The Nurse Honor Guard of Northern California carries a longstanding legacy of leadership and service closely connected to Kaiser Permanente Nursing. Prior to 2025, the Honor Guard was guided by dedicated Kaiser Permanente nurse leaders, including Eileen Lang, MSN, RN, and Janet Sohal, DNP, RN, PHN, NEA-BC, whose vision and commitment strengthened and expanded its reach across California. Through their leadership, KP nurses helped shape the Honor Guard’s structure, ceremonial traditions, and volunteer foundations — establishing it as a trusted presence during moments of profound loss and remembrance within the nursing community.
In 2025, Kaiser Permanente nurse leaders further advanced this mission by joining fellow KP nurse leader Kaykay Vang, PhD, RN, PHN, CPHQ who was collaborating with colleagues from the Hmong Nurses Association to broaden Honor Guard efforts. This shared leadership expanded the Honor Guard’s services beyond the KP organization and into diverse communities, even supporting ceremonies across state lines, including in Minnesota. This growth reflects Kaiser Permanente Nursing’s enduring commitment to serve communities beyond hospital walls and recognizes that nursing is a calling that transcends geography, culture, and healthcare systems.
The Nurse Honor Guard of Northern California exists for a singular and sacred purpose: to honor nurses and nursing students with dignity, reverence, and gratitude for their dedication to the profession. Comprised of volunteer nurses and nursing students across the region, the Honor Guard gathers to pay tribute to individuals whose lives reflect a profound commitment to caring—commitment that shapes not only a career, but an identity.
To many outside the profession, nursing is compassionate work. Those within it understand something deeper: it is a lifelong promise to show up during humanity’s most fragile moments. The Nurse Honor Guard gives voice to that promise. Their presence communicates what words alone cannot—this life mattered, and this service will not be forgotten.
For Kaiser Permanente nurses who volunteer with the Honor Guard, participation represents more than ceremonial service. It embodies KP Nursing’s commitment to Caring Science and the belief that human connection and presence are foundations of healing. The Honor Guard stands as a living example of what it means to be a light in others’ lives — supporting families, colleagues, and communities through life’s most vulnerable transitions. Through these sacred ceremonies, KP nurses demonstrate that caring extends beyond clinical practice and into the human spirit, honoring the legacy of every nurse whose life reflected compassion, dignity, and service.
The Nurse Honor Guard of Northern California offers the public a rare window into the soul of nursing — a profession bound by tradition, strengthened by community, and grounded in reverence for life itself. For nurses, it represents a solemn promise kept: just as we care for others through their final moments, we will stand for our own.
Because a nurse’s work does not fade with time.
It echoes in every life they touched.
And when their watch ends, we remember.
Today, Kaiser Permanente nurses continue to serve as volunteers, leaders, and ambassadors of the Nurse Honor Guard of Northern California, ensuring that traditions of remembrance, gratitude, and professional reverence endure for future generations. Their involvement reflects KP Nursing’s broader mission to care for the whole person—including the caregivers who devote their lives to serving others. In every ceremony, one message is carried forward with quiet clarity: a nurse’s legacy is not measured only in years of service, but in the lives forever changed by their presence.
To learn more about the mission of celebrating service, honoring dedication, preserving legacy, and embracing tradition, please visit nhgnorcal.org.