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an outdated and 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