Ann Marie McCrystal has been committed to the mission of the Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) since helping bring the well-known nonprofit organization to Vero Beach in 1975. For nearly 50 years, including as board chair, she has been instrumental in growing VNA Home Care and Hospice resources for residents of Florida’s Treasure Coast.
“I’m doing something to help someone every day, not just for my own family or very good friends, but in the community and beyond,” says McCrystal, 86. “It’s a good feeling to go to bed at night knowing that if you close your eyes and never wake again, you have done something in your life that mattered, that meant something to somebody.”
Once upon a time, however, she expected a very different future. An accomplished teen accordion player, McCrystal performed in Miami Beach hotels and on cruises. In 1955, she came to the University of Miami intent on an acting career, as she explained during her SONHS Alumna of Distinction speech in 2017.
But a new path was soon illuminated by her nighttime view of Doctors Hospital from campus. “I saw all those lights on inside, drawing me. I believe there was some higher power that pointed me towards Doctors Hospital, saying, ‘Ann Marie, this is your destiny and you’ve got to take it,’” she recalls. “This was something I had to explore.”
Nursing 101 was relatively new at the College of Arts and Sciences. “We had our classes in makeshift cottages we called Cardboard College,” she says. “I paid $25 for a yellow uniform with a white pinafore and mortarboard nurse’s cap.” She still has the original cap she wore at UM. That summer, McCrystal observed her first surgery.
“As soon as I walked into the operating room, I knew that was the drama I needed in my life,” she says. A day after graduating, she went to work at Jackson Memorial Hospital and later ran its open heart surgical operating room—Florida’s first. “Every day I went to work at JMH as an OR nurse was exciting,” says McCrystal. “I just knew I was home.”
Jackson was also where she met surgical intern Hugh McCrystal. After marrying, the pair moved to Washington, D.C. He was a urology resident at Georgetown Hospital, while she set up the VA’s open heart OR, at times scrubbing in with Dr. Charles Hufnagel, inventor of the first artificial heart valve.
Returning to Florida in 1966, McCrystal stayed busy raising three children, running her husband’s urology practice, and fundraising for the local theater guild, the VNA, VNA Hospice House, and Indian River Medical Center. She served on the SONHS Visiting Committee at a time of transformative growth for the school. Eight years ago, McCrystal was appointed to the Indian River County Hospital District Board of Trustees, stepping down just recently to care for her husband.
“Through it all, I was always very proud of the nursing profession and the B.S.N. I received from the University of Miami,” says McCrystal. In fact, she acknowledges, she would go on for her doctorate degree if she were starting her career today. “Continue your education,” she advises current students. “Every day there is something to learn that can assist you in your ability to help people through health care. If you would like to make a difference in a life, there isn’t a better, more rewarding calling than nursing.”
