In the late 1950s, Ilda Marie Kirchner Mora went house to house across San Antonio, dressing wounds, dispensing medication and taking care of patients who couldn't afford to see a physician.

She kept her equipment in the trunk of her car, and often toted along one of her children when day care wasn't available. In the evenings, she hand-wrote pages of paperwork for each patient, updating the supervising physician of their progress.

Caring for others was her passion.

Mora died Sunday from complications of pancreatic cancer. She was 84.

As a student at Baptist Health System School of Nursing in San Antonio, she met and fell in love with Frank Mora, a World War II veteran. But because the school required female students to stay single, the couple couldn't marry, at first.

“I suppose the school didn't feel young married ladies would complete the three-year program,” son Tim Mora said.

Frank and Ilda Mora wed a year after her 1950 graduation.

After their third child was born, Mora began working full time and embarked on what became a 30-year career as a visiting nurse with the Visiting Nurse Association in San Antonio. She eventually became an unofficial spokeswoman for the organization, which was funded by the United Way and consisted of about 10 traveling nurses.

“In the 1950s and '60s, it was rare for a married professional woman like my mom to be out and about in the workplace,” Tim Mora said. “She set a wonderful example.”

She loved family gatherings. One year, they had a family reunion in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. More than 25 people, including 14 grandchildren, shared a five-bedroom home for a week. Each night, a different family member would cook dinner, and the kids had a big slumber party, “sleeping wherever they could sleep,” Tim Mora recalled.

Even though a traditional hospital setting might have been easier work, Mora was passionate about getting out in the community.

“She didn't like being stuck in a hospital,” youngest son Patrick Mora said. “She wanted to go out and help the people who couldn't get to the hospital.”

His mother made vulnerable and scared patients feel at ease around her, he said. “Not everyone can do that, go into a stranger's house alone and provide them compassionate care.”