Oral History Program Glenda Heaton Johnson Interviewed by Marci Farr 9 September 2008 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Glenda Heaton Johnson Interviewed by Marci Farr 9 September 2008 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 Dee School of Nursing was founded in 1910 to provide training for nurses who would staff the new Dee Memorial Hospital. The first class of eight nurses graduated from the school in 1913 and the school continued to operate until 1955, with a total of more than 700 graduates. A new nursing school and home located just east of the hospital was completed in 1917 and all nursing students were required to live in the home during their training. This oral history project was created to capture the memories of the school's alumni before their stories disappear in the same way the Dee Hospital has disappeared. The oral interviews focus on how the women became involved with the school, their experiences going through training, and how they used the training. ____________________________________ 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: Glenda Heaton Johnson, an oral history by Marci Farr, 9 September 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Glenda Heaton Johnson Application Photo September 3, 1946 Graduation Photo Class of 1950 Glenda Heaton Johnson September 9, 2008 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Glenda Heaton Johnson. It was conducted September 9, 2008 and includes her recollections and experiences with the Dee School of Nursing. The Interviewer is Marci Farr. MF: We are interviewing Glenda Johnson. She graduated in 1950. Today is September 9, 2009. GJ: “These are experiences upon entering the Nursing Program at the Thomas D. Dee Memorial Hospital School of Nursing. The Dee Hospital, as it was known in the community, was located at Harrison and 24th street. The dormitory of the student nurses was east of the hospital facing the north of Ben Lomond Peak. The nursing dormitory was three stories.” The lower you were on the educational level, the lower you were in the dormitory. All of the “probies,” or probationers, were housed in the basement. It was a daylight basement which made it really easy for us to sneak in or out. At that time the nursing department at the hospital was operated as a military base. The whole plan and design for hospital nursing came from the military hospitals because they were the first hospitals to educate nurses. “When the Dee Hospital received money from the Federal Government Cadet Nursing Program, little did we realize, to initiate their training program,” we were in the military, we were probationers, or “probies.” After six months of education we graduated from the “probie” program. Then we became fullfledged student nurses and we received a cap. We had one stripe on the first white cap. We were so proud of that cap. As I look back now, the cap was a 1 really awful pain in the neck because it was always getting in the way of the privacy curtains; it was always falling off and getting tilted and it was really the hardest thing I had to deal with for the first several weeks. Anyway, “after we became probationers, probies, we were determined to become first year students. Because this is really low, we stayed in the basement through all our first year. My roommate later in life became the Director of Nursing at Weber State University. She was the Director of the Nursing program when the college became a University. Her name at that time was Elsie Okomoto. She later became Dr. …did you know her? MF: Elsie Shiramizu? GJ: Yes, Dr. Shiramizu. MF: Yes, we interviewed her about a month ago. GJ: Really? MF: Yes. GJ: She was my roommate during my first six months. MF: Oh good. GJ: Later, after Elsie and I were roommates…our shifts changed. The Nursing Department determined that everyone who was working the evening shift would be located in one set of rooms. So everyone working the night shift had to move to another set of rooms. We were quite mobile. Moving meant we just picked up a big laundry bag full of stuff and went to another room. But anyway, we were determined to be located in a room where we could sleep during the day. We 2 were on the night shift, I think, at first. Occasionally we worked on the “pm” or 311 shift. Elsie and I continued to be roommates through most of the first year. When I received a new roommate, her name was Beverly Hamblin, she has since passed away. She and I were roommates for the rest of the year. Your roommate was important because you had to depend on her, first of all, for a lot of news and for a lot of help with finding out changes, meals, menus, etc. We very often went to the cafeteria, ate, and picked up another meal for our roommate who had worked the night shift who was too tired to get up and go to lunch. So there was a lot of cooperation and actually, as I look back it was kind of fun. Because we grew to know one another, we exchanged clothes. If we had a really “great hot date,” “Can I wear your new blouse to the…” or, “I have got a date, could I borrow your skirt because I’m going