*During 2017, Penelope participated in North Little Rock’s Race for the Cure®.*

*Penelope with her parents, Dorothy and T.J. Abraham, during her graduation from the nursing program at Texarkana College in 1987.*

Nurses have always been held in high esteem in our society—caring for the sick, keeping doctors in line, maintaining organization and good records, and comforting families who have lost, but in recent times, nurses are even more respected and regarded as essential to our daily lives amidst growing health concerns and an uncertain future. Penelope Loosbrock has been a registered nurse since the late 1980s, and while she maintains a career in nursing, she has recently found even more ways to serve her community and diversify her interests through teaching a community Zumba® class at the Southwest Center.

When asked how this came to be she responded, “I was attending classes toward my next degree and working PRN at the hospital when the previous Zumba® instructor unexpectedly needed to leave with her military husband. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I stepped up to help the community.”

It seems that stepping up has been a trend in Penelope’s life. “I grew up in Texarkana, Arkansas, and attended Carver Elementary School there,” Penelope said. “In the ’60s schools were segregated. My mother was a school teacher during this time, and I was too young to understand what was going on. It was the era of the Civil Rights Movement – there was busing, violence and school closures.

“I can remember asking my mother to let me learn ballet when I was 4,” Penelope recalls. “I already was trying to teach myself piano by ear. It is amazing to believe that during this time it was normal to hear my mother say, ‘There are no ballet schools for colored children in this area.’ To ease the disappointment, she put ballet dancers on my birthday cakes and gave me a music box with ballet dancers on it.

*On July 29, 2017, Penelope attended a Zumba® convention in Orlando, Florida.*

“In the ’70s, I became one of the first group of students to go to the desegregated Washington Sixth Grade School. It was the first time we had gone to school with students of a different color. I went on to Arkansas High School, and I never lost my desire for music or dance. I was in band, on the flag corps, and in the armor guard,” Penelope said. “After graduation, I attended Arizona State University, in Tempe, Arizona. I was chosen to be on the Flag Corps at ASU. I never realized the ability I had to perform or instruct. I thought I was only chosen because I was Black. I never thought I was smart, even though at 16 years old, I was accepted to ASU.

“I enjoyed college, but I did not appreciate it the way I would have now. I traveled with the band and attended Rose Bowl activities during football season. I became a little sister for Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. I enjoyed a campus that had a culture of diversity, which I longed for in high school. Orange trees lined the sidewalks which emitted a heavenly fragrance on campus. I will never forget this college experience,” Penelope said.

Penelope knew from a young age that she would care for the sick someday. As a child she cared for families of guard dogs and gave them a decent burial when they died. She saved bugs from harm and mended her injured dolls. In 1987, she graduated from Texarkana College with her associate degree in nursing and became a registered nurse.

“My father was an orderly (now they are called transport techs) at St. Michael Hospital in Texarkana, Arkansas,” Penelope said. “The nuns there seemed to love him. As a child I would grab my favorite nun’s habit. She was very patient with me and patted me on the shoulder when I did this. I begged my parents to let me be a Candy Striper. Later, my father was in this hospital, and I helped him during his recovery. I became a nurse at the very hospital where I took care of my father.”

Currently, Penelope works PRN at the CHRISTUS St. Michael Rehabilitation Hospital, but she has served in many capacities throughout her nursing career, including travelling as a nurse during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

*Penelope (left) worked in Louisiana when the pandemic began.*

“I was in Louisiana when COVID became a pandemic,” she said. “Travel was restricted, and I had to carry a permission letter in my car to go to work. The interstate and highways were empty, PPE was limited and N95 masks had to be autoclaved to be used for so many days. We kept up with this by the marks they put inside the mask. We became not only the patient’s nurse, but their family. It was a lonely time for them. Patients were dying in front of our eyes from this virus, and in the end we were getting the virus, too. Units were closed and combined to have enough nurses. I am grateful to be a nurse for such a time as this.”

Penelope ended up getting COVID herself after working with patients for close to a year. Thankfully, she overcame the virus and was able to continue working and teaching.

Penelope’s Zumba® classes and other classes were paused for some time while the Southwest Center remained closed due to COVID, but as soon as it opened back up, she went right back to teaching. “The Southwest Center became a hub to offer COVID-19 vaccines, and we didn’t mind pausing our class, because that’s what our community needed,” Penelope said. “Now that we are opening back up, I’m happy to be back. I can offer a class that destresses, elevates confidence levels, improves posture, provides socialization, and raises endorphin levels. If you want to lose weight and burn calories, this is a fun way to do it. Just move.”

Penelope believes in the power of dance. She has been teaching Zumba® for five years now. “Zumba® is a gateway to exercise and includes a diversity of people. We are like a family, and new family members come in all the time. My Zumba® family extends to other Zumba® instructors in town and out-of-town. I attend and support their classes. At the Southwest Center, we have two Zumba® classes, one in the morning and one in the evening. The Zumba® in the morning is slower, and Zumba® Fit in the evening. You are never too old to move!”

Along with a theme of stepping up to help in times of need, Penelope also appreciates the themes of diversity in her life. “My father, who was born around the turn of the century told me he had to sit on the back of the bus or train and lower the blinds when entering some of the small towns outside of Texarkana, Arkansas. My mother worked for a short time in a school district in Garland, Texas, and I remember a sign in a small town near there that said, ‘The blackest dirt and the whitest people.’ When I was growing up, segregation was ‘separate but equal,’ and I recall it making me feel like I wasn’t beautiful or valued because of the color of my skin,” Penelope said.

It seems in contrast, she has endeavored to make everything she touches about inclusion and finding the beauty in each individual. One of the members of her Zumba® class wrote: “What I enjoy about class is [the] microcosm of our society, all ages, ethnicity and economic groups, and we all get along.”

Penelope loves that idea. “This is why I do Zumba®—it brings all people together.”

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