Oral History Program Sister Agnes Reichlin Interviewed by Marci Farr 17 November 2010 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Sister Agnes Reichlin Interviewed by Marci Farr 17 November 2010 Copyright © 2010 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The St. Benedict’s School of Nursing was founded in 1947 by the Sisters of Mount Benedict. The school operated from April 1947 to 1968. Over the forty-one year period, the school had 605 students and 357 graduates. In 1966, the program became the basis for Weber State College’s Practical Nursing Program. This oral history project was created to capture the memories of the graduates and to add to the history of nursing education in Ogden. The interviews focus on their training, religion, and experiences working with doctors, nurses, nuns, and patients at St. Benedict’s Hospital. This project received funding from the Utah Humanities Council and the Utah Division of State History. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management Special Collections All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Sister Agnes Reichlin, an oral history by Marci Farr, 17 November 2010, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Sister Agnes Reichlin Graduation Photo Class of 1957 Sister Agnes Reichlin November 17, 2010 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Sister Agnes Reichlin, conducted by Marci Farr and Sarah Langsdon, on November 17, 2010. In this interview, Sister Reichlin discusses her recollections and experiences with the St. Benedict’s School of Nursing. MF: This is Marci Farr. We are interviewing Sister Agnes Reichlin. She graduated from St. Benedict’s School of Nursing in 1957. We are interviewing her at St. Gertrude’s Monastery in Cottonwood, Idaho. It is November 17, 2010. Share a little bit about your early life and where you grew up. AR: I always say I came so far to the monastery because I grew up five miles away from here on a little farm. I was the oldest of ten children. I am one of seven girls and three boys. MF: That is funny. Everybody has been the youngest out of who we have talked to out of the ten children. You are the oldest, that is good. AR: I went to school for my first grade at a little country school where all eight grades were in one room. I went a mile to school and back. My second and third grades were here at the monastery where they had boarders. We were little kid boarders and I was here for those two years. That was very hard being away from home. I was here during the week and went home on weekends. For the sixth grade, my folks had moved to Montana so I was there for a year and then came back and finished up at that little country school. I came over here to St. Gertrude’s Academy for high school. MF: Is that when you graduated from high school? AR: Yes. I graduated from high school here in 1952. 2 MF: At that time had you decided to become a nun? AR: My desire to be a nun started when I was pretty young, probably about seven or eight years old. My parents had been very much associated with the Sisters here all the time. We would come and visit. The Sisters were always quite intriguing, especially the one who answered the doorbell and brought us cookies. So I think it kind of started there. I actually entered here in the middle of my senior year of high school. We were able to do that in those days. MF: So you had already taken your final vows by the time you were headed to Ogden? AR: I made my first, or temporary, profession in 1953. The year following that, the group of us stayed here to take classes. Toward the end of that year my superiors told me they had decided that I would be a nurse. MF: So they made your decision? AR: Actually I wanted to be a nurse from the time I was probably in the fifth or fourth grade. My mother had wanted to be a nurse but never got a chance to do that. I think that is where that all began. It was really not a decision, it was just something I knew I wanted to do. In high school I wrote to a nursing school in Spokane and asked what kind of classes I should take in high school. They said to kind of emphasize the sciences. MF: So you did those in high school? AR: Right! I had a little bit of a foundation for the nursing sciences. MF: That is great. Tell us a little bit about when you first entered St. Benedict’s School of Nursing. Tell us a little bit about your impressions and how you felt. 3 AR: There was another Sister and I who went down together. We went by train so it was a late, windy night when a couple of the Sisters came and picked us up. They were very gracious and everything. The whole thing of being there was very welcoming to me. We stayed in the nurse’s home but the Sisters had a wing on the second floor where we had a room. So she and I were roommates. MF: That probably made it nice. You weren’t by yourself. AR: Right. At that time, as Sisters, we were kind of secluded. That was easier too, I think, rather than being in the midst of the other students and feeling like maybe I shouldn’t interact so much. I always enjoyed being with the girls. They had some different ideas and things and directions in their lives for sure but we all got along just really well and had some fun together. MF: That made it nice to have some good memories. Tell us about a few of the Sisters that were teaching at St. Benedict’s who you remember. AR: Sister Berno was the director of the nurse’s program. She was kind of fearsome at the beginning, you know, but I really got to like her a lot. We became really good friends by the time I left. Sister Estelle taught the sciences like chemistry, anatomy, and physiology. Sister Boniface was my teacher for nutrition and dietetics. Sister Rebecca was my teacher for pharmacology. The teacher for nursing arts who was really a great inspiration for me was Jeane Barker. She married a Doctor Morton, toward the end of my time there. She was just an inspiration in every way. MF: We interviewed her in September. She is amazing. She still gets around