Faith in the nurse
The inspirational backstory behind a $1 million gift to Marquette University to support nursing scholarships
Oscar Wilde, one of the world’s most popular playwrights in the 19th century, once said: “Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
The first moment they connected, they stood just feet apart and locked eyes.
With surgical masks covering their faces, the two strangers hovered inside a cramped St. Joseph’s hospital room in Milwaukee. A young OB-GYN resident named Michael Regan was caring for a patient, working alongside a Marquette University nursing student. They stood inside a room filled with tragedy.
The year was 1959 and the young pregnant woman they were caring for was supposed to be having one of the greatest moments of her life. Sadly, this day was the opposite. The expectant mother had just learned that her baby would never live to see the world. She would never have the chance to rock her baby to sleep, drop her off at kindergarten or watch her walk down the aisle.
The expectant mother began to sob, no longer able to hold in the grief that consumed her.
“Dear Lord, please see me through this,” she said, while laboring through what no woman should ever have to go through.
Gently saying the words out loud, the young resident began.
“Our father, who art in heaven…”
He held his patient’s hand while the nursing student stood by silently, saying the words to herself.
Now more than 60 years later, the young nursing student — then Barbara Zemlicka — still vividly returns to that hospital room.
“That moment was so touching to me,” Barbara said. “Michael stayed with her through it all.”
The next day, Michael Regan knocked on the door to the nursing students’ dorm, which was adjacent to the hospital. He needed to learn more about that young masked woman who worked beside him.
The house mother answered the door.
“Hello, I would like to meet Cynthia — the nursing student who worked with me yesterday,” Michael said.
“Oh, that wasn’t Cynthia,” the house mother replied. “That was Barbara.”
Moments later, the house mother called Barbara’s room and she came down to the lobby. It was the first time she and Michael really saw each other.
A year later, Barbara Zemlicka became Barbara Regan, and she and Michael began their new life working together a thousand miles away from where they first met. Michael graduated from Marquette Medical School (now the Medical College of Wisconsin) in 1959 and Barbara from the College of Nursing at the same time.
Deep within South Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains, the young couple drove together through narrow rural roads in a car that served as a mobile health unit. They were on a mission to eradicate polio. Dr. Michael Regan had landed his first job with the CDC in Atlanta, and he and Barbara were charged with stopping this devastating and deadly infectious disease in its tracks.
“We were way into the boondocks, deep in the country,” Barbara recalled.
As they pulled up to a dirt road that doubled as a driveway, strangers living within a shanty anxiously poked their heads out the windows.
For Barbara, it all started with a moment of trust.
“I always introduced myself first, because they had a great deal of faith in the nurse,” Barbara said. “Then Mike would join me and we would team up.”
Dressed in navy blue attire, Barbara was the first to exit the car and approach the man who was standing on his front porch. He held a broken mirror in one hand as he shaved with the other. He eyed her anxiously as she came forward.
“I’m here to help you with your sick child,” she told him.
Less than a half hour later, Barbara and Michael departed. With them, they bagged carefully labeled samples from each family member and stored them in a cooler. They injected a new vaccine into each arm, and house by house, they began to shut the disease down.
The work was deeply meaningful for Barbara. A few years earlier while in high school in Aberdeen, South Dakota, she lost a good friend to polio. “The disease would wipe out entire communities,” she said.
Six decades later, Barbara Regan still marvels at the early years of her relationship with her husband. Their common bond was their Marquette University education — where they were taught to always serve others first.
Barbara first began thinking about how she could give back when she approached what would have been her 50th wedding anniversary with Michael.
After a long fight against Parkinson’s disease, Michael died less than a year before their milestone.
“We didn’t get to celebrate,” Barbara said. “I wanted to honor what would have been my 50th wedding anniversary and could think of no better way than to help the future nurse leaders in our community receive a Marquette nursing education.”
She reflected on their deep family ties to the university. Michael’s father, brother and brother-in-law all graduated from Marquette. Michael and Barbara’s daughter, MaryNell, graduated from Marquette Law School.
Barbara made her gift after speaking with College of Nursing Dean Janet Krejci. The two immediately connected. In November 2018, the university announced that Barbara and her family gave $1 million to benefit scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students in Marquette University’s College of Nursing.
Thanks to her generosity, nursing students, like Barbara, will celebrate the Regan family legacy for years to come by serving others.
“I’m very proud to be a Marquette Nurse,” Barbara said. “The fact that Marquette is a Jesuit school has a lot to do with our love for the university. Many of the people we met were not all Catholic, but they really turned out to be fine people. We still have many good friends from our undergraduate days, and we are all so proud of our education.”
From a tragedy that dramatically impacted two young Marquette students, a beautiful relationship came to life. Now, future generations of Marquette Nurses will have a renewed sense of hope and possibility, thanks to the generous legacy of Barbara Regan and her family.
By Brian Dorrington
Special thanks to Barbara Regan for sharing her personal story and to MaryNell Regan for contributing. We are also grateful to Katie Blank in Marquette University’s Special Collections & University Archives for providing the inspirational imagery.
