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Louise LaFramboise, who holds a doctorate in nursing, retired early this year after 38 years as a faculty member with the College of Nursing, including time as assistant dean.

NU President Dr. Jeffrey Gold, the university’s former chancellor, recalled his many plane trips across the state to graduation ceremonies with LaFramboise. He called the leadership she provided, as well as the friendship she gave faculty and staff and the mentorship she offered students “truly remarkable.�

The Nebraska Nurse Honor Guard honored LaFramboise with a living tribute ceremony. The group this month marked its five-year anniversary of honoring nurses, both in life and in death, for their service and commitment.

The group now has 284 members who provide services across the state with the addition of a group in the Panhandle region in August, said Debra Zobel, the group’s president and founder. Members have conducted more than 600 ceremonies.

Thirteen nurses wearing traditional caps, white uniforms and blue capes walked solemnly into a reception area and presented LaFramboise with a bouquet of white roses, representing comfort, kindness, gentleness, courage and unwavering devotion to duty, and a lamp like the one Florence Nightingale carried while tending wounded soldiers at night.

Lepaine Sharp-McHenry, the nursing college’s dean, traced LaFramboise’s nursing career, from earning a bachelor’s degree in nursing at Creighton University in 1978 to becoming an instructor in the college in 1986 and earning a doctorate in nursing from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in 1998. LaFramboise was selected as director of UNMC’s accelerated nursing program in 2005 and as director of the baccalaureate program in 2007. She became assistant dean for the college’s Omaha division in 2020.

Sharp-McHenry also read a proclamation from Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen naming LaFrambroise an admiral in the Great Navy of the State of Nebraska and tributes from a number of colleagues.

LaFramboise said the tribute from the nurse honor guard was “so special.� She said she saw her role as an educator as supporting and putting people on the right path.

“I am so honored,� she said. “I don’t know that I have words to describe it.