by herself, she is amazing. Such a nice lady. 4 AR: She was always just that way as an instructor too. She knew how to correct you to be sure you had everything just the way it was supposed to be but also to do it in a kind way. Then another teacher—I have been trying to think of her name. She taught psychiatry—she was a lay person, she drowned. SL: McKeller. AR: McKeller. Yes, Lavina McKeller—wonderful, wonderful instructor. It was all very sad when she was killed. MF: Do you remember any of the doctors? AR: Doctor Lund was a nephrologist surgeon. I remember working with him in surgery one time. I was on my surgical rotation. I was always kind of scared when we had to scrub for these doctors. The patient had had some kidney surgery and post-operatively began to hemorrhage. I was the scrub nurse and it was on a weekend or an evening. I was the main scrub nurse. I know I was almost terrified. I made it through very well. He was very nice and complimentary. The two Nelsons—Dr. D.F. Nelson and Dr. Dean Nelson. The first one was—I am not sure if he was an obstetrician or just a general practitioner but Dr. Dean Nelson was an obstetrician. A very nice man to work with. MF: Was Dr. Swindler there at that time? AR: Oh yes. I meant to mention him—the orthopedist? MF: Yes. AR: Swindler. He would have the girls babysit for him. Sister Berno told a story one time when he came in to pick up one of the girls for babysitting and she walked 5 by. He was looking at the girl that he came to pick up and he said to her, “You need decent shoes.” A lot of us began to wear the shoes that he recommended—a special kind of walking shoe. I wore that kind of shoe for a long time. MF: That probably was nice to not have to worry about your feet. You were on your feet all day and all night. That is great. Were there any other instructors other than Jean? Those were the only two lay people right? AR: For the first year. The second year we had Miss Etcheverry. She did our OB stuff. We loved her too. MF: Which rotation was your favorite when you were at the hospital? AR: I loved it all really. It was all so interesting and so challenging. I think maybe in some ways the surgical post-op stuff was my favorite because we were able to push people through some of those really hard times when they didn’t want to move. To see them able to get up and walk around and go home was an incentive and encouragement to do it again and again. MF: The progress. AR: Yes it was very satisfying. MF: You are seeing the beginning to the end instead of just a circle. AR: Right, yes. MF: So which floor was probably your least favorite do you think? AR: Oh I think my least favorite was psychiatry. I did that at St. Benedict’s at the time. MF: That is where you had your psych training? 6 AR: Right. They were still doing it there. There were always a couple of us there. We were never by ourselves. When working the night shift—we sometimes had to give doses of insulin and then had to watch for the signs to give the orange juice at the right time. That was such a scary thing to have to do. I never did really like those ETC’s, the shock treatment either. MF: It would be very hard to have to watch someone go through that. At that time did you have any rotations out of state? AR: The only rotation I had out of state was pediatrics. MF: At Denver? AR: Yes. I went to Denver in the fall. There were probably six or eight of us who went down there. There was a gal who was in our class from Switzerland— Maria Secrist. So we kind of chummed around on Saturdays when we didn’t have things to do. We went to see the Museum of Natural History several times. At one point we actually rented a car and drove to Boulder to see a little group of Sisters that were living there. MF: Was that nice to be away with your classmates and be able to feel like you could interact with them a little more instead of when you were in Ogden or was it about the same? AR: It was about the same. In Denver, they put the fear of the Lord into us before we went to Denver saying you really had to be very accurate with what you were doing or you could be booted out of the program. MF: So they wanted to make sure you weren’t going just to play. AR: Right. I guess that is what it was. 7 MF: Did you feel like with you training there—did you learn a lot? AR: I thought it was wonderful. We had one instructor there—her last name was Browder—she wrote a book on pediatrics. She was very dedicated to the profession of nursing. Often in our class she would kind of lament about how nursing was going to be heading down the wrong road and somebody would be making the decisions for nurses rather than the nurses themselves. MF: That is interesting. AR: Yes. I have thought about that many times, seeing how some of the things are going now. MF: That is true. How it has gone for computers instead of the personal care. It is kind of lost in the taking care of the instruments and machines. AR: Right. We had a young person here who thought she wanted to be one of our group here and she became ill and had to go to the hospital. They took her blood pressure with the automatic blood pressure machine and then put something on her finger to check her pulse and O2 and all that. They had one other thing they did and the nurse left the room and she said to me, “Whatever happened to touch?” MF: It is true. It is a lost profession. That is too bad. AR: It is sad. MF: That is good as far as the training for pediatrics that you were able to experience that. Did you have the polio rotation? AR: When I was in Ogden we had people who had polio and it was during that time, maybe the second year, that they came out with the Salk vaccine. I worked with 8 some people in the iron lung. If we were working nights we had to watch some of these people who came in with a diagnosis of polio in case they went into respiratory failure. Polio patients were always frightening. But at the time we did what we had to do and you knew we could call somebody if we noticed something like that