-in-law as well.

These days, they're also president and vice president, respectively, of the nursing school's alumni association. For decades, the association has had an annual reunion for graduates of the school, their instructors and the doctors and other staff who worked at the hospital, which closed in August 1956 when what is now University of Tennessee Medical Center opened.

As their numbers dwindled, the annual reunion became a luncheon at St. James Episcopal Church. In June, about 45 attended.

It was about a month before the reunion that Mary McNamara had the idea for a program on the nursing school's history. She assigned her daughter, who has genealogy experience, to pull it together.

"She said, 'That should be easy; all our material is at UT,' " which supposedly took custody of the contents of the nursing school after it closed, Billie McNamara said. But when she called UT, "they didn't have anything" no photos, records or uniforms, nor the silver tea set used during the ceremony where nurses received their caps.

Photo by KNS Archive // Buy this photo

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'Virtual museum' pays tribute to graduates of Knoxville General Hospital School of Nursing