Nurses Diane Erdeljac and Tony Smith in front of an exhibit that celebrates 100 years of Piedmont Hospital. The exhibit is near the main entrance of the hospital.

You don't have to work in health care for the exhibit to capture your interest. Centennial Exhibit: A Century of Compassion & Care at Piedmont Hospital - which showcases Piedmont Hospital's rich legacy as a medical and Atlanta institution through artifacts, photos and a timeline of medical and Atlanta historical facts - is a visual story that has something to engage everyone.

Three years in the making, the exhibit is the labor of love and pride of Diane Erdeljac, a registered nurse with some unusual skills and the new job of Piedmont's public historian.

"I feel like I'm doing what I was born to do," Erdeljac said. "I wanted this exhibit to celebrate the spirit as well as the history of Piedmont. After learning so much about the people who have gone before me, I feel humbled and honored to be able to say I'm a Piedmont person."

Erdeljac's connection with the hospital began in 1972, when she enrolled in the Piedmont Hospital School of Nursing. She graduated three years later. Diploma nursing programs have since been phased out, but Piedmont's school operated from 1905-1983 and graduated about 2,000 nurses.

Erdeljac joined the hospital staff, working on a medical-surgical floor, in coronary care, renal transplantation and as a case manager for more than 20 years. At the same time, she followed another passion, earning a bachelor's degree in art history and a master's degree in public history.

Aware that Piedmont's 100-year anniversary was coming in 2005, she wrote a proposal in 2002 for an historic exhibit and landed the job of collecting artifacts, recording oral histories and organizing a vast amount of forgotten material into thematic displays. "I'm so grateful to everyone who donated items and told their stories," Erdeljac said.

Fortunately, Sarah Helen Kilgore, the nursing school's last director, and Tony Smith, RN, a 1977 Piedmont graduate, service line administrator and nursing alumni director, had saved artifacts when the school closed. They helped develop a case that displays the first uniform and cap designed by original director Mamie Mobley, a Nightingale lamp used at the capping ceremony, a metal thermometer case that nurses pinned to their bodices, lecture notes, pins, diplomas, photos and the bell used to call nurses to meals.

Other cases are filled with artifacts and photos, such as a ceramic tile from the first house on Capitol Avenue where Drs. Ludwig Amster and Floyd W. McRae started the Piedmont Sanitorium, and a picture of a student nurse in a patient's room, "which shows that Piedmont was always a home-like place," according to Erdeljac.

Every case shows the faces and stories of people who helped shape Piedmont Hospital, from Medal for Merit winner Dr. James Edgar Paullin, who attended President Franklin D. Roosevelt at his death and supplied the armed forces physicians in World War II, to Minnie O. Persons, a U.S. Army nurse cadet who served in Italy and wrote her memoirs.

"It's impossible to fit 100 years of history into one exhibit," Erdeljac said. "This only paints a tiny picture of how Piedmont has provided a century of better care."

To share Piedmont Hospital items or history, call 404-350-9698.