August 9, 1935 — July 11, 2025 
Nursology.net “In Memoriam”

On July 25, 2025, Janet Allan sent me the sad news of Bev’s death – her partner of 45 years.

Bev had been on home hospice/palliative care for about a year and a half dealing with 5/years of Long Covid. The efforts of the hospice nurses greatly helped to mitigate many of her symptoms which were mainly shortness of breath, tachycardia and extreme fatigue. She  spent only 3 days in an inpatient Hospice facility . . . and had a very peaceful death. I am both very sad and also relieved because she is no longer suffering. We have been together for over 45 years and it’s hard to imagine a life without her. 

Bev and Janet were among the women who”founded” Cassandra: Radical Feminist Nurses Network at the ANA convention in 1982. Their relationship was brand new at the time, and the group of about a dozen nurses gathered in a hotel room to brainstorm what we could do to counter two shocking things happening in and around the convention. First was the fact that over the same weekend of June 30, 1982, women from all over the United States were gathering to mark the death of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. constitution, which simply stated: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex”. There was no mention or even a hint at the ANA convention that this was happening – despite the fact that DC was teaming with women and week-end long concerts, events and protests marking the occasion.  

The second event that we observed and that shocked us to the core, was the fact that the Maternal-Health section of the ANA had as their keynote speaker Orrin Hatch – Republican Senator from Utah who was a vocal opponent of equal rights, specifically women’s reproductive rights. Several of us watched Mr. Hatch get out of his limosine and be escorted into the hotel, accompanied by a group of nurses representing the ANA.

More detail about this event and details of our gathering and actions are described in the first Cassandra Newsletter . The newsletter contains a poem on page 12 by Bev –

FEMINISM IS DEAD

It’s 1982,, and the ERA is dead.
Well, not dead, says the National Organization for Women.
The ERA has just suffered a small setback, that’s all.
Oh, okay, if that’s all it is.

It’s 1982 and the San Francisco Chronicle said,
Feminism is out among younger women surveyed.
I have never been discriminated against.
Feminists are such unhappy people.
We do not need feminists.

It’s 1982 and long skirts are in.
High heeled shoes, too.
Feminism is out.
Do you understand that, woman?

It’s 1982 and Nightingale is dead.
Has been for 72 years.
We hardly remember her anymore.
Wasn’t she the one who never got married?
Died an invalid.

It’s 1982 and feminism is dead.
But, listen, we don’t have to be nice about it.
Malvina Reynolds said,
The ones that bleed you like to see you nice.
So, you and I, let’s don’t be nice, okay?

• Beverly A. Hall

We made a plan to meet for our first “gathering” in San Francisco, and Bev volunteered to set up the arrangements with the Women’s Building (which did occur in 1983). Then she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was not able to participate in the gathering. Sue Dibble, who at the time was a doctoral student at UCSF, stepped in to help. The physicians predicted that Bev’s form of cancer meant about a 5-year survival trajectory. Bev went through a round of the typical chemotherapy ordeal, which she determined she would never engage in again, and instead created her own healing pathway and survived and thrived to the age of 90! She spent many years working closely with people who were living with HIV/AIDS, guiding their experience using the healing approaches she had learned to know during her own healing journey. She documented her journey in her book “Surviving and Thriving After a Life-Threatening Diagnosis“.

So here’s to fond memories of our dear colleague and friend Bev Hall! Her spirit and influence lives on!

Members of the NurseManifest team have issued a call for nurses to join together in signing a 2025 Nurses Declaration of Solidarity and Resistance, indicating our commitment to stand together, act to resist that which harms health and well-being, protect those who are harmed, and build coalitions that move toward the ideals we seek.  Nurses stand on a long and strong legacy of political activism that arises from our moral imperative to actively promote public policy that assures social/health equity. Nursing’s extensive theoretical foundation, and our knowledge derived from ethical, aesthetic, personal and emancipatory knowing leads us to take action, and provides the substance that constitutes our purpose in taking action. Nurses worldwide are invited to join with other nurses to engage in determined action to protect health and justice for all, regardless of age, social/economic circumstance, ability, religion, skin color, race, country of origin, sexual orientation or gender identity. To join this movement, add your signature to the 2025 Declaration of Solidarity and Resistance! For inspiration about actions to take, see our “Resources for Action,”

The 2025 Declaration builds on the 2017 Declaration, issued during the early days of the first Trump administration. Within a few weeks, 2,215 nurses had signed on to the 2017 Declaration. Now it is 2025, and we have new avenues and resources for dealing with health crises, some of which emerged during the 2020-22 COVID-19 pandemic. Having lived through the first Trump term, and the pandemic, nurses are prepared for almost anything that comes along. And now, many nurses are even more deeply concerned, even horrified, that not only are we re-experiencing the health-damaging traumas of 2017, we are witnessing even more dreadful and devastating effects of government action. But as Sally Thorne explains in her March 2025 Nursing Inquiry editorial, “We were made for these times.”

We will not be mandated to engage in hateful acts, acts of division and furthering disadvantage, policies that expand the privilege of the few and cause pain and distress in the many. As we showed so clearly during the COVID-19 pandemic, we will not be cowed by fear or self-interest, rather we will continue to do what nurses have always strived to do in optimizing health and health equity in the fullest sense of those terms for all. We are a force for good in this world, and we have always understood that as our mission and our privilege. (Thorne, 2025)

Take a few moments today to read more about the 2025 Declaration, and join the many nurses who share a passion to take action, and join with others in a strong coalition to resist the harms, protect others at risk, and create a foundation for a future in which this sort of erosion of human health and well-being can never happen again.