happening. MF: That would be hard. Did you have a lot of post polio patients that you took care of? AR: A few. In the early stages after the acute stage but I don’t actually remember that they had a lot of rehab. They must have. I know they had a big physical therapy department and in that they had a tub and things that they used. We didn’t rotate through physical therapy at all. MF: Did you have any interactions with your classmates on a social level at the hospital with the Sisters? AR: Every now and then the Sisters put on a party. It would include all the Sisters and the students. They had a nice backyard where we would gather for those parties or sometimes we had the parties in the building too. MF: Who were some of your classmates? AR: I have been trying to remember. Lucy Powers, Gwen Wolf, Eva Jo Eckersley, and Dorothy Swenson who actually has already died of diabetes. She had diabetes at the time and every now and then she had a lot of trouble with it. Maria Secrist from Switzerland. She struggled a lot because of her language difficulty. 9 MF: I am sure that would be a challenge to learn a new language but especially the nursing language. Did you participate in the capping ceremony? AR: I participated but since I was already all garbed in my own stuff I didn’t get a cap or a cape. MF: How did you feel about that? AR: I thought it was wonderful. The ceremony was beautiful. It was very significant to me. I believe we recited the Nightengale pledge and held lighted candles. MF: You feel like you are serving Christ. AR: That was always my feeling. MF: I love that. I think that is such a great thing because it makes it more personal. You are trying to take care of these people as if they are Christ themselves. AR: It is a great motto and ideal. MF: What do you remember most about that ceremony as far as the significance as what you were taking on as being a nurse? AR: Just the fact that I had gotten into this way of life and my desire, in a way, to always really live up to what I was called to do and to be—to bring comfort and solace and help to other people and aid in their healing. MF: Absolutely. What about graduation? AR: Graduation was held at the church, the Catholic church. Everyone was there in their beautiful white uniforms. I remember that—we had to be sure all the hems were at the same level. You wouldn’t stop to think about such things nowadays but that was quite important. MF: Yes, get the yard stick out. 10 AR: Right. Then we marched down the aisle, all of us together. I think it was the Bishop who passed out our certificates at a certain time. MF: Was your family able to come? AR: No! I think Sister Chanelle was there. She was going to school there at the time. She was two years behind me. They gave out an award which I happened to get. The Bishop Hunt Award which was very significant for me. MF: That meant that you were the top student, right? AR: That is kind of what it implied, I think. I felt very honored. MF: Good, for all your efforts and hard work. AR: I did work hard to do whatever I needed to do but at the same time it was very interesting to me to delve into all that, especially those case studies we had to do. MF: So after graduation tell us a little bit about your life and what you did. AR: Because I made my final profession during the last summer of my program, I was away from there longer than was really allowed. I had to make up a little time after graduation. Sister Berno had me helping with some of the new students that came in the fall. That was very interesting to me. I was kind of interested in staying on, which she would have liked if I would have done to help teach. But my superiors here said, “No, we need you here.” I decided I would take my state boards in Utah so I took those in Salt Lake. I stayed there at St. Benedict’s and helped with that teaching until I took those in October. Then I left and was assigned to work in our hospital in Jerome, Idaho. I began kind of orienting to the OB department. There was one of our Sisters there from Switzerland who 11 had worked with mothers and babies for forty or fifty years. I would say some things to her about what I learned and she would say, “You don’t know everything yet.” Anyway, that was kind of deflating. But you know when you come out you are so enthusiastic about stuff? MF: Yes. AR: She was nice to work with too. I learned a lot watching her and working with her. After a few months I was put on the night shift at St. Benedict’s. On the night shift I covered the whole house. It was a good challenge. I was always one that had a hard time getting my stuff finished on time. I was always there finishing up an hour afterwards or so. Then I spent eight years in Jerome and was asked to come to Cottonwood to work in that hospital. While I was in Jerome they built a nursing home there. It was exciting to be involved in that too. In Cottonwood I again worked some night shifts where you just had everything. You never knew what was going to come in. MF: I am sure every night was different. AR: While I was in Cottonwood they decided to build a new hospital. So I was involved with that which was exciting. Moving into the new hospital was such a thrill. Actually, while I was in Jerome, at the end of my first year there the Sister who was the administrator told me one day, “We are going to start a LPN program and you are going to be the teacher.” That was one thing I never wanted to do was be a teacher. I thought that would be the worst thing in life to be a teacher. Luckily the state had a pretty good vocational education program so I went to the one-week-long courses they had every year. At the time when I 12 began teaching LPN’s there was only one book that they used which was supposed to cover everything. But it really didn’t. I had kept all my nursing class notes, from Ogden. It was kind of like I rehashed those notes and taught my students. I remember just writing furiously on the board. At the end of the day the floor beneath the board was tan with chalk dust—I had this little tiny room that I used as a classroom and there were ten women who came to take the class. