Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda

In the near future, I will introduce a resolution declaring February 26, 2020 “Lavinia Lloyd Dock Day” in Pennsylvania. This day marks what would be Lavinia Lloyd Dock’s 152nd birthday. 

Born to a wealthy Harrisburg family in 1868, Lavinia Lloyd Dock had no need to work, but chose to become a nurse. She graduated from Bellevue Hospital School of Nursing in New York – going on to make a name for herself as one of the founding mothers of modern nursing. Dock worked for the American Red Cross alongside its founder Clara Barton, first combating the Yellow Fever epidemic in Jacksonville, Florida and then back in Pennsylvania – aiding the tens of thousands of people who had been uprooted by the Johnstown Flood. Later in life, Dock marched among the suffragettes for the right to vote, worked as a union organizer, and aided in the establishment of multiple international nursing organizations.

Lavinia Lloyd Dock, a native daughter of Pennsylvania and a leader in the profession of nursing, the movement for unions, and the fight for a woman’s right to vote, is not a name that many know outside of the profession of nursing. Ms. Dock deserves to be remembered and to be honored, nowhere more so than in her home state of Pennsylvania.  

I hope that you will join me in co-sponsoring this resolution to declare February 26, 2020 as “Lavinia Lloyd Dock Day” in Pennsylvania to honor her legacy as a nurse, an activist, and an outstanding Pennsylvanian.