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Casey Flitcraft
Lamar State College Port Arthur graduate Casey Flitcraft stood on stage, tightly gripping a small statuette that represented one of the top nursing student recognitions internationally, the DAISY Award, a recognition for top nursing students, instructors and practitioners from across the country.
Six months earlier, exactly to the day, Flitcraft sat in shock on her front porch in Winnie. It seemed as though her world had just come to an end. While her children presented her LVN pin to her during the ceremony, it was Flitcraft’s husband, Greg, who was missing, tragically lost to a late-night heart attack.
“I was a medic in the Army Reserves. I work as an emergency room tech,” she said. “But I was there in the bathroom with him, and I was in shock.”
The next week was a blur, the following week remembered for the presence of her LSCPA nursing instructors and fellow students sitting in the church pews at Greg Flitcraft’s funeral.
“Without my instructors and my classmates,” she said, “I couldn’t have done it. That program absolutely saved my sanity.”
Continuing with Baptist Hospital as a new member of the LVN crew, Flitcraft is now planning to join LSCPA’s Upward Mobility (LVN to RN) program with the goal of eventually becoming a nurse practitioner specializing in psychiatric care.
“You can’t be scared,” she said. “Fear is the main thing that holds us back, the fear of failure. Life is not perfect. The road we walk is full of potholes. You have to keep going. You can’t quit.”