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know that before we began any class we should contact the State Board of Nursing to be sure we had the right number of students for the right number of patients. I only found that out after we were about half way through the class. They said, “Since you have begun we are going to let you finish because somebody always drops out.” Nobody dropped out. But the group finished top in the state which was wonderful. I taught LPN’s almost every year—for eight classes. I enjoyed it. Then in Cottonwood, the administrator decided I could do the same thing. So I taught an LPN class there. After we moved into the new hospital I was starting a second class. Then it seemed like a good opportunity for me to go on to college. Someone else was willing to take over the class so I, in a frenzy, packed up, tried to get the other person oriented to the class and all the things that we had to do, and I went off to Seattle U to get my bachelors degree. At the time they were giving public health grants to help with nurse’s education. The Western Hospital Association provided a grant for a year. Because I was able to qualify for another one of those public health grants I took an extra year and went on to the University of Washington for my master’s in maternal child health and 13 nursing administration. When I finished that in December 1969 my community asked me to go back to Jerome. So I went there and worked in OB. The next year I became the director of nursing. I found that very interesting. Then in 1971 I came to Cottonwood to be the director of nursing. I was in that position for twenty-two years. We had some change of administration and that doesn’t always work real well. I left that job and took a sabbatical. I went back to Massachusetts. I spent a year and a half doing some very interesting things like art and reflecting on what my life had been and where it was going. Because I got so involved in the art I decided that I would like to stay a little longer than just a year and a half so the person who was the superior here at the time told me that if I found a job I could do that. I found a job at a rehabilitation and nursing home center and worked there for three and a half years. I was the afternoon supervisor in that facility. That was interesting. Then it seemed like it was time for me to come back home. So I came back here in 1999 in January and have been here ever since. Since I am here I have been working a lot in the infirmary we have for our sisters. MF: That is probably nice to be able to still… AR: Oh I love still being in nursing. MF: So you haven’t officially retired? AR: Well I retired but I didn’t. MF: Well we appreciate you sharing your story. 14 SL: I actually have a couple of questions. Did you perceive to be treated any different by the other students while you were in training or by the Sisters being a Sister yourself? AR: Well I think that my classmates, even though they weren’t aloof or anything, I think there is that thing about being a Sister that they kind of don’t know, sometimes, how to relate to you. They kind of put you a little bit out there. Although it didn’t really ever seem like there was a separation in a way, there was some difference I believe. SL: Did the Sisters treat you any different in class? AR: No I didn’t ever feel that way. I thought we were all treated the same by both the Sisters who were our instructors and by our lay women who were our instructors. We had to meet whatever standard it was no matter who we were. I thought it was all very fair. Sister Estelle and Sister Boniface were—they give an assignment, every day. When we came in the next day, the first thing Sister Estelle said was, “Take out a piece of paper and a pencil.” She began with the questions and all we had to do was put down one or two words. That happened every day. Sister Boniface did the same thing with nutrition. I really believe it helped me learn. MF: I am sure, it was kind of a review of what you talked about. AR: And we knew we had to come prepared if we didn’t want to get an F. SL: Do you have a patient, while you were in training, that kind of sticks out in your mind? 15 AR: I have a couple of them, really. The first one was probably Sister Berno. I was in the second semester of my first year when we had just been working on the floor for awhile. She had surgery and so this morning I come in on duty and am assigned to take care of her. I thought, “Oh my goodness. I think that is kind of what really helped deepen our relationship because it went well. Another time it was Doctor Loomis who was an internist. To be assigned to take care of a doctor who had surgery was pretty awesome too. I worried about doing everything right. Sometimes doctors can be kind of harsh. Both Sister Berno and Dr. Loomis were good patients and nice to care for. MF: What a great thing. AR: Then there was a man who had congestive heart failure. He was so scared. Just to see him be so afraid and know that he was going to die was—touching it left quite an impression on me. Then, of course, there were always the Cistercians—or Trappist monks who came from Huntsville. In some ways I approached them like my fellow students approached me. It is that something out there that you don’t know how you can touch or how you can talk or stuff like that. MF: That is interesting. Who was telling us about that? Somebody talking about the hunky monks from Huntsville and that the student nurses kind of fought over who was going to take care of them. AR: Sometimes they were quite intriguing. It was kind of fun to find out more about what they were about. 16 MF: Well thank you for sharing that with us. We appreciate you letting us come. It has been wonderful to visit with both of you and Sister Chanelle and Sister Bernard. It has been fabulous. We appreciate you hospitality. AR: Thank you. It has been nice having you here.