somewhere.” So there was a lot of comradery. We became like a big group of sisters. I still look back on all my friends as one of my sisters. I don’t think that happens now. You get to know one another because we were waking, sleeping, eating and studying together. MF: I don’t think they do. Yes, you go to your classes, you don’t have to stay together or rely on each other. I think it is a totally different program now. GJ: Because when we left, we still kept in touch with one other, we are truly sisters. We still see each other two or three times a year. Sharon Barnett is another of my close friends and still is. She lives in Mesa, Arizona now. My oldest son lives near her now. He keeps me informed about her health, activities, etc. MF: Yes. GJ: Do you know her? 3 MF: We have talked to her. She has gone to Arizona because she has had problems with cancer, and, wished to live near her daughter. GJ: Yes, she’s just beginning to notice symptoms. For a long time she lived in Wichita, Kansas. Do you want to know who else was in my class or does it matter? MF: Yes. Go ahead. GJ: Okay Elsie Okomoto; AKA Dr. Elsie O. Shiramizu, Beverly Hamblin, as I said, is deceased, Sharon Barnett, Clara Lou Beers, Clara Lou’s husband is the Judge Advocate General (JAG) at a military base in Texas. Her family lives here in Ogden so I am sure you could get in touch with her. Her family still lives up about 24th street and maybe Tyler. MF: Okay. GJ: Actually she lived in the dorm, but we could walk up to her house and have a good meal. Clara Lou had a lot of girls go were up there; because it was a home. It was a house as opposed to the dorm. Clara Lou now, as I said, lives in Texas. She married Boyd Knowles who was a graduate of Ogden High. He graduated the same year Clara Lou did. So they had a beautiful wedding. He went to law school, Clara Lou went with him and worked to help put him through law school. As I said, he is a Judge Advocate General (JAG) now in Texas. I still keep in touch with her because she visits her family in Ogden when she attends our class reunions. MF: We will have to make sure we get her letter sent out. 4 GJ: Yes, she would be great to interview. She is a military wife and she has done some traveling to other military bases. MF: That will be perfect. We will make sure to call her because we are setting up interviews with out of state people, if they weren’t able to come to the luncheon or weren’t in town we have to get in touch them by mail, by email or by phone. GJ: She may be at the luncheon. She has been to more than one. I know because we try to sit together so we can visit. MF: If she is you will have to introduce us. GJ: Yes. I certainly will. “The Dee Hospital received funds to educate their student nurses. Thirty states were given funds to support the program and Utah was one of them. After the program ended, the Dee Hospital Nursing School Faculty, secondary to the careful money management by the Director of Nursing Education,” who at that time had the name of Marie Manning. She later became Dr. Marie Manning Donaldson. She was the force behind developing the great nursing program. As a “Dee Nurse,” you could walk in a hospital anywhere in the United States and if you were a Dee Hospital graduate they would say…“Oh! That hospital in Ogden…yes,” you were hired automatically because the quality of education for the nurses was very high when the nurses finished. Marie was the instigator of that. She, at the beginning of my first year ensured that the credit we received were university hours of credit. She went to the University of Utah and spent a semester there financed by the funds left over from educating the cadet nursing students. MF: The cadet nursing program? 5 GJ: Yes. The Cadet Nursing Program was sponsored by the army. She managed the Cadet Nursing Program funds carefully. There was money left over from the Cadet Nursing Program to finance our tuition for first two semesters to the University of Utah. MF: Oh good. GJ: So we didn’t have to come up with tuition. We were automatically placed in the program. She became a member of the University of Utah faculty. This enabled us to have their physicians and their nurses for our instructors. I thought that was really the biggest step that anybody ever made at the Dee School of Nursing. MF: That is great to get credit from the University. GJ: University credit is what enabled me, in later years, to go back to college at age forty-one. After I had raised my family I went back to Arizona State University College of Nursing. The credit hours from the University of Utah helped me with my placement in the program at Arizona State University. I was awarded a Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) at Arizona State. My field of study was Community Health, and I was given status as an Adult Nurse Practitioner (ANP). MF: Oh good. GJ: “Funds were remaining in the Program, and the executive board members decided to offer scholarships. Marie Manning Donaldson set this up. They offered two scholarships to the six northern Utah counties because they were the closest distance to