Oral History Program Marjorie Lepley Porter Interviewed by Marci Farr 19 August 2010 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Marjorie Lepley Porter Interviewed by Marci Farr 19 August 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: Marjorie Lepley Porter, an oral history by Marci Farr, 19 August 2010, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Marjorie Lepley Porter Graduation Photo Class of 1962 Marjorie Lepley Porter August 19, 2010 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Marjorie Lepley Porter, conducted by Marci Farr and Sarah Langsdon, on August 19, 2010. In this interview, Marjorie discusses her recollections and experiences with the St. Benedict’s School of Nursing. Darlene Allen was also present during the interview. MF: This is Marci Farr. We are interviewing Marjorie Lepley Porter. She graduated from St. Benedict’s Hospital School of Nursing in 1962. It’s August 19, 2010, and we are interviewing her at the Pineview Rehab Center. Will you just tell us a little bit about your early life, your family, where you grew up and went to school? MP: Well, my father was in the US Army, and we moved around a lot, so to say that I was brought up in one place doesn’t work. But he fought in both World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. We lived in Logan to begin with, and then Salt Lake after he was transferred to Japan. It was in peacetime, so we went over there to be with him during peacetime. Then Korea War broke out, and he ended up going and fighting in the Korean War. So we were in Japan probably sixteen months, and he was in Korea for thirteen of them. So it was a long time – but my mother wanted to be able to stay there at the American camp so she could be there if he got R&R, which is rest and relaxation period of time. I was in Japan when I was in the fifth grade, and then we moved to Ogden. He got orders to teach at Ogden High School, and he taught ROTC. He had taught ROTC at what used to be the Agricultural College, which is now Utah State. We were buying a home up there, and when we got transferred to Japan, he said, I’ll never buy another home until I have permanent orders. Well, we 2 moved to Ogden, he was transferred over to Ben Lomond after a year when Ben Lomond was opened, and he taught at Ben Lomond High, taught ROTC there for like seventeen to twenty years, I can’t remember exactly how long. So we moved around Ogden, all over. We went from 30th Street out to Harrisville and anywhere in between. So I became friends with some of these girls early on in our junior high years, then because Daddy was teaching at Ben Lomond High, we were allowed to go to Ben Lomond rather than Weber High or Ogden High, and that was nice, because we were able to attend school there. I loved school during my school years. Our family – I had four sisters, two died as infants; then I had one brother. We grew up together in a really closely knit family for being a military family. That’s probably why we clung together. We missed our daddy, who had to be away so much in the military. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which we’ve talked about being really different, to learn the Catholic way of living, and how things were expected so differently of you. Education wise, I went to Ben Lomond all my high school years, and I loved it there. I think because my dad was a teacher there, it opened us up – my sister and I were just sixteen months apart, and so she was just above me in school – and it really opened up a lot of friends. Whether they were scared of my dad or not, I don’t know what it was. But I did have a variety of friends in school, and the classes in high school that I took would help me qualify and help me study for nursing. I’d always wanted to be a nurse, and I’ll explain that in a minute, but I’d always wanted to be a nurse, so my classes in high school were, 3 like Darlene said, were mostly geared towards achieving that goal, such as chemistry, physiology, psychology, anatomy, and then the others expanded in that when we went to St. Benedict’s. Like pharmacology and that. But yeah, it was a good life. We had a very – my father passed away when he was fifty-nine, so we were still young married families, and it was hard to lose him because we had enjoyed him so much when he was home. MF: Absolutely. So why did you decide St. Benedict’s? MP: Well, first let me explain why I wanted to be a nurse. MF: Okay. MP: I remember my dad was wounded in World War II, and he came home and my mother changed his dressings. I seem to remember standing at the bedside – which, I was just a young girl. I mean, a really young girl, because I was in fifth grade when I was in Japan. But I knew I wanted to help people and do that kind of thing. So during my high school years, I worked with handicapped children during the summers of my high school years. Right after high school graduation I went out and helped my uncle in Elko, Nevada. He was a chef out to one of the cafes, and I was relieving hostesses for their summer vacation, and the nurses’ director for the Elko general hospital lived right across the street from my uncle, and I went over and asked her, is there any way I could work as a nurses’ aide until I go into nurses’ training? We didn’t have the CNA program, you didn’t have to be certified and all of that. And she said, “Oh, yes. Come on, we’ll put you to work.” So I can remember taking my first thermometers and cleaning them, and as I shook them down, I shot one across the room and broke it. But I took care of 4 a patient that had been severely injured, and they had to take him to surgery to change his dressings. He was a