Celebrating Ida Mosby for Black History Month

Ida Mosby

As we’re nearing the end of Black History Month, we want to highlight an influential person who is not often recognized. Ida Mosby’s story is worth telling.

Ida was born in Fort Worth and her first interaction with nursing came when she was very young. Her mother was very ill and Ida cared for her until she died when Ida was six. This early experience as a caregiver paved the way for her future. In Ida’s words, “Nursing was given to me by God.”

Ida became a nurse and came to Kerrville in 1933 to work at the Thompson Sanatorium as Mrs. O. C. Funderburk’s private duty nurse. Dr. Thompson was very impressed by her work and recommended that she be kept on after he sold the sanatorium to the state for the new Kerrville State Sanatorium for African Americans. After some time as a first charge nurse at Kerrville State, she began to work at the Sid Peterson Memorial Hospital after it opened in 1949 and soon enrolled in their School of Nursing. Ida faced discrimination, and several students quit when she enrolled. But others, including some doctors, encouraged and supported her. She graduated Salutatorian and became the first African American licensed vocational nurse to work in Kerrville. In 1959, she moved to California, to work at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles and then at the V. A. Center of Psychosocial Medicine in Brentwood. Her work was recognized and rewarded by the Veterans Administration, and she received multiple awards.

She came back to Kerrville in 1973 and took a job on the nursing staff of Hilltop Village Nursing Center. Mosby also contributed to the community in many ways, including with the Kerrville Lions Club, Mt. Olive Baptist Church, the League of Women Voters, the Chamber of Commerce, and many other local organizations. In 1992, she was named Outstanding Woman of the Year by the Kerrville Chamber of Commerce.

At the end of her life she had one son, two grandsons, three great-grandsons, and a great-great grand-daughter. She died in 2009, at the age of 103.

Sources used in this blog:

A Kerrville hospital dedicated to serving African-American TB patients

West Kerr Current; Mosby looking forward to 103rd

Local woman recalls changes, challenges

Written by Bill Schneider, an intern at the Heart of the Hills Heritage Center, who enjoys the many wonderful and complex aspects of Kerrville’s history.