the hospital. Scholarships were offered to Box Elder, Cache, Rich, Morgan, and Davis counties. Two scholarships were sent to every high 6 school in those counties.” There were two high schools in Weber County and they each received two scholarships. The scholarships included money for uniforms, caps, capes, and books. I don’t know if the students still wear them. We had a gorgeous cape, blue with red lining and a gold fastener at the neck and “Dee Hospital,” in gold embroidery letters. We loved those capes. We really needed them. They were warm. Because a lot of our classes involved scampering across to the hospital. We even had to walk to Weber Junior College. At that time, it down 25th street just north of Jefferson at the old campus. MF: So that was a little jaunt. GJ: It was a little jaunt. Not only was it a little jaunt but the first and second semesters of physical education credits (which were required for the degree) from junior college. The only classes available that we could attend at the time, were “beginners swimming.” We went swimming, we would walk down the hill. We would come home with wet hair, wrap it in towels and hoods, and walk up north on 24th and 25th streets. We usually used 24th street because it wasn’t as busy. We walked up the hill, past the park and just about froze to death after our PE. We joked it was like we had gone to Antarctica, and back. “The tuition, capes, uniforms, and textbooks, were all included in the first semester. I think the faculty at the nursing school approved the selection the high schools had made. The high schools, their executive board, and their faculty selected the students who received the scholarships. There were some faculty members and staff who made the selection. I didn’t know in them high 7 school because my high school curriculum was academic. I registered for a class called “Elementary Radio” and we built a radio. Physics and science classes were more interesting to me in that part of my life. I did not like sewing and cooking classes. That is where all the girls went, so as a result; I didn’t get any cooking and sewing classes. In high school those were called “home ec.” and you either went into the home ec. wing and did the home ec. classes or you went into the science building and attended those classes in my high school. I liked those classes and that is what I elected to do. MF: So where did you go to high school? GJ: At Box Elder High School, in Brigham City, Utah. MF: So you were from Brigham? GJ: I am from Brigham City. I was born in Tremonton, Utah. The hospital there. It is called the Tremonton Hospital now. But there were two physicians in Tremonton that began it. It was their hospital in its beginning. There have been additions but in the beginning there were three stories. I have been back to look at it. I have toured it but they have added to it, and its not the same hospital to me. MF: Yes. Now is it the one as you are going into town; it’s that first brick building? GJ: Yes, the old brick building my parents knew. At that time, my father was managing a ranch for Mr. Kohl at Promontory Point. As soon as I was born I went back to Promontory Point. I grew up in a home that is kind of dilapidated now. It was a home for the manager of the Kohl ranch. Because my father was the foreman of the ranch, we lived in that house. Someone in the community, I think he actually lived in Roy, is an artist. He went out to that area to paint. He 8 did an oil painting of the old Kohl ranch. We recently, bought the painting for our home. This is just a little aside…my mother was in the Heritage Care Center in her later life. She lived to be 88 years old. In her last couple of years I visited her. We live in Oregon, we fly, recreationally we have an airplane…well we still have it, we have an airplane and so we used to fly two or three times a month and land in Ogden and stay in that Riverdale Motel right near the end of the runway at the airport in Ogden. While I was visiting mother at Heritage Care Center I came across this painting and said, “Gee that looks familiar.” I waited for the artist because he often came to bring new paintings. They were displayed on the walls of the care center. He came by and he told me, “Well I painted the old Kohl ranch building. It is abandoned now but I go out there and paint.” He had done many other paintings of that area and they are oils. MF: That’s nice. That is exciting. GJ: I wanted to buy the painting (my husband wanted to buy it to surprise me for my birthday) which is really what happened. He found out the name of the painter and we found that he would sell it and so my husband bought it for me. So I have it at home. It is really wonderful to see it every day now! MF: That is great. GJ: Yes it is hanging in our bedroom. It is a marvelous oil painting. He is really a good artist. Yes; I knew where the gold spike was. My grandpa used to take me out and he would say, “This is where the gold spike is.” It is painted gold, you know, 9 there is a duplicate out there. I would say, “No that is the real one.” And then he explained to me had they