Elaine Greer remembers how one of her classmates in nursing school got secretly married.

“If they found out, she would have been kicked out of school,” Mrs. Greer says. “Nurses couldn’t be married.”

That’s because it was during the 1960s at the former Missouri Methodist Hospital and Medical Center in St. Joseph, when things were much stricter. Schools thought women should be completely devoted to nursing, she says.

Nursing students went to school for three years with no summers off and had to be in their dorms by 9 p.m. at night. And they were also required to learn how to make up their own nursing caps from a white piece of cotton fabric.

“You had to learn to fold it up, back and around,” she explains. “We would starch it with really thick liquid starch. Then you would have to lay it out on a flat surface, so we would put it on the refrigerator and dry it overnight.”

The resulting cap was very stiff, almost like cardboard and was secured with paper clips, then attached to the hair with white bobby pins. They had to be white, of course, to match the white uniforms, white nylon hoes and white shoes.

At Women’s Health and Well Being, where Elaine Greer is a nurse practitioner, 30-year-old nursing assistant Holly Wells doesn’t remember ever seeing a nurse wearing a cap. But when Mrs. Greer graduated in 1965, they were a source of pride and distinction. Much like the military, the stripes on your cap let patients know your level of education.

“You got a powder blue stripe as a freshman, so patients knew you weren’t very experienced,” Mrs. Greer says. “Your second year you got two stripes across the corner of your hat. As a third-year student, you got three, then you got a black stripe when you graduated.”

Every school of nursing had its own unique style of cap, says Dr. Carolyn Brose, assistant professor of the school of nursing at Missouri Western State University. And if students successfully completed their training, they went through a ceremony called capping.

“It was your first sign you were on your journey to be a nurse,” she says.

Around the mid-1970s, the world of professional nursing evolved, she says. Most nursing training became university-based, four-year programs and the caps were no more, partly because they got in the way and became a liability. Nurses now wear colorful scrubs with a badge identifying their qualifications. And for Mrs. Greer and Dr. Brose, the caps have become just a former symbol of a noble profession.

“I still have mine,” Dr. Brose says, “but it’s been in storage for a very long, long time.”

Lifestyles reporter Sylvia Anderson may be reached at sylviaanderson@npgco.com.