Basque sheepherder, never spoke a word of English, but we connected so well that that’s what I knew I wanted to be a nurse. I had already applied at St. Benedict’s. I decided to go to St. Benedict’s, but I had applied both at the University of Utah and St. Benedict’s, and I received a scholarship to both schools, but I decided to accept the one from the Elk’s Lodge scholarship to St. Benedict’s because it had such an intense hospital-based program compared to a collegiate program. Besides that, I needed to go there to meet my future husband, so. MF: Well, there you go. That’s important. MP: It was. MF: You said that you had to apply, right? Did you just have to be accepted, or were there any assessments? MP: Well, when we were accepted there were all kinds of things that we had to send in to them. Some of that is in my book. MF: Was it based on grades from high school? MP: Somewhat, yes. You had to have good grades, and you had to provide a current physical assessment, immunization record and that kind of thing. MF: What were your first impressions? Was this your first time away from home? MP: Oh, yes. But I was closer to home than if I’d gone to the U, and that was maybe part of it too, because I was glad to be that close to home. MF: Because you could go home on the weekends, right? 5 MP: Some weekends, if we weren’t working. As we got older – I mean, as we progressed in the program, we worked a lot of weekends, so I did get home once in a while, but – I was overwhelmed, and so excited when we first went into the dorm and were accepted and everything. We were shown through the home, and given assignments of roommates and the rooms, and an orientation of projected expectations. It was incredible. It was very overwhelming, too. MF: I’m sure. You said Pam was your second roommate? Or was she your first? MP: I had a couple of roommates, and my senior year it must have been, I had a single room down at the end of the hall. I don’t remember why I got to have the single room, but… DA: The seniors, because of affiliations, had single rooms. MP: Oh, okay. DA: Because a lot of them were out and about. MF: Okay. So you said that you and Annette… did you and Annette room together? MP: No – but we served affiliations together. We went to Nebraska and to Colorado and that together. MF: Oh, okay, all right. MP: We really bonded then, and we’ve been really good friends. But between Darlene and Pam and Annette and I, we just clung together. MF: That’s good. So what did you think about – when you first were in there, and the aspect of the Catholic sisters? MP: It was very overwhelming. MF: Because you probably weren’t used to having contact with them at all. 6 MP: Not at all – not at all. But it was just another thing to work with, you know. The sisters were very understanding and dear. And our little house mother, her name was Lena Borino, we were talking about her, and she really was great, because she did have a shoulder to lean on. I don’t know whether I’m the only one that ever communicated with her, but I feel like she had a shoulder to lean on and an ear to listen. MF: Oh good. MP: There were times when she did that with different ones, but she wasn’t ever – I can’t think of the word I want – she wasn’t ever overwhelming as a supervisor, kind of thing. She was just there, to kind of help out and oversee things. MF: Tell us about some of the courses that you took. What were your favorites while you were in training? MP: Maternity and pediatrics were my favorite areas, and I dearly loved them. They probably – I mean, they were what helped me decide to do what I did later. But yeah – maternity and pediatrics were probably. Like the other girls, psychiatry was the scariest. Surgery was really – I really enjoyed surgery, and I worked in surgery after the year that I graduated. I went over and worked with Darlene. When I worked with her over at the Dee, this is jumping ahead, but I was working as a scrub nurse, and she was working as a circulating nurse, and I got so frustrated with the doctors, the way they flirted with everybody - it just was driving me crazy. Darlene said, she just told them where it was at, she wasn’t going to circulate in the room if they weren’t going to be nice. DA: I did. 7 MP: And she didn’t. Me, I was standing behind the mask, and I was totally overwhelmed with it. I had one doctor that had known my husband’s family and we talked about it a lot, so it was a really friendly situation, and we were waiting for the x-ray to be developed on the fractured leg we were treating, and we’re standing there, and he says, let’s go in the darkroom and see what develops, and I went flash red. I’m glad I had a mask to cover my face and a cap to cover the top of my head, because I was so embarrassed. I said, “I don’t think so.” But it was really hard for me, because I’m a very personable, outgoing person with people, and to me, patients that came in out and went out out, I didn’t have any communication with them. That was frustrating to me. Then my legs – I had trouble with my legs even then, so they just didn’t take that standing for eight to ten hours in a row. MF: I’m sure that would be hard. MP: My physical health was falling apart at that time, and it’s not gotten any better since. MF: What were some rules you had to follow? MP: One thing, we had to check out and in at night, and if it was later and the nurses’ home was locked at the front door and the back door, you had to check in at the front desk of the hospital. I can remember some of the girls that would sneak in late and crawl underneath the desk so they couldn’t see them up there. How did they ever get away with not signing in? I