hammered a real gold spike in there that it would bend because gold was so soft. MF: Yes. GJ: So I received early lessons in science. I grew up within walking distance of that area. It really is a desert. Out on Little Mountain, which isn’t too far from there, there was a big cave where rattle snakes hatched their young. My father used to take me up there. We would climb up look in the cave so we could see all the baby rattlesnakes. MF: Oh my goodness. GJ: I don’t know whether that is still there but it was quite desolate and way out in the boonies when I lived in Brigham City, Utah. “We had our diplomas because we completed the three year nursing program. Some of the credit hours I was able to transfer to a university. I entered Arizona State and most of my credits transferred. At that time I was going for a BSN Degree. I was licensed through reciprocity in the eight western states; Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, and Montana. Then I became nationally certified in Nursing Administration. I was active in the Oregon Nurses Association. I have always been an active member and a member of their chapter of Sigma Theta Tau, so I was obviously going up to Portland for a lot of nursing meetings.” I did a lot of driving. I wore out two cars and was working on my third car when I retired. Those little Hondas and little 10 Toyotas are really neat and easy on gas. There are so few mechanical problems that you have to worry about. “After I became certified, national certification, they offered a certification I think in two areas, one I think was nursing administration and the certification in the other area was med surg nursing I think, a national certification which was good in all the states. For nurses who traveled in their work, that was very valuable and it made a difference in your salary when you were working in other states. I was employed by a firm who owned long-term care facilities. This included nursing homes, homes for the developmentally defective or disabled, assisted living, and retirement homes. As you know, retirement home residents need a little assistance with meals, or bathing, or cleaning their apartments, that kind of thing. Every state has a different definition and a different set of regulations for each of the levels of care. Homes for the elderly vary in many ways, so there are a variety of regulations to learn. You have quite a few things to learn if you are moving from state to state. I carried a great big loose-leaf with regulations from every state. The reason I was hired by different companies who owned long-term care facilities in different states was because I knew the regulations in the states. My job was to do, what is called, “quality assurance.” I went to the facility maybe a week or two before their scheduled state surveys. I want to ensure that things were in place. When the state survey team came they would pass the survey with few deficiencies. As you know, they were fined for deficiencies. They had to pay fines to the state. Some of those fines were pretty 11 heavy. I do not object to the fines, because our goals were the same. Our teams were facility employees, and the state teams were state employees. I did was quality assurance. And there were, let us see, one, two, three, four, there were four quality assurance nurses licensed in the state of Oregon. We always worked in the state of Washington because there are just two bridges that separated. Sometimes we were in Washington, sometimes we were in Oregon. We were also in California. Occasionally we were in Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho, or Montana. Usually we traveled in pairs of two or three if we were in large facilities. We really enjoyed that. We didn’t like to travel alone. It was just a lonely evening away from home. So as I said, we paired up and the corporation owning the nursing facilities was the largest in the nation I believe. The corporation was based in Fort Smith, Arkansas. It eventually became Beverly Enterprises. Beverly Enterprises owned the majority of facilities for long-term care in forty states. So there was a big group of Quality Assurance Nurses. At the company conventions there was a whole room full of nurses who were doing quality assurance surveying. There was a lot of companionship at company meetings in various state groups, or divisions. MF: That was good to have other nurses to share experiences. GJ: We were all doing the same thing. MF: So you kind of continued on from your Dee Hospital graduation? GJ: Yes, I was an operating room nurse. MF: That is great. 