Generations dedicated to caring for others

Vanessa Moore, FNP, remembers growing up with IU Health Bedford Hospital—Camping with the nurses and their families, cookouts with doctors and their loved ones, and regularly walking the halls where her mother, Connie Kinder, RN, has been caring for patients since September 1970.

In fact, the photo above is Kinder with some coworkers during the early days of the hospital, while the one to the right shows Kinder when she was working while pregnant with Moore.

“People always say, ‘the walls are going to fall when Connie Kinder walks out,’” says Moore. But Kinder truly is an institution in the facility.

The nurse joined the team just two months after the facility first opened, and she has touched countless lives over the past 50 years. That dedication influenced her daughter, Moore, who was hired onto the Bedford team in 1999.

After all, the team was already like family to her.

“Some of my closest friends are the people I work with daily,” says Moore.

And while Moore and Kinder have moved into other units, they both have a soft spot in their hearts for where they started: the emergency department.

“To help somebody, and it can be as small as just telling a mother their child’s okay to saving somebody’s life, that’s exhilarating and just a wonderful thing,” says Kinder. “I can’t imagine a more rewarding career.”

Caring for others runs in the family. Moore has a son attending school to be a physician assistant, and her daughter is halfway through nursing school. And both have spent summers working at IU Health Bedford Hospital Emergency Department, like their mother and grandmother.

“I’m so proud of my kids carrying on the legacy,” says Moore.

“Three generations,” adds Kinder. “I know they’re going to be great in the medical profession.”

And while it’s undecided where the new generation will end up, the influence of their mother and grandmother will follow as they continue the family tradition of helping others.

Happy Mother’s Day to Moore, Kinder, and the rest of the moms on the IU Health team.