San Francisco County CA Archives Biographies.....Gustafson, Miss Ruth H. 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Ila L. Wakley iwakley@msn.com July 11, 2010, 8:07 pm

Source: California and Californians, Vol. IV, Published 1932, Pages 61 - 62
Author: The Lewis Publishing Company

     MISS RUTH H. GUSTAFSON. The career of Miss Ruth H. Gustafson, director of 
nurses of the San Francisco Hospital, has been one of constant activity and 
notable achievements. She seemed to have sensed the importance of her innate 
talents at an age when most young women are bent only upon the frivolities of 
life, for she made her independence known when she was only seventeen years 
old, since which time her connections have been so important as to place her 
among the foremost women of achievement in her adopted state, if not in the 
entire country.

     Miss Gustafson was born at Ishpeming, Michigan, and is a daughter of Olaf 
and Selma (Sjoholm) Gustafson, natives of Sweden, who came to California in 
1922 and are now residents of Oakland. Her early education was secured in the 
public schools of her native place and at Rockford, Illinois, at which latter 
city she did private secretarial work from the ages of seventeen to twenty-one 
years of age. She then took a course in nursing at Washington Park Hospital, 
Chicago, where she was graduated in 1917, and immediately thereafter was 
appointed assistant superintendent of nurses. In January, 1918, she was a 
chief nurse of the United States Army Nurse Corps connected with the United 
States Army Medical Corps, serving in that capacity until 1920, when she 
returned to the Washington Park Hospital, this time as superintendent of 
nurses. In 1921 Miss Gustafson came to California to accept the position of 
assistant superintendent of nurses of Stanford University Hospital, but left 
this post to accept a like position at the San Francisco Hospital. On November 
1, 1927, she was advanced to director of nurses of this nationally-known 
institution, and has continued in this capacity to the present.

     Miss Gustafson is a member of the San Francisco County Nurses 
Association, of which she is a member of the directorate; the California State 
Nurses Association, of which she is treasurer; the American Nurses 
Association, the California League of Nursing Education, the National League 
of Nursing Education, the American Red Cross, the California Public Health 
Association and the Woman's City Club of San Francisco.

     As will be noted, Miss Gustafson's work has been along the lines of 
education as well as practical practice. She has been constant in her efforts 
to procure for women proper recognition in the higher fields of professional 
employment, and has claimed for them nothing on the grounds of gallantry or 
sympathy, recognizing that the only path to lasting and genuine success is 
through thorough preparation and fitness for any and all callings to which 
women may aspire. Her own example is a stimulating one. She has risen to 
influence and attained recognition through solid merit, founded upon good 
natural abilities, ripened by liberal scholastic training and matured by 
thorough scientific study and long, continuous and assiduous practice.

     With all these acquisitions Miss Gustafson has fully preserved the innate 
delicacy of her womanly nature, and is none the less a lady because she has 
become a professional woman and executive of rare capacity.

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