Two of a Kind | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This article, by Crystal Baity, was originally published in ECU News Services.

Daughter follows in mom's footsteps

    Iva Marie Winstead of Bath decided to become a nurse after job shadowing in high school. She didn't have to look far for a role model.

    When Winstead receives her East Carolina University nursing pin on Dec. 15, her mother will pin her with the same pin she received when she earned her ECU nursing degree in 1988.

    Her mom, Lucinda "Cindy" Winstead, is an ECU nursing faculty member. She asked permission from nursing administrators to fulfill a request from her daughter - that Cindy pin Iva during the traditional pinning ceremony in the College of Nursing's departmental ceremony at noon Saturday.

    Graduates receive the ECU nursing pin, with the university's motto, "servire," or to serve, across the center, one of the mainstays of nursing's commencement rituals. Students in the first nursing class designed the pin more than 50 years ago.

    A rowdy fall commencement for more than 2,000 graduates on Dec. 14 left 22-year-old Iva Winstead coated in confetti and Silly String. She enjoyed being with her friends as her mother joined faculty colleagues at the ceremony. While Friday was a great day, Iva Winstead said she is really excited about Saturday. "It will mean more since my mom is pinning me," she said.

    Cindy Winstead also earned a master's degree in nursing from ECU in 2007. The Winsteads had some of the same instructors while in nursing school, including Dr. Frances Eason and Karen Krupa. Dean of Nursing Sylvia Brown taught Cindy Winstead too. "It's really been a unique experience for someone who taught me to also teach her," Cindy Winstead said.

    "I'd like to thank my mom for being an inspiration and role model for what a mom and nurse should be," Iva said. "I hope to be half the mother and nurse she has been one day.

    After spending the holidays with family and friends, Iva Winstead will take the National Council Licensure Examination next month. She plans to work at Vidant Medical Center in Greenville on the post-partum mother-baby unit in obstetrics, her mother's specialty.

    Iva Winstead was always interested in the medical field and had heard her mother talk about it all her life. But she became hooked through a job shadowing experience her senior year at Northside High School in Beaufort County.

    "I love being able to help people and be with patients," she told her mother.

    Another faculty member, Dr. Alta Andrews, pinned her son, Adam, at his graduation in May.