In 2025, Frontier Nursing University honored the 100-year anniversary of the inception of the Frontier Nursing Service. We are grateful for the alumni, students, couriers, donors, volunteers, friends, and employees who have made an incredible impact on FNU’s century-long journey. We celebrated this milestone year by capturing and sharing some of the countless stories that make up our history. Whatever your connection to FNU, we hope you enjoy these stories.
The story of the mission and founding of the Frontier Nursing Service in 1925 shines a light on the importance of providing healthcare to areas where there is little if any access to care. Mary (Strubhar) Showalter, MSN, CNM (Class 39) is among the many Frontier graduates who have been inspired by the mission to serve the underserved.
“I sensed a calling from God to work in medical missions,” Showalter said. “To do so, I believed I needed to have a good training foundation on which to build in order to serve others by ministering to their health needs. Part of that training included becoming a midwife.”
Showalter said that she chose to attend Frontier because of its community-based distance educational platform.
“It also was very special to me to follow in the footsteps of my aunt, Ruth Cressman, who had trained as a midwife with the Frontier Nursing Service in the early 1950s,” Showalter said. “Aunt Ruth was a classmate of and fellow graduate with Kitty Ernst.”
Ruth Cressman Strubhar was from Ontario, Canada. After her midwifery training at Frontier, she went to the Ozark Mountains and worked there at a rural mountain mission clinic in the Culp, Arkansas, area. There she met Clifford Strubhar, who was the mission farm worker at that time. They married and lived in Arkansas until Ruth’s death in 1955 from a pregnancy, birth, and postpartum complication. Their son, Curtis, was stillborn due to the pregnancy complication.
Much like her aunt, Showalter is committed to serving others. Her travels as a nurse-midwife have taken her to Paraguay, Haiti, Mexico, Liberia, Ghana, and Romania. In the U.S., she worked as an RN at Providence Newberg Medical Center in Newberg, Oregon, for 10 years, as a travel nurse for over three years, at Andaluz Birth Center in Portland, Oregon, for eight years and at Bella Vie Gentle Birth Center in Salem, Oregon, for five years.
For the past five years, Showalter has worked at the Growing Family Birth Center in Lebanon, Oregon, where she provides pregnancy and well-woman care. She has also shared her experience and expertise as a clinical instructor at the Walla Wall University School of Nursing for seven years.
Mary is married to Glenn Showalter, who was a widower with nine married children when she married him. They have 54 grandchildren and one great grandchild with two more expected in the summer of 2025.
