LEBANON — No professional problem was too big for Loretta Land to handle.
Dealing with people in various states of stress was her special talent, and had been developed in a small town in western Pennsylvania, sharpened as a nurse and a nursing teacher and unleashed when she directed human resources departments at various stops in the Upper Valley. She was the definition of a people person, empathetic to the problems of others and quick to navigate solutions.
Her talents never went unnoticed for long.
She was instrumental as a teacher of psychiatric nursing at the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in Hanover, writing a book, Hiram Hitchcock’s Legacy: The History of the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital School of Nursing, which was published in 1980. Later in her career, Land became crucial in helping the Co-op Food Stores develop and expand their human resources department into one with modern systems and policies for the expanding complex company it is today.
But those who knew Land — who died at the age of 72 on Oct. 22, 2018, after a four-year battle with ovarian cancer — remember her smile, the probing, specific questions she would ask about their lives and how being around her made everyone feel comfortable.
“It didn’t matter when I saw her. She was always Loretta,” said Peter Nolette, a case coordinator at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. who had Land as an instructor during his time as a student at the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital School of Nursing. “She would still listen, offer suggestions and make you feel like you were doing the right thing. … She had a very good way of helping see other people’s perspective without making you feel that you were wrong.”
Added Joanne Bouchard, the prepared foods manager at the Lebanon Co-op store who worked with Land for 15 years: “I felt like she was very easy to talk to. She was fair, would always see both sides of any situation. She was always open and honest with me. I found it easy working with Loretta.”
Land was born on July 19, 1946, in Claysville, Pa., a small town of about 724 people, according to the 2000 census, approximately 45 minutes southwest of Pittsburgh and eight minutes east of the West Virginia border.
She graduated from Canon-McMillan High School in 1964 before earning her bachelor’s degree in nursing from the Ohio Valley General Hospital School of Nursing in Wheeling, W.Va.
She got a job as a nurse at Yale New Haven Hospital and later the Middlesex Memorial Hospital in Middletown, Conn.
It was at Middlesex that she met her husband, Peter Land. The pair were married on Sept. 2, 1972, and built a life enhanced by worldly adventures.
“She loved to travel, loved her cats, loved Peter,” said Janet Couture, who regarded Land as a mentor and is now the finance operations manager at the Co-op. “She was very passionate about the things she enjoyed. She did as much of it as she could.”
Land moved to the Upper Valley in the 1970s and started working at the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, where she taught psychiatric nursing. It was there that Nolette met Land, who described his teacher as approachable and fair even if the subject matter wasn’t for him.
“She never wavered in many ways. One way was that she was always accepting of the individual,” said Nolette, who was a nurse at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and an assistant professor of nursing at Colby-Sawyer College from 2011-2018 before starting his new job in Washington, D.C. “She was nice, had a bright smile, bright eyes. … She was well-liked, respected by her colleagues. I don’t remember anyone ever saying an ill word about her.”
It was in the classroom, Nolette said, that Land’s talent for connecting with people came into full view.
“I wouldn’t have made it through psychiatric nursing if not for one or two of my instructors. I didn’t care for the specialty, it’s not my cup of tea,” said Nolette, who graduated from the school in 1977. “But she made it very palatable and helped you understand the specialty in a way that made it easier to learn.”
Land later was designated to research and write the distinctive history of the school, a task that Peter Land said took his wife about a year to complete. It was published upon the school’s closing in 1980.
“(Land) used school and hospital records, conducted surveys and interviewed graduates, former directors of the school and other people closely associated with the school in her effort to document its evolution,” wrote Marilyn Prouty, the school’s administrator, and Hilda Batchelder, the school’s director, in the book’s forward. “This book will not only serve as a resource, but it also enables the school to close with dignity and with the assurance that its significant contribution to the development of nursing education and to the health care of people in the Upper Valley, as well as elsewhere, has been recorded and preserved.”
After the school’s closure, Land turned to human resources, a career her husband said she was meant for. She served as the employee relations administrator at Thermal Dynamics in West Lebanon and director of human resources at Valley Regional Hospital in Claremont before landing at the Co-op as its director of human resources for the last 15 years of her career.
Terry Appleby, the former Co-op general manager who retired from his post two years ago, described Land as someone who had the perfect personality for human resources.
“She was a classic people person, the kind of person you love to find in a human resources job,” Appleby said. “She really cared about the people she worked with. I always had a great admiration for the work that she did and the care that she took in people.”
Land joined the Co-op at a time of expansion and solidification, which complicated the operation and, in turn, created a need for the development of policies and systems for its expanding group of employees. Land, Appleby said, was crucial in picking up where previous human resource directors had left off.
“We had gone 60 years in a kind of family way, with all the positives and negatives that come without policies,” Appleby said in describing the Co-op human resources prior to Land. “Loretta was instrumental in building policies around HR and was critical at a time when our organization was moving from one store and service center to multiple stores, into a much more complex organization. Also at that time, in the mid-90s, the government was imposing more and more standards on business. She had to adapt our business with federal and state regulations, and help us become more in sync with modern times.
“Before she was at the Co-op, there were very loose systems for evaluations, for example, for pay raises and for basic policies around treatment of coworkers,” Appleby added. “There was no harassment policies. All of those had to be created.”
Land left a positive impression on the employees she helped care for during her time at the Co-op, a part of her nursing background that carried over into the late part of her career.
“She had that experience behind her,” said Bouchard, the Lebanon Co-op’s prepared foods manager. “In a hospital, you run across a lot of different situations. I think that was very helpful for her. She had a certain bedside manner. I don’t think you can be in that position and be shy and introverted. You have to be able to open up and get people to open up to you.”
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.