12 GJ: I worked afternoons, evenings, and nights. On those shifts, we also staffed an emergency room. MF: That is great. GJ: My education, I think, was one of the best educations. There was absolutely nothing I lacked or needed, to go back to take. As I worked, I was grateful for the education I received at the Dee Hospital. I thank Marie Manning (Dr. Marie Manning MacDonald). I know she had to work hard. She had to go to Salt Lake City and meet with the Board of Nursing. She presented the Nursing Faculty Credentials and obtained accreditation for our school. MF: It was at that time where women, that wasn’t a traditional role for women. GJ: Very much so. MF: I think your education was more hands on. GJ: Yes. MF: Every training that you had, you were trained every section of the hospital. GJ: That is right. Absolutely…every kind. It was important that we see a variety of patient conditions. Occasionally, Marie would grab us by the hand and say, “Come in here and look at this, you’ll never see one of these again;” something like that. Toward the end of my education, we were getting our first polio victims, with them came the iron lungs. We did have four of those at the Dee at one time. They were loaned to the Dee from the executive…I think based in Georgia, wherever the polio executive group were at…I believe they were at Warm Springs, Georgia. 13 MF: Oh okay. GJ: And we would call Warm Springs and say that we…because we did have a polio epidemic in Utah in the ’48-’49 years. We had four patients at the Dee in iron lungs so we did have to learn that. One of them turned out to be my high school instructor, he was my high school english teacher. He did not do well. He had to be transferred from the Dee to Salt Lake City because their iron lung setup enabled him to be intubated for respiration. They had a more sophisticated setup. Our iron lungs at the Dee were just positive/negative pressure. The iron lungs…were very old fashioned. Now they don’t even need them. But the iron lungs at the LDS hospital were more sophisticated and could support life better. He did stay there for awhile but I think after a year, maybe into the second year, he did pass away. Everything possible was done for him and that was a big emphasis in our training. We learned to do the hot packs, I don’t know if you remember that the polio stricken children and adults had hot packs on arms and legs, neck and back muscles, constantly. On your shift, if you had two polio patients that is all you did. Put hot packs on, put the others in the steamers, and wait. We had big steamers so we could get the hot packs ready. That was a really tough shift. You couldn’t take that shift for very long. So there was another group ready to rotate there. At the old Dee, we had the iron lungs on the second floor. The old Dee was built with two wings on each end of the building kind of going out and there was a solarium on each floor on each end of the wings. The iron lungs were in the solarium on the second floor. That required electrical re-wiring. Our poor 14 maintenance people were constantly trying to figure out what we were doing and what we needed. The Maintenance Department at the Dee had some heavy demands then because there were so many changes in medicine, changes in nursing and patient needs. MF: That is true. GJ: When IV medications began, we attended another series of classes. We had to be certified to give IV medications. I can remember when we got our first machine. It is an antique now. We could hang the IV and the machine would dispense the correct number of drops. I think everybody came to the Dee to see the one we had. Then we got two so that each patient in the room could have one. Looking back now it is really funny because nursing is totally different. It is all so automated now. MF: It is and I think a lot of times the care is for the machine… GJ: Oh yes, I agree. MF: …and not for the patient. GJ: I would guess that is true because you run in, check the machine, and run out again without looking at the patient. MF: Exactly. GJ: But in our day it was hands on, it was turn and rub backs and place cool clothes on the heads, I remember holding hands and just talking to people, especially on the evening and night shifts. So many times in the night shift we were sitting a patient or two patients. We were talking or reading to them. Yes, that was a lonely, long time for those people and they were “hooked” up to those painful 15 gadgets. Now, they are not. You put a line in and that is all you can do everything with that line. In those days we were “sticking” people each time. I can remember peoples’ arms because we would stick them, put an IV in, and then take it out. A day or so later, the doctor would order another one. Oh, these people had band aids all the way up and down their arms and on those little hand veins…it was just awful. I used to think, “How cruel, I don’t want to do this.” Especially to babies, to insert the cut downs. It was so hard for me to work in pediatrics and care for babies because it just did hurt them and they cried. I met one of my former boyfriends because we had a hydrocephalic baby. The baby was so uncomfortable and there was just no way to make his head comfortable. So when working the night shift I would get him as a patient. I would get all the other work done. As you know, you had to pass the meds and change diapers and dressings. Then I would find an upholstered chair…it was a recliner a chair that you could bring the foot up and lean it back. Probably one of the early chairs. I would go put blankets on that chair. Then I would go get him and pick him up to hold