Surviving a train wreck on the Newfoundland Railway, delivering a baby aboard a steamship and traveling by dog sled through some of the world’s most desolate regions all came with the territory of former UVM Professor Rosalie Lombard’s first nursing assignment, which culminated with her escape from a near-shipwreck.

“That was probably the nearest I’ve come to losing my life,” Lombard recalls of the harrowing conclusion to her two-year assignment in Newfoundland and Labrador in the early 1950’s.

Upon earning her bachelor’s degree in Nursing from Columbia University in New York in 1951, Lombard became interested “in going to some other country where there was a little adventure,” she says.

“I did a little research about the Grenfell Mission that was founded by the English doctor Sir Wilfred Grenfell, who traveled to Newfoundland and realized that the fishermen and the people in Newfoundland and Labrador had no medical care, so he set up the mission and eventually there were several hospitals and nursing stations up the coast of Labrador,” Lombard explained.

“So I traveled up there a year after I graduated from nursing, and I was in a train wreck.”

A member of the train crew telegraphed for rescue, and afterward Lombard continued on to her first nursing assignment.

“I think my experience in Labrador and Newfoundland gave me a lot of confidence,” says Lombard with characteristic understatement. “I figured if I could get through these things I could get through most anything, so I have never been hesitant about changing from one job to another or from one career to another.”

Lombard said she also appreciates the personal and professional benefits offered by the cultural immersion that she experienced in Canada.

“In Newfoundland there were a lot of nurses and doctors from the British Islands and Canada, and they all had different ways of thinking and doing things; and all of that exposure I think was very valuable in learning how to get along with people and appreciating the talents of others. Any opportunity that anyone has to be with people of different backgrounds or to go to countries with different cultures certainly adds to the quality of your life.”

When her two-year assignment ended, Lombard earned her master’s degree at Teachers College Columbia University (while teaching at her alma mater) and eventually accepted a position at the University of Vermont.

Teaching nursing, she says, turned out to be the most rewarding of any of her adventures.

“I do think that most nurses who stay in the profession really have a desire to help people – I know how trite that is – but it is a trait in most nurses. And, in teaching nursing, you realize you’re not only helping the patient, but you’re helping the student to develop, too.”

Following her teaching career, Lombard opened an assisted living facility, which was housed in a country estate named Fox Chase  built in the 1920’s on 132 acres of lush New Hampshire countryside. But, she adds: “I needed something to do on the side.”

“There was a very small airport nearby, and a retired airline pilot from whom I took (flying) lessons and I finally got solo’d and got my license.”

When she retired from nursing, Lombard spent a year traveling the United States with friends in an Airstream RV.

“Now that I’m older I wonder how I did that," she reminisces. "I tended to be rather daring in my younger years - and maybe even now.”

Lombard’s experience on assignment in Newfoundland and Labrador is detailed in her book, Adventures of a Grenfell Nurse.