don’t know. But they’d go down the back stairs, and then went through the tunnel, and they were free. Boy, us girls wouldn’t have dared push that. 8 MF: We had one – was it Judith that told us about how they would wait for the nuns to go to Mass and then they’d go sneak back in or however they’d figure out? They’d have like this two-minute window. MP: Yeah, the tunnel saved a lot of them, let me tell you. It was. MF: It made us laugh, we thought that was pretty funny. What was something that you would do for fun? You met your husband, so tell us about him. MP: Well, that wasn’t until the last of my senior year. DA: After your training, though? You still met him while you were in training. MP: Yes. But during those other years, I – I mean, if I had a chance to go home, I went home. If I – I just don’t remember a lot of things. There were a few of us, it must have been Darlene and Annette and I, we went once in a while down to a Chinese restaurant or something like that, but we didn’t have cars during training. DA: We used to walk, and then we’d take the bus. MP: That’s how we did it – I couldn’t remember. I should have remembered it. We went to the one ward that was in our area, the LDS ward, and it wasn’t very often that we got to go there, but we’d walk down there and back on Sunday. So that way it was – that was okay. MF: That was a good thing. MP: We’ll talk about my husband later. DA: We’ll bring him up. MF: So tell us your impressions about your capping ceremony. MP: That was so beautiful. That was just absolutely overwhelming. It was an incredible experience. It was with our complete uniform, including our capes and 9 our caps, when we received our caps in a very formal setting in the living room, off of the front desk. It was totally in honor of Florence Nightingale. We walked up to receive our cap carrying a little candle with a little white candleholder, but it was the Florence Nightingale lamp, and we were able to get some of those and have them available when we had our fifty-year reunion, so a lot of us got one then, but I don’t remember that they were ours then. They must have just had them available for that capping ceremony. But it was beautiful. It was that we could become the kind of nurse that would be dedicated to take care of our patients as the Savior and our sisters at St. Benedict’s would want us to. And they were devoted to the Savior as much as our lives were devoted to the Savior. Even more so at that point. DA: We used to have a prayer – every teacher had a prayer. You stood at the beginning of class and recited that prayer. MF: Tell us a little about your classmates. I know we talked a little bit about the friends that you made. MP: All of them were very friendly, and we got to know – I mean, we were so close to each other as far as working together. We learned to tolerate the other stuff, and we just did our thing and they did theirs. Sometimes it was a little noisy in the nurses’ home – other times – they still were good friends, and they still are. I mean, if we see somebody in town or something, it’s something that, “Well hi, how are you doing?” And we want to know how they’re doing, and what they’re doing now, and everything. So it’s always been great that way. And like we talked about before, we’ve had a lot of get-togethers through the years, even the last 10 years one of our classmates had a membership at the Ogden Golf and Country Club, and we would go there and have a luncheon and there’d be what – a couple or three dozen people there, and that was really fun. Since we had the fifty-year reunion, we really haven’t had a big get-together like that. The gal, her husband was a doctor, and he’s been really sick, so she’s not been away from him. So we really haven’t put anything together, but we’ve talked about, just recently, about getting something together and meeting for lunch again, because that camaraderie will be there the rest of our lives. MF: Exactly. Well, it got you through training, and you relied on each other for those three years. MP: Oh, yeah. And we went on affiliations together, and even though we had our own little clique like they had, we still were very much a part of the class. MF: Oh good. MP: And they treated us well. MF: That’s a great thing. So tell us about a typical day when you’re at the hospital – what was something that you started out, how did your day start out? MP: Well, they really varied, but we were always there to do the a.m. cares and get them up and whatever bed baths, showers, whatever – mostly bed baths in that day. MF: Yeah. MP: We had less showers than we ever had bed baths. DA: All the teeth-brushing. 11 MP: Oh, yeah. But there were powerful working situations with other students and professionals within that unit, wherever we were, and it was a hands-on kind of thing, it was never – whatever we learned in the classroom, we went over and practiced in the hospital. MF: You applied what you learned. MP: Yes – and it was like right away, because like we talked about, they ran – the students ran the hospital. I mean, that’s how they ran the hospital, was very dedicated girls that came into the program, and you were there to learn. And if you weren’t, those were the ones that dropped out. MF: Those were the ones that left. That’s true. Which one was your favorite? You said pediatrics and maternity. MP: Maternity and pediatrics. MF: Tell us about a few patients. Do you remember any patients that you can tell us about? MP: There were a lot of them, just like that little boy that we took care of that Annette was talking about. But one of the really memorable days was when I had been working on the medical floor, and