him. I had to hold him between my legs and hold his head so I would be bent down holding him and talking to him. The resident came in and stood there and looked puzzled. I said, “I am just holding “baby blank blank.” He said, “Oh that is wonderful.” I said, “If you approve, bring me his bottle.” So he went over and got the bottle and I fed the baby. He thought that was pretty unique because he had never seen anybody pick the babies up. And then that started it. They do. I am sure they do now and I am sure they can rotate them and do 16 everything. I met the baby’s parents later. They were able to take the baby home and care for him. Their child did subsequently die at about age nine, eight and a half or nine. My husband and I have continued our friendship with them. I think the Dee Hospital gave me such a fine education because of its affiliation with Weber College and the University of Utah. MF: Yes and they had great staff. You couldn’t have it any better. GJ: It was wonderful. I know, the nursing staff teachers; they were every staff nurse, every head nurse, every charge nurse, every supervisor was a teacher. In fact, our night supervisor, I thought I would never forget her name, but she was somewhat of a rascal so maybe that’s just as well. We used to have good jokes and laugh and then she would wait for us all to get off duty, put us in her car, and take us downtown to the café and we would have a great big breakfast and tell jokes and giggle. Then she would take us all back to the dorm; and we would go to bed. But there was that kind of comradery with us. She has since passed away. Cecile Demoise was another nurse. She was more strict, but she was another supervisor and very professional. We didn’t want to break any rules with Cecile Demoise because we would really get in trouble. So you get to know them…and of course they get to know the students. They were our role models. We decided who we wanted to emulate. The only reprimand I had from Cecile Demoise concerned this incident. They used to line us all up and the hems of our white uniforms had to all be the same length from the ground. Well if you were tall…the taller you were the higher up your hem was. They wanted us to look “uniform,” don’t ask me why. 17 They would line us up. Before we left for our assignments at the hospital, we had to stand for an inspection. I think it was Lucille Taylor (who later became Lucille Taylor Bruerton), had a yard stick. There was a little stage in the nursing dormitory auditorium. MF: The auditorium? GJ: Yes, the auditorium. We lined up along the stage of the auditorium and she would go by with this ruler. You know, if you were short or tall you kind of didn’t fit in but anyway, we all had to have our uniforms the same line. Mine, I was 5’5 ½” and mine were what I thought a little too long. Anyway, but don’t ever shorten it and get caught, you had to have it right. Run down the hall and measure your uniform length. Everything was so “military,” so uniform. It was like we had been recruited into the army. We didn’t have to salute but we did everything but salute. Our posture…oh that is another thing. We would be doing something or standing somewhere and we would look at the instructor or faculty…Miss Pace…it was Marie Manning and I can’t remember Miss Pace’s name, she was our first nursing arts instructor and she would give us hand signals while she was teaching. If we weren’t sitting perfectly upright, we had these chairs with the little writing pad here and of course, I was left handed and they had no left handed chairs so I was always having to go like this and she was always having to go gestures to me to “sit up straight.” That was nearly impossible for me. MF: Because you were turned all the way around. GJ: And I wanted to do it this way. I think there were three of us left-handers, and the nursing world was not made for left-handed people. Some doctors were left- 18 handed. Actually, if you were a left-handed surgeon it was a really good convenience. That is the other thing…to have a left handed scrub nurse. They used to request me because I was left-handed. There were physicians and surgeons who would request me. Dr. Dumke, who was a busy surgeon used to ask for me. MF: Yes. GJ: Do you remember Dr. Dumke? MF: We have just heard stories. GJ: He was a great surgeon. He did all the major surgery. He did huge Laporotomies and made incisions from top to bottom. He did all of the longest operations; particularly the abdominal surgeries. Anyway, he used to request me because I was left-handed. There were two of us who always got to “scrub” for the operating rooms. We would wake up in the morning at 6:30, eat, and go up to the OR suite to find out which suite we were assigned to that day. I was always with Dr. Dumke. He was kind of a legend. He was a very kind man, a wonderful man, but kind of loud, boisterous, obnoxious, and liked to tell “off-color” jokes while he was operating and have everybody laugh, you know. Half the time I didn’t even know what he was talking about. I tried to smile, but I was wearing a mask, so it didn’t really matter. The