Posey Fulmer cared about people, and that's why she was so good as a nurse.
"She was always helping people," said her daughter Ruth Ann Hoak. "Everyone in the neighborhood knew she was a nurse, so it didn't matter who got hurt, they were knocking on our door. She never turned them down."
Rosella B. "Posey" Fulmer, formerly of North Huntingdon, died Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005, at the Crown Point Assisted Living Center, in Sebring, Fla. She was 83.
She was born in West Newton and graduated in 1940 from South Huntingdon High School. Mrs. Fulmer was in the same Westmoreland School of Nursing class as her sister, Ruth, graduating in 1943.
With World War II raging, the sisters joined the Army together and were stationed with the Army's 99th General Hospital in Germany.
After the war, Mrs. Fulmer worked as a charge nurse at Westmoreland Hospital, in Greensburg, as one of the first home health care nurses in Westmoreland County and as recruiting director for Westmoreland School of Nursing.
After the death of her first husband and Hoak's father, Mrs. Fulmer became a school nurse with the Norwin School District. That was in 1967. During her 18 years with the district, she worked in almost every elementary school.
It was also during those years that Mrs. Fulmer became friends with the man who would become her future son-in-law.
"I first met Posey while I was teaching at 6th Street Junior High," said Tom Hoak. "We became friends, and then one year she brought her daughter to one of our end-of-the-year parties. Ruth Ann and I started to talk. Then we dated, and in 1982 we got married."
Tom Hoak said Mrs. Fulmer wasn't anything like the stereotypical mother-in-law.
"We got along great," Hoak said. "She traveled with us a lot. We even took her to her first NASCAR race, and she became a big fan. Her favorite drivers were Jeff Gordon and Bill Elliott."
Besides her nursing skills, Mrs. Fulmer was known for her love of flowers. That is how she got her nickname "Posey."
"She always had stands and stands of violets all over the house," Ruth Ann Hoak said. "Then when she married my stepfather, he loved flowers, so they had roses all around the outside of the house."
"They were even test growers for the Rose Society," Ruth Ann Hoak said, recalling how each Mother's Day she would buy her mother a dozen different long-stem roses.
"She would take cuttings from those roses and start new bushes," she said.
Although Mrs. Fulmer and her husband, Clyde, moved to Florida 11 years ago, her daughter said they never lost touch with the area.
"She would call every day to see how we were," Hoak said.
Survivors include her husband, Clyde "Norm" Fulmer; a daughter, Ruth Ann Hoak, of Westmoreland City; a stepson, James Fulmer, of North Huntingdon; a stepdaughter, Carol Errett, of McMurray; a brother, Warren H. Brunner, of Smithton; a sister, Ruth Lees, of Sebring, Fla.; a granddaughter; three stepgrandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday in the James W. Shirley Funeral Home Inc., Clay Pike, North Huntingdon Township.
The family asks that memorials be in the form of contributions to the Norwin Middle School Library.
