Vera Krogman, 'pioneering nurse'

Vera Krogman was one of the first nurses involved in psychiatric treatment of the mentally ill. In 1950, she was hired at Topeka State Hospital, where the Menninger brothers had begun using counseling and drug therapy, instead of just warehousing the mentally ill.

Krogman, 90, of Richfield, died of a stroke May 22 in Edina.

She worked in the 1960s at what is now Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis and became head nurse of its mental health unit, said her daughter, Cynthia Hirsch, of Honolulu.

Krogman was a "pioneering nurse" in the mental health treatment reform, said psychologist Patrick O'Laughlin, who knew her since the early 1970s. He said they led therapy groups together for mentally ill outpatients at the former Metropolitan Medical Center.

"She had an intuitive, almost instantaneous grasp of what was going on with people emotionally," he said. "A lot of her work was based on a deep-seated trust with people who had difficulty trusting, to help them confront things they needed to confront to put their lives in better order."

Krogman was unpretentious and fair and had a natural interest in others. She also had a sense of humor. O'Laughlin said she encouraged him to get his Ph.D. When he complained that he would be 40 by the time he earned that degree, he recalled her quip: "So, you'd be 40 anyway."

"She was kind of a counselor and mother hen to a lot of staff people. It was not just her patients that talked to her, staff also sought her out," he said. She loved traveling with her husband, Dexter, and cared for him before he died, O'Laughlin said.

Krogman grew up in Red Cloud, Neb., and was inspired by her grandmother, a midwife. After getting a nursing degree, Krogman learned to work with the mentally ill at state hospitals in Hastings, Neb., and Kansas, Hirsch said. At Topeka, she met renowned psychiatrists Karl and Will Menninger, whom she found to be "very compassionate, caring people, but hard-driving in their expectations," Hirsch said.

Arlene Craig, of Richfield, was a new nurse at Metropolitan Medical Center's psychiatry unit, when she met Krogman in 1977. "She was my nursing mentor," Craig said. "She was probably one of the most caring individuals I have ever met. She was very patient-centered."

"You always knew where you stood with Vera," Craig added. "She was famous for tapping her finger on your shoulder blade when making her point. Everybody would listen."

Hirsch said her mother, who retired in 1984, "loved to debate politics, especially with those with right-wing views."

She liked cooking, and even in her last years at Village Shores senior housing in Richfield, "she made cinnamon rolls on Sunday mornings and took them up and down the halls so people could have hot cinnamon rolls for breakfast," her daughter said.

In addition to Hirsch, Krogman is survived by a son, James Kershaw, of Milford, Texas; four stepchildren, Dawn Gabriele of Minneapolis; Dane Pizzuti of Winston-Salem, N.C.; Debby Thomas of St. Louis Park and Dee Kerr of Ramsey; eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Jim Adams • 612-673-7658