Not setting that alarm each night might be the most challenging adjustment Langston has to make after she retired from the Abilene ISD earlier this month, concluding a 49-year career in nursing that has seen her work in hospitals in Waco, Fort Worth and Abilene, as well as a school nurse in the AISD. She worked as a school nurse at Purcell Elementary (then Johnston Elementary) and the since-closed Lincoln Middle School before returning to Hendrick Medical Center in 2001 as a childbirth educator.
In 2008 she returned to the Abilene ISD as the Director of Health Services, a job she held until she decided to retire at the end of the 2022-23 school year. For each of those 49 years, she had woken up between 4-4:30 a.m. to get ready for her day, get her children up and out the door, and get herself to work between 6-6:30 a.m. Even on weekends, she would get up early, get herself ready, and fall back asleep in her chair for 30-60 minutes before getting on with her day.
But no more.
“I’m not planning on setting that alarm unless I have to sub for the district or be somewhere, and I think that’s going to be very hard,” Langston said with a laugh just a few days before her last day on the job. “I think I’ve gotten out of bed so early in the morning for so long that I don’t know if I can just turn it off. But I’m looking forward to finding out.”
Langston is a 1971 Abilene High graduate who was an Eagle cheerleader and classmate of current Texas Rep. Stan Lambert. She graduated from the University of Texas and then from the then-Mary Meek School of Nursing in 1975. She was an ICU nurse at Hillcrest Baptist Hospital in Waco before she worked at Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth.
She’s been a nurse at Hendrick, working in the trauma center and surgery before working as a childbirth educator. During those moves, she managed to raise three daughters, all of whom graduated from Abilene High School. And it was those three daughters who encouraged her to step away from full-time work.
“There are days when I wonder why I retired because I’m still able to go to work, but my kids tell me all the time that it’s time for me to have some time to myself where I don’t have to be on a schedule,” she said.
Time to herself has been rare over the last 3 ½ years as she was part of the team that led the district’s COVID response. The previous 42 months of her tenure in the district were some of the most memorable and tough times she experienced as a nurse.
“Going through COVID changed so much about what we do every day,” she said. “In the spring of 2020, I didn’t think there was any way we would get another week off after Spring Break … and we did. Then I thought it would only be for that week, but we knew the governor would make that call. Never in my life could I have imagined that we would be out the rest of the year and go through what we all went through over the next few years. Making those phone calls to parents in 2020 and 2021 when we told them their kids had either tested positive or had been exposed and would have to sit out for 10 days was tough. I want everyone to be happy, work together, and not be in conflict, but it was hard not to have some conflict during those times.”
But after getting through the global pandemic, she realizes the time is right to step away … at least on a full-time basis.
“I still wonder if I should have gone another year to make it an even 50, but I realize it’s time,” she said. “I’ll probably still do some substitute work with the district, and I’ve told (Hendrick Health Vice President and Chief Medical Officer) Dr. Rob Wiley to find me something to do at Hendrick. I’ve been at this too long. It’s going to be hard to turn it off.”
A little bit like that alarm clock.