I had helped a family through the death of a loved one, it was a little elderly man, and then I was called up to the delivery room to help deliver a baby. To me, that was such a scope of life. You know, it was kind of backwards, but from death to life. And that’s how we carried on through the rest of our career, was handling those kinds of situations. They didn’t have hospice and things like that then. We were it, we did that. I also took care of a very special patient that was dying of cancer, and I became very close to her, 12 and had her as my assignment nearly every day that she was in. I left on the evening shift one night, at midnight, and I returned the next morning to find out that she’d died in the night. And I always felt that she did that in the night because she knew how hard that would be for me. MF: Oh, absolutely. MP: That was a few years ago. I was really saddened, but I was relieved for her that she was through. MF: Yes, her suffering was over. So tell us – do you remember any traditions, was there anything that you remember, maybe during the holidays? MP: We talked about playing ball with the sisters out on the grass; that was the first thing that we did, I think, as students, was going out there. Then the annual spaghetti dinner was the biggest thing. Then helping celebrate in the hospital with our patients. They allowed us to decorate the hospital somewhat, you know, for the holidays, and the nurses’ home, but always remembering to dedicate whatever we did to the Savior. MF: Okay, good. Tell us about graduation. What were your impressions of graduation at St. Joseph’s? MP: Well, after all the studies, rotations, and testings were completed at the end of the three years, the graduation was held on August 1st, 1962. It was held, as we talked about, at St. Joseph’s Cathedral. It was absolutely beautiful. It was a very formal celebration, as the pictures indicate that we’ve shown you. With our white dress uniforms, we walked in single file, carrying a bouquet of red roses, and each student would go up, like we said, and kneel at the Catholic Bishop. I 13 remember having to kiss his ring, and that’s what showed in my picture. I don’t know what the others did – maybe I was just obeying the rule or something. We received our graduation certificate, and it was just really exciting. I can tell you this – right after graduation, or just before graduation, we graduated in August. In December of 1961, I was serving my rotation on the orthopedic floor, and I took care of a patient that was from Morgan. He was twenty-nine, he was a cowboy; I put his clothes in the closet and thought, wow!, and never thought anything of it. I wasn’t a flirty person. I only took care of him one or two days the first few days, and the others were evening shift, and I was the charge nurse on evenings, so I’d take care of all the other patients, and he was right across from the counter, from the nurses’ desk. He wouldn’t take pain medicine, so I’d go in and give him an extra back rub and I’d visit with him, and then I’d go out. Well, my girlfriend was engaged to this fellow up in Morgan, and when he went to recuperate up at his folks’, this fellow came over as the home teacher. My husband came out, and he’d never dated in all these years - he came out and said, this student nurse took care of me at the hospital, and I’d really like a date with her. So the friend called me on the floor the next day, in the middle of doctor rounds and everything, and we’re lining up this date on the phone. We went two times that next two weeks with them, and from then on, when he got off work he’d come in and we’d go to dinner or something. He asked me to marry him in June, and we got married right after nurses’ graduation. Like right after – August first, and we got married on the eleventh. We finished on the 14 ninth on the floors, and I wasn’t wasting any time. But it’s a good thing that I didn’t waste any time, because he passed away twelve years later, and we had five kids at that time, so I was thankful for my nursing profession and what it’s done for me though the years, because it carried me through. MF: Oh, I’m sure, absolutely. Had to take care of your kids. MP: And I went back to work – I had only worked part time before that. I worked at the old Dee in surgery for a year after I graduated, and then I went back to St. Benedict’s, I varied in different places. Mainly I was the county and school nurse up in Morgan for over five years. Then I started with home care and I did that for over twenty years. I just retired in June of 2007 because of health problems. I wore my body out. Now I say that my RN now stands for Retired Nurse instead of Registered Nurse. MF: There you go – that’s all right. So tell us how you think nursing has changed over the years. MP: It’s become very clinical; it seems like it’s more important to have the facts than it is to have the person taken care of on a personal level. I’m saying that critically – I’ve had some really good caregivers, especially here, as I’ve had problems. But definitely it’s changed over the years, and I think computers and all that kind of technicality of the professions. And they aren’t on a personal level any more. It’s all bookkeeping and taking care of the records and seeing that things are correct, meeting all the guidelines that are required. DA: All business now. 15 MP: Yes, it’s all business requirements. They’ve got to abide by state rules, general rules, everything. It’s all by the rule. MF: Thank you for letting us come. We appreciate you setting this up – it’s been great to visit with you and your friends, we’ve had a great day. MP: It’s been awesome.