Kay (Poffenbarger) Farmer, BSN ‘57, knows what it’s like to worry about expenses in nursing school.
“I remember experiencing some angst about not having extra money for things that I needed,” Kay said. “I did without, but for nursing students in today’s society, I know their needs are totally different.”
That’s why several years ago Kay made the decision to contribute to the IU Nursing Student Emergency Fund. Gifts are used to provide emergency financial assistance for students in the School of Nursing who have encountered unforeseen financial hardships that would prohibit them from pursuing their education without additional financial support. The fund is available to nursing students on the Indianapolis, Bloomington and Fort Wayne campuses.
Kay started working in her father’s grocery store in Monon, Indiana, when she was just 12 years old. The money she earned and saved, at her father’s encouragement, was enough to pay for nearly all of her nursing education at Indiana University. While Kay is proud that she put herself through nursing school, it wasn’t always easy.
“It’s very gratifying that I’m able to extend what I have and give to someone else—to help other nursing students get through a hard time.”
Kay was taught by her parents from an early age the importance of caring for people. Weekly church services reinforced the importance of serving others, as did her father’s example.
“My father had a lot of influence on my childhood, and my mother did too,” Kay said. “As the owner of the largest grocery store in the area, he would take care of people in the community during the holidays—transport groceries to them, and it just really made a big impression on me.”
With such strong role models, it was no surprise that by the time Kay graduated from high school, she had decided to become a nurse. During her freshman year at IU Bloomington, in addition to her studies, Kay nurtured a lifelong love of music by playing flute in the University Women’s Band in Bloomington. During her time at IU School of Nursing in Indianapolis, she played the piano. Kay was a member of the first class to graduate from the school’s BSN program in Indianapolis.
“I learned a lot both through my studies and in perseverance,” Kay said. “As nursing students, we worked very hard.”
After she graduated from IUSON, Kay worked for a year on the communicable disease ward at IU Medical Center’s Long Hospital.
“I became very interested in communicable diseases—it was during the time of polio and the iron lung,” she said. “There were some great communicable disease physicians at IU in Indianapolis who taught us a lot of the things we needed to know.”
It was during her third year as a nursing student on the Indianapolis campus that Kay met Charles Farmer, a medical student at IU School of Medicine. After Dr. Farmer graduated in 1958, the two married and moved to California so that he could complete his internship at the University of California at San Francisco. More career moves followed with the Farmers spending time in New Mexico and Minnesota before settling down in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Dr. Farmer, a nephrologist, started a dialysis clinic. The Farmers lived in Charlotte for 51 years.
“I’m very grateful for the education that I had at IU School of Nursing,” Kay said. “I worked as a nurse in nearly all of the places we lived, including as a public health nurse in Rochester, Minnesota.”
Kay now lives in Franklin, Tennessee, near her daughter—one of the couple’s four children. Since her husband’s death in 2019, Kay has made gifts to organizations that made an impact on the couple’s life—the IU School of Nursing among them.
“For me, giving to IU School of Nursing is of utmost importance,” Kay said. “I’ve been very lucky in my life, and I just really want to share it with others.”
Gifts can be made to the IU Nursing Student Emergency Fund.