Newspaper Article – Elsie Leipst to Korea

Miss Elsie Isabella Leipst has been appointed by the New Zealand Branch of the Save the Children Fund to the position of visiting nurse to serve with the Save the Children Fund Team at Masan Korea.

Miss Leipst trained at Hastings Hospital and qualified in 1942. She also holds her maternity and Plunket certificates and the New Zealand Diploma of Nursing.

More than 150 people came from Hastings and surrounding districts to farewell Sister E. I. Leipst at Hastings before her departure for Korea.

Sister Leipst who has been at the Hastings Memorial Hospital for the last five and a half years, has been granted two years leave of absence to go to Korea to work with the Save The Children Fund there.

“Sister Leipst’s appointment is not only an honour to her and her home town but is a stimulus to the work of the Save The Children Fund in the area,” said the Chairman of the Hawke’s Bay Hospital Board, Mr. W. E. Bate.

“Her work will be on the frontier between the two great ideologies struggling for the world, and it will be tremendously important.”

Other speakers were the Mayor of Hastings Mr. R. V Giorgi and the President of the Hastings and District Branch of the Save The Children Fund, Mrs. A. H. Hutchins. Sister Leipst replied.

The audience included the Mayor of Taradale, Mr. A. W Miller, the Deputy Mayor, Mrs. R. M. Lucas, the Mayoress of Havelock North, Mrs R. J. Nilsson. and Mrs. E. J. Keating.

After a programme of several songs and a highland reel, the audience saw a film showing the work of the Save The Children Fund and other organisations among the refugees in South Korea.

A collection at the end of the evening brought more than £35 for the fund.