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"It was Linda's calling in life to be a nurse and a union leader," said Engledorf. "She was involved in the growth and development of MNA as a true union for registered nurses. Linda, Jean, and I helped orchestrate the house of delegates to leave ANA and become a stronger union." Hamilton's active involvement in MNA began in the 1990s when she was working at Children's Minnesota in Minneapolis. She had been given a verbal warning for a medical error that was missed by others. After her union steward accompanied her to a meeting with a manager, Hamilton filed a grievance and won, getting the warning removed from her file. When she learned that her hospital planned to return to a team nursing model, the steward asked Hamilton if she would like to be a steward because of her strong feelings against team nursing. She said yes, and soon stepped up to a leadership role at her facility after a chair quit and no one else was willing to take on the position. Hamilton was always willing to do more for nurses, patients, and the profession. She advocated for no-fault reporting at her hospital in the early 2000s, an idea that took off after the Institute of Medi- cine issued its groundbreaking 1999 report "To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System." Hamilton saw errors as an oppor- tunity to learn, reduce risks, and examine systemic issues that affect patient safety. "Near misses are never reported because they're not viewed as an error," said Hamilton in a 2006 interview. "There were accidents waiting to happen, and no mechanisms to report them." By the early 2000s, she became MNA's metro chair and chair of the union's Economics and General Welfare Commission. She also served as a director of UAN from 2006 to 2009. Meanwhile, in 2007 she was elected MNA treasurer and in 2009, a pivotal year for RN unions, Hamilton was elected MNA president, serving until 2015, and became a vice president of NNU. She took on increasing responsibilities with the staunch support of her husband Tom Ham- ilton. He said he was her personal assistant and confidant, doing everything from handling her scheduling and emails to anything else she needed help with. Dubbed the "First Dude" by MNA staff, everyone knew to contact him if they needed to get in touch with Hamilton. "I was very proud to be the man behind the woman," said Tom Hamilton. Hamilton was sworn in as MNA's president when the union had only been disaffiliated from ANA for about a year. "Linda was both a stabilizing force and a progressive force," said Ross of Hamilton's legacy at MNA. "She was interested in making us a stronger trade union. At the time, there was still a core group of nurses who were afraid to be union. She helped lead us in the right direction." Less than a year after Hamilton was president, 12,000 MNA nurses across six hospital systems in the Twin Cities walked off the job in June 2010, holding the largest RN strike in history at the time. The nurses ratified a three-year contract the following month, averting a second strike. "Linda was very adamant about growing the president's role so that MNA could be effective at the capital and be known by legis- lators so that our voices meant something," said Engeldorf. Mary Turner, RN, and NNU president, heartily agrees. "Linda saw the importance of being involved politically," said Turner, who was elected to MNA's board of directors in 2012, the year she met Hamilton. "She was very involved in the AFL-CIO and the DFL party [Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor]." Hamilton volunteered in many political candidates' campaigns over the years, including Barack Obama, Al Franken, Keith Ellison, 18 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G J U LY | A U G U S T | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 5 Linda Hamilton's nursing journey Linda Hamilton always wanted to be a nurse, said Bernadine "Bunny" Engledorf, RN, Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) board member and former NNU vice president, who knew her for at least 25 years. "She used to spend summers with her grandparents, who were a great influence in her life," said Engeldorf. "When she was young, her grandmother became sick and she helped take care of her. Linda would take an envel- ope, draw a blue line on it and turn it into her nurse hat." Hamilton's nursing hero was her great aunt, Thora Larson, RN, who graduated from nursing school in 1909 and worked at Barrett Hospital in Barrett, Minn. for 50 years. When Hamilton earned her nursing degree from Winona State University in 1981, she said her great aunt gave her a priceless graduation gift: her watch and nursing books. Hamilton's daughter Cassie Snodgrass, a labor and delivery nurse at Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids, Minn., still has some of those books. Snodgrass never intended to follow in her mother's footsteps. She wanted to be a lawyer but discovered that she loved bedside nursing. She's been a nurse since 2003. Hamilton spent the majority of her career at Children's Min- neapolis (1987-2019), working in the neonatal intensive care unit, and when her hospital launched its extracorporeal mem- brane oxygenation (ECMO) program in 1988, she was one of the first nurses at her facility to be trained on this specialized ther- apy. At the time, noted Snodgrass, few hospitals in the area had ECMO capabilities. "If Children's Minneapolis was full, the nea- rest hospitals with ECMO were in Kansas City or Denver," said Snodgrass. "Linda was the go-to person for the NICU and ECMO pro- gram at Children's," said Engeldorf. "She was one of the smartest nurses I ever knew." "She was always willing to teach people," said Snodgrass about her mother. "She would bring me and my friends to work to see the little babies. One of my friends became a doctor and another became a nurse because she inspired him." —Chuleenan Svetvilas