WYOMISSING, Pa. – It’s the end of an era for Tower Health Pediatrics as a longtime, beloved nurse hangs up her hat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“She just has a very comforting voice and working with her over the years, she’s a comfort to everybody who she’s around,” said Dr. Cindy Schadder, a pediatrician at Tower Health Pediatrics.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After almost three decades with what started as Wyomissing Pediatrics and is now Tower Health Pediatrics, “Nurse Barbara” is retiring.<\/p>\n
“Today, 29 years ago, I was hired,” said Barbara Kantner. “That’s why I picked today.”<\/p>\n
Kantner’s career in nursing started long before Tower Health Pediatrics.<\/p>\n
She went to nursing school, graduating from Reading Hospital School of Health Sciences in 1971.<\/p>\n
“I started in the emergency room when it was called the ‘accident dispensary’ at Reading,” Kantner said. “I was the only nurse on the evening shift, and I had a nurse aid or an LPN with me and that was it.”<\/p>\n
After that, she was a school nurse at a local school where her son attended.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When she became a widow, she came to Tower Health Pediatrics where she had a lasting impact on many lives. That was made apparent as she prepared to say her goodbyes.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Since she doesn’t own a computer, her coworkers printed out 49 pages of comments.<\/p>\n
“I said, \u2018I’m just one of many in this group,\u2019” Kantner said.\u00a0 “I mean, I’ve been here longest, but I don’t think I’m anything special.”<\/p>\n
Most everyone she interacted with would disagree.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“She did it the right way,” Schadder said. “Everybody’s dream in life is to have a wonderful career, that you’re loved by everybody, you make a difference, and she can go out on her own terms.”<\/p>\n
As for retirement plans: Kantner enjoys antiquing and flowers and has a whole house full of things she hasn’t had time to go through while working.\u00a0She also has a lovely offer from a family member.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“My little brother lives in the old farmhouse that’s been in our family for 100 years. Danny has a bathroom, a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom set up for me,” Kantner said. “[He] even built a porch on the outside. I can sit on the porch and wave to the people going up the road. He said I can come two days, two weeks, two years or forever.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WYOMISSING, Pa. – It’s the end of an era for Tower Health Pediatrics as a longtime, beloved nurse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[49306,49305,49308,128,130,129,49307,133],"class_list":["post-101222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-barbara-kantner","tag-nurse-retirement","tag-pediatric-nurse","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-tower-health-pediatrics","tag-wyomissing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}