Samoa’s Nursing

Golden Anniversary For American Samoa’s Nursing Service

The Nurses’ Association of Ameri can Samoa celebrated its 50 th anni versary on March 28— and the three women who pioneered the nursing service in the territory were on hand to take part in the celebrations.

THE three women are Mrs. Pepe Haleck, 70; Mrs. Initia Nemaia, 68, and Mrs. Feiloaiga (Winnie) Apisaloma, 68. Hale and hearty, they sat for three hours on the stage at the Lee Auditorium listening to speeches in their honour.

Governor H. Rex Lee delivered the golden jubilee address before 500 invited guests. A gala reception fol lowed at the Huber Hall of the High School of American Samoa.

The three pioneers are still actively engaged in nursing. Pepe spends all her waking hours tending her parti ally-paralysed husband, Mr. Max Haleck, while Winnie is Samoan Chief Nurse and Initia is House Mother over student nurses.

Nearly 400 Samoan nurses have graduated since the three women be came district nurses in 1916, two years after they were chosen as the initial students in the Samoan Nurse Training Programme of American Samoa.

Pepe was made the first Samoan Chief Nurse in 1927. She was the last of the original three to get

married when she became the wife of Max Haleck in 1936.

Initia married in 1918 and was in Western Samoa with her pastor husband during the dreaded cholera epidemic that carried off a quarter of Western Samoa’s population. In 1924, she went to New Guinea and nursed there until her husband died in 1938, when she returned to Samoa.

She went back to New Guinea in 1939 and remained for 10 years.

Winnie was married in 1921 and then went with her pastor husband to the Gilbert Islands. While there she raised four sons. After her husband died, in 1938, she returned to American Samoa, and a year later took over from Pepe as Samoan Chief Nurse when Pepe married.

Initia turned this position over to Winnie in 1939 when she (Initia) went back to New Guinea. Winnie has held the position since then.

American Samoa's three pioneer nurses (from left) Mrs. Pepe Haleck, Mrs.

Feiloaiga (Winnie) Apisaloma and Mrs.

Initia Nemaia.