Nelson selected for Hall of Fame

Even the busiest of people will find some benefit from volunteering, a piece of wisdom that Beth Nelson of Holton is willing to impart to those who are looking to get involved in their community.

“Everybody is busy,” Nelson said. “But just taking a little time for somebody else is good. It’ll make you feel better.”

Nelson, who’s known not only for her volunteer work with Friends of Banner Creek and Developmental Services of Jackson County but also for her efforts in establishing and growing the cardiac rehabilitation department at Holton Community Hospital, is being rewarded for that work with a place in the Holton/Jackson County Chamber of Commerce Hall of Fame.

It’s an honor that she said left her “very surprised.”

“When I got the call, I was really quiet at first,” Nelson said. “But my daughter Audra was right there, and she was like, ‘Yes!’”

She’ll join fellow inductees Pat and Nancy Fontaine, Dennis and Joni White and Rod and Shannon Wittmer in being honored at the 21st-annual Hall of Fame banquet, to be held in early February at Prairie Band Casino and Resort.

Nelson grew up on a dairy farm in the Seneca area, attending Sts. Peter and Paul School and graduating from Nemaha Valley High School. Her upbringing on the farm contributed to one of her earliest passions — horses.

“I love animals, and my dad got me a horse when I was probably 10 or 12 years old,” she said. “I’ve always had a horse.”

She moved to the Holton area in 1979 and went to Washburn University, initially seeking a degree in education but switching over to nursing. She earned her nursing degree in 1984 — the year her oldest daughter, Danielle, was born — and went to work at Holton Community Hospital, which was still located at Fifth Street and Kansas Avenue, as well as at Stormont-Vail in Topeka to fulfill an education contract.

While working at the old Holton hospital, Nelson answered a telephone call from a person who wished to speak to her mother, a patient at the hospital. When she offered to transfer the call to the mother’s room, she was told the hospital didn’t have phones — and that spurred her to reach out to her neighbors in the Banner Grange, who agreed to pay to have phone lines and phones put into the hospital’s patient rooms.

In the late 1990s, Nelson and her family were involved in fund-raising efforts for construction of the new HCH facility north of Holton, and while reviewing the building plans, she noticed that there was going to be a cardiac rehabilitation department in the new hospital. That led to her becoming the new hospital’s director of cardiovascular services when it opened in 1999.

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