other duty I had was all the doctors that wore glasses I would have to unscrub, put towels around and go wipe their glasses, adjust their masks…that was another thing you had to do when you handed them instruments. You had to make sure everybody was comfortable. It was like we were taking care of 19 them too. They thought of us as their handmaidens. But I stayed in surgery a long time. I had two rotations through surgery. My aunt at that time, “Aunt Ruth,” nine years older than me, and a Dee graduate. She was a “private duty” nurse. She had graduated several years before I began nursing school, and was hired by a physician, I can’t recall his name. He was the doctor that did all of the rectal surgery, hemorrhoidal, all resection surgery. She was his private scrub nurse. MF: So what was her name? GJ: Ruth Lundberg and then she later became Ruth Lundberg Stallings. MF: Oh okay. GJ: She is deceased now. She lived across the street from the hospital. She did private duty nursing. Everybody knew her. She was one of the few private duty nurses and really high priced. She charged what she thought she should. A lot of money. If you have lived in Ogden for awhile; you find that there are quite a few “elite” families, maybe five to ten wealthy Ogden families. MF: The Dees. GJ: Yes, the Dee’s, the Eccles’, and the Rich’s. Both junior and senior Rich. In our student days; they were both physicians. MF: Yes. GJ: Doctor Rich senior and Doctor Rich junior. Anyway, they all lived up on the hill or the “bench” and she was the private duty nurse for anyone in their family. MF: Well that is good to know. GJ: Of course, at that time, they stayed in the hospital a long time. You needed a nurse who you would know and trust because you were probably there for three 20 weeks, a month, who knows how long you would be there, two months, to recover from your “horrendous” illness or surgery. Yes, that is true. CVA’s or what we called “stroke patients” were there for a really long time because there were no skilled nursing facilities to go to. You had all your skilled nursing in your room with the rehabilitation team, i.e. the speech therapist, and we did have a speech therapist. I don’t recall her name. I think she was speech and physical therapy combined perhaps. But all of those auxiliary skills…the “therapies” were beginning at that time. They were just starting to realize that we needed speech, we needed this, activities of daily living skills. They were just starting to develop those personnel or, the different team members. The ancillary team members were just being educated. MF: That was a hard time, especially if you had a baby too you were in bed for two weeks. GJ: Oh yes and that was one of my duties in the newborn nursery. You had this big long cart and it had room for nine babies on one side and nine babies on the other side. You would get the babies ready, of course, that meant changing them. Making sure they had a dry diaper, and then you “swaddled” them. There was a certain way to wrap them and if you were a student you had better not wrap them the wrong way. You would lay them on this blanket and “you would do this and this,” and this and they had their little faces out. They were all swaddled up and crying. Then we would carry them into their mothers who were nursing of course. We had to hand them these nipple cleaner packets. We carried the packets and it was just a big routine. Newborn nursery…my mother, 21 an LPN, worked there and loved it. I just think “oh this is not for me.” You would take the baby and be sure the baby was at the breast and was nursing. If the baby wasn’t you had to stand there and usually there were two nurses managing this cart, because you could not leave those babies alone in the cart. There always had to be somebody looking at the babies while you were in the room for fifteen or twenty minutes trying to get a baby to nurse from mother’s breast. MF: That is hard. GJ: It was. It just wasn’t my favorite but as I said it was my mother’s favorite. OB really wasn’t my favorite. I went through it, I got A’s and I believe did a good job but I thought, “Boy, I can hardly wait to get out of here, this isn’t where I am going to work.” MF: So was surgery your favorite? GJ: My favorite was surgery. I liked surgery and post-surgery because it was something I could grasp and learn. I would say surgery was my favorite rotation but when I went back for my degree, at Arizona State University, Community Health was my specialty. I loved community health and became one of the first certified Family Health Nurse Practitioners. I liked enjoyed people at home. I liked the teaching components in community health. MF: That is good. GJ: In the community where I live we had a…I live in a coastal Oregon city. Lincoln County. The Cascade Mountains really divide the state of Oregon into two parts. You have what we call the valley and the coast. Over the Cascades is “Eastern Oregon” which is a high plain. It is four thousand feet high. We have always 22 lived on the coast so we were over the coast range from the valley. In the coast range were people