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Edna Mildred Peterson was born on April 2, 1902 in Skamokawa, Washington to Andrew Peterson and Hilma Johnson. She attended the on-room school, West Valley Grade School, and graduated from high school at Redman Hall in Skamokawa.

Afterward she entered the nursing profession and obtained her Registered Nurse degree from St. Joseph's Hospital in Vancouver, Washington in 1924. She worked at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland, Oregon until 1929 when she took the position as head of the infirmary at the University of Idaho. Here she managed the old infirmary and supervised the building of a new infirmary. She was actually the first patient in the new infirmary after she contracted tuberculosis.

When Edna overcame the illness, she accepted a position with the Red River Lumber Company in Westwood, California as administrator of their small hospital. She never returned to Idaho, but did completed nurse anesthetist training program at the Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, Washington. There she became head of the nurse anesthetist department and served a term as president of the California State Nurse Anesthetist Association.

Edna retired from St. Francis Hospital in 1968 after more than forty years of service in the nursing profession. She died on September 28, 1988 in Orem, Utah.