40 July 11 • 2019
jn
soul
of blessed memory
L
UCILLE MAE MUSSER
ARKING, 83, passed away
June 22, 2019, in the Henry
Ford Hospital in Detroit after a
lengthy battle with congestive heart
failure. She was a member of the
Birmingham Temple.
The daughter of Boyd Albert
Musser and Marion Anna
Merryman was born Jan. 26, 1936,
in Penn Township, Centre County,
Pa.
When she graduated from
high school in Penn Valley, Pa.,
Lucy was able to attend nursing
school due to loans from the local
Women’
s Club, which she had to
repay so that another person could
attend the following year; she
learned that one must pay it for-
ward, which she did for the rest of
her life.
Nursing appealed to her because
it involved helping people, required
a knowledge of science and offered
a career other than teaching that
a poor woman of the time could
achieve and still travel afar; she
yearned to see the world. She chose
to leave her hometown and go to
the Episcopal Hospital School of
Nursing in Philadelphia, partly
because she felt the best clinical
education would be in the city.
After graduating with her R.N.
from the three-year program
at Episcopal Hospital School of
Nursing, Lucy worked as a pub-
lic health nurse trainee for the
city of Philadelphia. She and her
colleagues used epidemiological
techniques to identify individu-
als unintentionally involved in
spreading various sexual diseases
within a high school population
and were able to stop the epidemic
by treatment and by education.
This earned her a citation from
the mayor and, more impor-
tantly, made it possible for her
to apply for, and win, a National
Institute of Health fellowship to
earn her B.S.N. in nursing from
the University of
Pennsylvania in
1968. While work-
ing as the head
nurse in the emer-
gency department
of the University
of Virginia, she
spearheaded its
transition from
an outdated and
segregated institu-
tion to a modern
and capable ER,
open to all without discrimination.
There was some resistance to her
attacking Southern “values,” but
she persevered and won her critics
over by the improved survival and
health performance of the new ER.
She then moved to Kentucky
to take the position of nurse epi-
demiologist and clinical director
of nursing with the charge of
implementing the first epidemiol-
ogy program at the University of
Kentucky. Her program succeeded
in two ways. First, it allowed the
U of K hospital to be chosen as a
United States public health service
surveillance hospital. Second, Lucy
spent much time and effort con-
tacting other nurse epidemiologists
at other institutions and brought
them together to form a group with
shared interests. This led to her
becoming a founding member of
the Association of Practitioners of
Infection Control.
APIC has become the “leading
professional association for infec-
tion preventionists with more than
15,000 members …” Lucy’
s drive to
improve health led to innovations
far beyond what she might have
hoped at the time. She was the
right person in the right position at
the right time, and her efforts have
helped us all.
After Lucy received her
B.S.N. from the University of
Pennsylvania, she went on to
achieve graduate level expertise in
nursing, community
health, infectious
diseases, epide-
miology, microbi-
ology, education
methods, statistics
and administra-
tive management
methods in various
classes at Wayne
State University.
She headed up
the Epidemiology
Department at
Henry Ford Hospital for 20 years
and was instrumental in pioneering
modern infection control processes
for the Henry Ford Health System,
which then became nationally
known for reducing infection rates.
She used these procedures in the
1980s to learn how AIDs was trans-
mitted and so could be constrained.
She also contributed to helping
learn about how Legionaire’
s dis-
ease was transmitted. She published
her results in peer-reviewed medi-
cal journals, a book, many invited
lectures and much informal corre-
spondence with colleagues.
When many others in the health
care field succumbed to fear of
AIDS, she showed extraordinary
compassion to the growing num-
bers of gay men who contracted
HIV, inviting them into her home
to learn more about who they were
and assure them they were worthy
of competent, quality health care.
Her office was a safe place for
many and nurtured the birth of
various LGBTQ organizations.
Lucy’
s beloved mother had
spent three difficult years as an
Alzheimer’
s patient in a nursing
home in Penn Valley. There was
not much Lucy could do to help
her from such a distance at that
time. But when she retired from
Henry Ford in 1995, she decided
to become a change agent and
improve the performance of nurs-
ing homes. She became well known
for her ability to turn around fail-
ing nursing homes by educating
workers and implementing effec-
tive policies. She was awarded the
Florence Nightingale Award for
being the best nursing adminis-
trator in Michigan in 2010 by the
nursing department of Oakland
University.
Over the years, Lucy also ful-
filled her dream of traveling the
world, having lived at various times
in South Korea and Austria, while
also visiting Japan, Hong Kong,
Singapore, India, China, Italy,
Germany, France, Hungary, Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Russia,
Mexico, Canada and Israel. It was
fun to travel with her.
Lucy was proud of her accom-
plishments but was most proud of
being a nurse and a mother. She
was good at both. May her memory
be as a blessing.
Mrs. Arking leaves behind her
loving and faithful husband of
60 years, Robert; sons, Henry
David (Deanne) and Jonathan
Jacob (Carolyn); grandchildren,
Benjamin, Jared, Rachel, Joshua,
Emily and Claire; siblings, Norma
Mulvey of Michigan, Lois Runkle
(Tom), Dale Musser (Dianne),
Boyd Musser (Gail) and Robert
Musser (Linda), all of Penn Valley.
She was predeceased by sib-
lings Alice Sweeley, Feryle Winter,
Randall Musser and Glenn Musser.
Contributions may be made
to a charity of one’
s choice. Her
family will honor her last wish
by hosting a celebration of life on
July 13, 2019, from 2-5 p.m. at the
Birmingham Temple, 28611 W. 12
Mile Road. If you have a favorite
Lucy story, want to state what she
meant to you or any other com-
ment or thought about her, the
family would be pleased to have
you share those individual stories.
RSVP: arkingfamily@gmail.com
so that they receive you in the way
that Lucy would have wanted. ■
A Life Devoted To Helping