who had settled there, I am sure, in the late 1800’s or maybe early 1900’s. But many were emigrants from Appalachia. They were people who had no heat, no central heat, and they lived in little compounds and kept goats, geese, and a cow. They just lived off the land. We called them the Harlens, the community they lived in was called Harlen. We called them the Harlen people. I loved working with the Harlen people because there was such a big teaching component. You felt so welcome and it seemed like you were doing something helpful in assisting and teaching in these communities. MF: Some good. GJ: Yes and teaching them something that they really didn’t know… MF: Exactly. GJ: …and how to do things, how to make their lives easier and more healthful. MF: That is good. GJ: I went to the Harlen community once and there was a single mother with a newborn and I went in and she had a potbelly stove that was her only source of heat. She had a bed that was made on boards with the slats and the springs of the bed were like springs from a screen door that were hooked together. The bed was just hard and the mattress was straw. MF: Oh my goodness. GJ: She had a newborn. There were just flies all through the house and on the baby and on the walls. I just remember that is when you really feel like you are helping 23 somebody, like you are doing something for someone to help them. I was able to find someone to donate a screen door, and a mattress with box springs. MF: Exactly. GJ: That was always a feeling I wanted. It was the reciprocal feeling like, “Oh thank you, you have really helped me.” And then to go back and see that some of the things that you suggested had been implemented. MF: That they took… GJ: …put in to effect. MF: That is good. GJ: Yes. That, I think, is probably why I liked community health the most, because of the large teaching component. MF: Because you are giving back. GJ: Because you are felt like, “Well, I have got to give back.” MF: Yes. GJ: Let us see, I did decide to…I liked the older people and I did decide to specialize in gerontological nursing. So at that time there was a test you could take at a national level and test into a specialty that they called Gerontological Nursing. MF: Oh great. GJ: I used that designation in the ‘70’s. I became a “home health nurse” in the ‘70’s, ‘80’s, until about ’96 which was when I retired, in 1996. I officially retired but I am LDS so I continued doing a lot of things in the nursing field with the church. MF: Oh good. 24 GJ: We do have our old building but in the beginning it was a branch and we met with another little city. Our group or ward got enough funds to build. We have now a ward, first ward, LDS church in Newport and we are thinking that we need another second ward LDS church in Newport. MF: That is great. GJ: Yes I think it is pretty nice. Our community of Newport has become a much higher percentage of people over age fifty. Our last census, I think, showed a big increase so that tells us that we are getting a lot of retired, older people… MF: Good, that is great. GJ: …older families are retiring to the coast. MF: Yes. GJ: Well it’s not a bad thing because there aren’t a lot of jobs for young people in a coastal community. Once those jobs are filled, and there is not a lot of turnover, those young people leave and go to college somewhere. They don’t stay in the community. So we are a community of older families. I would say the median age is probably between thirty-seven and thirty-nine years now. MF: Good. GJ: It is good because I specialized in that age group. MF: That is good. GJ: I don’t know what else I can tell you. Oh, I was one of the five first adult nurse practitioners that became nationally certified. They developed the exam and I went to Vancouver, Washington to take it, it was the exam center. There were 25 maybe eight of us, seven or eight of us from Washington and Oregon taking that exam. MF: Good. GJ: And so it was adult nurse practitioners and we were called ANPs. Nobody knew what that meant, I don’t know if I even used it. No I didn’t. I used R.N., M.S.N. because everybody knew what that meant. MF: Yes. GJ: So I don’t know what else I can tell you. MF: Oh I think you are good. I think we have covered it. JJ: What made you want to go into nursing? GJ: Into nursing? My Aunt Ruth, who was a Dee graduate. When I visited in Ogden my parents would drop me off at her apartment and she would take me to the hospital with her. She gave me a little stool to sit on somewhere and I got to look around and watch. I was in junior high and high school and I just thought Aunt Ruth had the best job. She had, what I thought, was a good life. She was a very happy, cheerful person. Everybody knew her. I thought that is what I would like to do. MF: That is good. GJ: That is how I ended up there. MF: That is how you ended up. GJ: Yes. MF: That is great. Well we appreciate you letting us come take a minute of your vacation. 26 GJ: Oh I enjoyed it. MF: And we appreciate your calling. GJ: I have enjoyed it because it gave me a chance to write this down. MF: We are glad you did. Thank you! 27