How a St. Louis nurse used baking to foster friendships across the U.S.

It’s Thanksgiving in Maine, and Andrew Ring is standing at a colleague’s door with a tray of homemade gooey butter cookies. As a former travel nurse, he found connecting with people during short-term contracts hard, so he learned it’s important to bring a little bit of home to whomever he meets.

Ring, 26, was born and raised in the suburbs of O’Fallon, Missouri. He graduated from school and began working as an operating room nurse in 2021.

“I saw nursing as such a great opportunity because they’re the ones that are your advocate for your health,” said Ring. “I just love the combination of humanism and science.”

When he’s not dodging bone fragments or assisting with skin grafts, Ring’s role is as the main communicator and caretaker in the room, “making people comfortable as they go to sleep … holding their hand. My No. 1 rule is holding someone’s hand while they drift off under anesthesia.”

He has been present for life-changing surgeries, such as breast reductions.

“Just being able to give someone that care that’s going to ultimately change their life and their outlook, how they convey themselves to the world, is just amazing,” he said.

But in 2023, he felt a need to “get away from it all” and experience something outside his hometown. So he got into travel nursing.

Although travel nursing existed before COVID, the pandemic exacerbated stresses within every institution, particularly health care. Ring explained that part of the reason travel nursing is essential is because quality and expertise of care ranges from state to state, so having access to different health care professionals nationally helps provide gaps in coverage to patients.

Ring embarked on one of two major travel stints before returning home. The first stop was Maine. He was excited to meet new people, challenge himself at work, and, to his surprise, teach others about St. Louis at every chance he got.

Doing this work often required 10- to 12-hour days, and being in a new place made it difficult to find a community. He missed a lot of family holidays and recalls the challenges of making friends with people who didn’t have much interest in investing in a temporary relationship.

To create a sense of home, Ring posted family photos on his fridge and, after long shifts in the operating room, decided to make a familiar Midwest comfort food.

“If I was homesick, I’d be, like, OK, let’s make my mom’s favorite dish that I grew up with — basic stuff,” he said. His favorites? “One of the classic meals is macaroni and cheese and weenies and beans [but] her best was the gooey butter cookies.”

Hannah Artman

/

NPR Next Generation Radio

Hannah Artman

/

NPR Next Generation Radio

For Ring, food was his link to home, which is where the cake on Thanksgiving in Maine comes in.

“I was thinking about, you know, all the good dessert that I’d be missing at home. And there’s always gooey butter cake at any function in my family,” he said. “So I really was like, OK, I want to make some gooey butter cake and bring it to this house and show all these ‘Mainers.’”

Ring was honored to introduce his new group of friends to the iconic St. Louis gooey butter cake. The legend is that the cake was made by accident nearly 100 years ago. “Everyone loved [it]. It was a hit,” he said. “I think gooey butter cake should be national.”

Ring was grateful that this was one Midwestern morsel he didn’t have to vehemently defend like he did St. Louis pizza.

“A lot of people don’t agree with our thin crust pizza … you know, the Northeast people, they think they have it on lock with their pizza … so that’s something I would always have to defend.”

Despite the social victory, the demanding schedules and navigating time zones made Andrew decide to take a month between contracts to visit home. While there, he met someone unexpectedly.

Hannah Artman

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NPR Next Generation Radio

However, he embarked on his next journey, this time leaving behind not just his friends and family but also his new partner — which made his next contract in Seattle even more challenging. His mother jokingly questioned why he was trading one coast of the country for the opposite.

This time, instead of photos and food, Andrew occasionally flew his family and partner out to visit.

Ring said while missing loved ones is hard, traveling from hospital to hospital is also intimidating. He said learning new lingo is difficult, as is learning his colleagues’ names and faces.

He explained that “navigating a hospital is kind of scary sometimes, especially a really big one.” Working in the OR intensifies that challenge because “operating rooms are so big and everything looks the same. You turn left, everything looks the same as it was on the right,” he said. “And then you don’t know anyone’s names, so you’re trying to learn everyone’s names. And in the operating room it’s tough because people are wearing hair nets, and then they have a mask on.”

Hannah Artman

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NPR Next Generation Radio

He explains it’s “just a culture shock,” but he’s proud of the skills he has developed. He said he can walk into any OR now and feel confident.

Even though Seattle was his second assignment, it didn’t make the isolation any easier. His experience taught him that while sharing foods was an OK proxy for creating a sense of home, he was missing the people. He decided to go home at the end of his contract.

“I really liked the experience, and I loved meeting people, and I loved being able to go to these cities and drive around and go hiking or try a different restaurant,” said Ring. “It was really fun, and the money’s not too bad. So once things settle down in my life, I would do it again.”

He knows home isn’t necessarily a physical place. For Ring, home is “the love, the energy that you get from all your family, all your friends, and whatever culture that lies within your area. And I think you take that wherever you go.”