Nursing has been a passion for Linda Hutchings for the past 50 years – a career that was celebrated by Doctors Hospital administrators and staffers in their conference room recently.

Hutchings was told she was to give a presentation to her peers at 2:15; when she walked in the door it was to their applause and the unexpected presentation of a custom shadow box.  It was complete with her traditional white cap and early day portraits along with a special cake in her honor.

Pidge Gooch, director of nursing, said she had obtained the official photo seen in the bottom left hand corner of the box from Hutchings’ husband Ed who had carried it in his walled for some 45 years at his job as a long haul trucker.

Now retired, her husband had been lauded by the California Trucking Association and the California Highway Patrol in 1956 in Sacramento as their choice from among 70,000 truckers as the outstanding driver for that year throughout the entire state of California.

Linda Hutchings holds an MSN – Masters in Nursing degree – which she received from a Glendale school of nursing in Southern California where she held her first position before moving to Northern California.  She was first employed in the north state at Dameron Hospital in Stockton before joining Doctors in Manteca and in Modesto.  The couple has resided in Lathrop for the past 38 years. 

They have two sons: William, 47; and Joseph, 44.  William is a paramedic working in Oakdale following his mother’s lead in the medical field.  Linda is a native of Lindsay, south of Visalia, and her husband is originally from Hanford.

She prides herself in quilting when time permits and loves hiking, according to her husband.  Her choice of hiking trails has found her in the hills above Sonora as well as in the Bay Area.