Polly (Ghormley) Gumm

It’s not uncommon for people to stop Polly (Ghormley) (79) Gumm on the streets of Billings, Mon. Sometimes they haven’t seen her in a decade or two, but they are compelled to reintroduce themselves. One even named a cow after her. After all, Gumm helped deliver their baby.

Gumm was inspired by her mother to become the first person in her family to attend college and to become a nurse. While raising five children and working, Gumm’s mother earned her GED and studied to become an LPN (licensed practical nurse).

Gumm graduated in 1979 with a degree in nursing from PLNU and worked in the Hoag Hospital newborn nursery in Newport Beach. In 1983, she married David Gumm (77) and moved to Lubbock, Texas, where David was in a doctoral program. Over the next few years, Polly and David moved to Wichita, Kan; Sacramento, Calif.; and Dallas, Texas, before settling in Billings in 1991. Along the way, they had three children: David, Andrew, and SarahBeth.

Spending most of her career in labor and delivery, Gumm rejoiced with countless families who welcomed healthy babies into this world. But she also developed a special calling to the parents of babies who didn’t survive.

Gumm’s ministry to bereaved parents began early in her career when she was present for the birth of a baby born with anencephaly. Knowing the baby wouldn’t survive, the mother didn’t want to see him, and the doctor instructed Gumm to leave him in a back room.

“I just could not abide that anyone would put a baby in a back room to die,” she said.

So Gumm broke the rules and took the baby’s measurements, made a card with his footprint, and rocked him until his short life was over. The next day, she ran into the father in the hallway. He asked her if she had seen his child, and she shared what she knew.

“When I handed him the footprint card, it was like handing him the world,” Gumm said.

For Gumm, coming alongside people experiencing deep grief was never a burden.

“The veil between Heaven and Earth is so thin,” she said. “I’ve seen it; I could almost touch it. I haven’t done anything extraordinary. I just did what was right.”

Recently, Gumm sensed it was time to move on from labor and delivery to give the younger nurses at the hospital a chance to advance. Now Gumm is the nurse for a Native American health clinic and is on staff at an aesthetic medicine practice. She also still gives talks and mentors labor and delivery nurses.

So many are grateful for Polly Gumm, and she is grateful, too. “I could walk confidently knowing where those babies were going,” she said.