Louise Dietrich

St. Marks Hospital, El Paso, Texas ad in 1914

Dietrich was born in Ossining, New York, and was one of eleven children.[1] She graduated from St. John's Riverside Hospital in 1899 and went on to work as a private nurse in the state of New York.[1] Dietrich came to El Paso, Texas "on the same train with Buffalo Bill" in 1902.[2] Because of an epidemic of typhoid fever, Dietrich stayed on in El Paso, even though it wasn't her intended destination.[2] She worked at Providence Hospital where she was a director and superintendent.[1] At Providence, she started the first nurses' registry in Texas.[2] Dietrich established the El Paso Graduate Nurses Association in 1903 and served as the first president of the organization.[1] She resigned from Providence early in 1906.[3]

Dietrich went to work at the St. Louis Skin and Cancer Hospital in 1907.[1] She soon came back to El Paso to work at St. Marks Maternity Hospital as the superintendent.[4] She was an attendee of the second Texas Graduate Nurses Association meeting, held in San Antonio in 1908.[5] Dietrich helped to write a bill that required that nurses be registered with the state.[6] The bill was passed in 1909.[6] Also in 1909, Dietrich, nurse Emily Greene, and others organized and began to build a "woman's hospital" called St. Mark's Hospital in El Paso on the corner of Ange and Nevada streets.[7][8] In the summers, Dietrich and Greene helped work at the Cloudcroft, New Mexico Baby Sanitorium.[8] Dietrich went on to work as the St. Mark's Hospital superintendent until 1916.[1]

Dietrich became involved in the Red Cross in 1912, serving on the Nursing Service Committee.[1] She also provided classes on Red Cross work.[9] During World War I, she stayed active with the Red Cross and also was involved in women's suffrage in El Paso.[1][10] Dietrich was a member of the El Paso Equal Franchise League.[11] She went on to help women register to vote, helping African American and Mexican women in El Paso register.[12] Later, Dietrich became involved in the Texas League of Women Voters (LWV) and served as president from 1938 to 1940.[2][13]

In 1923, Dietrich became the first educational secretary of the Texas Board of Nursing (BON).[14] She became a general secretary of the BON and worked full-time for the group.[15] In this capacity, she provided additional training for members of the Texas BON.[16] She also was heavily involved in organizing many projects for the BON.[15]

Dietrich also became a general secretary of the Texas Graduate Nurses Association.[17] In 1954, she retired from the Texas Graduate Nurses Association.[18] The next year she was honored by the El Paso Graduate Nurses Association for her lifetime of work.[19] A fellowship grant was established in her name for graduate nurses to continue their professional education and for inactive nurses to return to the field.[20]

Dietrich died on January 22, 1962, in El Paso.[21] She was buried in Rest Lawn Cemetery in El Paso.[22] In February 1962, the Texas House of Representatives honored her nursing work in Texas.[18] They passed a resolution which said in part that Dietrich did "almost as much to improve and advance the profession of nursing as her revered predecessor, Florence Nightingale."[18]