From Train Whistles to Stethoscopes: The Depot Agent’s Daughter

This week, two commemorative days reminded me of the story I thought I would tell—and the one I ultimately wrote. My mom, Janette, was a public health nurse and the daughter of a depot agent.

Join me as I post stories behind the manuscript and bring the manuscript to a published book. Currently, my manuscript is still in proofreading, deciding on photographs and book cover design phase.

Two important dates slipped by this past week: National Nurses Day and National Train Day. Both are part of Janette Minehart's story—though in quieter, more personal ways than I once expected.

For about a year, I had been waiting to write posts to send you on National Nurses Day and National Train Day.

National Nurse’s Day was May 6, 2025

Janette Minehart’s graduation photo from Hamline-Asbury School of Nursing, 1951 (from Janette’s scrapbook)

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Janette’s dad, Russell, worked as a depot agent and telegrapher. She loved the sound of trains so much that, as an adult, she owned a vinyl record filled with whistles and the rhythmic clickety-clack of passing engines.

I kept that record after she died.

When I first wrote her story, I joined Facebook groups of train fanatics and researched nursing publications. But as important as both nursing and trains were to Janette, I don't think I can market this book as a train or a nursing story.

Janette wasn't just any nurse. She was a public health nurse.

After becoming an RN, she said it took her a few years to work up the courage to attend the University of Minnesota for her bachelor's in public health. In those days, not many women had a bachelor’s degree. The two traditional professions for women often didn’t require a college degree. (Nurses often had a diploma, and teachers attended a “normal” or “training” school.)

She was proud of her degree and profession, though when it was my turn to pick a profession, she warned me not to go into nursing: "You won't make any more money than a retail store clerk," she said. That may have been true at the time—but by the time I graduated from college, nurses started getting decent pay.

When I was a child, she worked with migrant families in the Red River Valley. Many lived in small farmyard shacks without running water. Can you imagine caring for a baby with no running water?

When I was in preschool, she visited mothers hoeing weeds in sugar beet fields—because their young children were often right there beside them. Sometimes, she took me along, and I played with the kids. That's where I first learned the Spanish pronunciation of my name—Noemí—which sounded like "No Amy."

Above is a photo of the medal (front and back) Janette received when she retired. The United States has had a Public Health Service since 1798. The nation’s first public health agency, the Marine Hospital Service (MHS), was formed to care for sick and injured seamen. Learn more here.

Later, she worked as director of Public Health Nursing for the Indian Health Service on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation. Her specialty was maternal and child health.

While living in Florida, where she thought she would retire, she worked as a hospital nurse in her early 50s. One evening, she watched a horrific child abuse story on the TV news in which a parent who had lost her patience killed a child out of frustration and exasperation. Janette said to herself, I have to get back to public health nursing. "I read that one visit from a public health nurse could prevent child abuse," she told me.

In her specialty of maternal and child health, she taught new parents what to expect. These include things like developmental milestones, feeding, language development, physical development, handling the “terrible twos,” getting a toddler to bed and other behavioral issues. That tragic TV news story spurred her to search for jobs in public health nursing. She applied to be a public health nurse with the Indian Health Service at Standing Rock.

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Because it was National Train Day this past Saturday, I visited the Lake Superior Railroad Duluth Museum. Real train whistles permeated the inside and outside of the area, which smelled like rope and oil. The place was packed with tourists and train fans. Vendors had displays pertaining to transportation, history and safety.

Model train builders had a whole room to themselves.

I toured passenger cars, mail cars, a display on porter uniforms and displays of different branded china because meals and eating on the diner car used to be quite the experience.

Outside the museum, a real train waiting for tourists took them up the North Shore of Lake Superior.

John Cartwright holds his sketch of the Slatyon, Minn. depot. “Railroads have always held a special fascination for me,” Cartwright said, “As nearly all of the previous generations of my family depended on it for their livelihood.” (Photo by Naomi)

I met an artist who had sketched nearly every depot in Minnesota based on photographs he'd taken while traveling with his father. I asked him if he had a photo of the Worthington Depot because that is where the Minehart family departed and arrived since no passenger trains stopped in Avoca. He told me that a passenger train had, indeed, stopped in Avoca until the 1950s. Well, that’s not what my Mom told me, I thought to myself. He said that the passenger train only stopped at Avoca once a week and made a lot of pit stops. Also, passengers had to board another train to get to Sioux Falls. I decided he knew much more about trains than I did, and it was quite possible that when Winifred and Russell put their five children on the train to visit South Dakota relatives, they didn’t want the children to have to transfer.

I also met someone from the James J. Hill House in St. Paul. She gave me a lesson in physics on how train wheels work.

National Train Day is observed on the Saturday closest to May 9—the anniversary of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads meeting at Promontory Summit, Utah. That historic moment in 1869 was marked with the ceremonial driving of a golden spike, completing the first transcontinental railroad.

This “Golden Spike” was one of the treats offered for sale. It is chocolate and commemorates the golden spike drive in Promontory Summit, Utah, resulting in a transcontinental railroad.

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Originally, I set out to write a book about Janette's nursing career. But when I tried to interview her about her career, she clammed up. What she really wanted was a story about her childhood.

So that's the story I wrote. But, the trains and the nursing are NOT the biggest bells and whistles; they are more of a backdrop in the scenes that tell the stories. They are stories of joy during hard times.