Oral History Program Jacqueline Blanco Chandler Interviewed by Marci Farr 28 September 2010 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jacqueline Blanco Chandler Interviewed by Marci Farr 28 September 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: Jacqueline Blanco Chandler, an oral history by Marci Farr, 28 September 2010, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Jacqueline Blanco Chandler Graduation Photo Class of 1962 Jacqueline Blanco Chandler 2010 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Jacqueline Blanco Chandler , conducted by Marci Farr and Sarah Langsdon, on September 28, 2010. In this interview, Jacqueline discusses her recollections and experiences with the St. Benedict’s School of Nursing. MF: This is Marci Farr, and I’m interviewing Jackie Chandler. She graduated from St. Benedict’s School of Nursing in 1962. It’s September 28th, 2010, and I am interviewing her via telephone. She lives in – Georgia? Is that where you’re at? JC: Huntsville, Alabama. MF: Huntsville, Alabama. I couldn’t remember which one. Perfect, that’s good. Will you tell us a little bit about where you grew up, your family, and where you attended school? JC: Okay. I was born in 1935 in Pocatello, Idaho, to Madge L. Christensen and Albert J. Blanco. I had two younger brothers, a little sister, and a lot of friends. We had what I felt like was a great childhood. MF: That’s great – thanks for sharing that, that is wonderful. That’s always important. JC: It always was in my development. I had to reach back often and draw strength from what my father had gone through, just to get to the United States, and how he stressed education because he was not educated. MF: Did you go to school in Pocatello, is that where you attended school? JC: Yes. I graduated from high school there in 1953. You know, there’s a question in the questionnaire that asks, “When did you decide to become a nurse?” I can’t put my finger on any particular time, it’s just something that always kind of 2 burned in me. I think maybe my father might have said the first nurse word to me long, long ago, and maybe that is where it came from. But it’s something that I always wanted to do. When I graduated from high school, I got married, and had a son; I was married for about three and a half years, and then divorced. When I was a young person, my parents never demanded that we go to the Catholic church, even though we had been baptized Catholic, all four of us. We were allowed to go wherever we wanted to go. They were liberal about this, as long as we went to church somewhere and were good kids. I went to a lot of different churches with my friends, but when I was fifteen years old I decided that I wanted to become a Catholic. MF: Oh, I know about that hospital. JC: Yes. It was a great experience. I went to school for a year, and then I started working as an LPN at St. Anthony’s on the three to eleven shift. There I met a wonderful nurse, an RN by the name of Nelly Muldenhower. Nelly sort of took me under her wing, and talked to the sisters and said, “I really need a medical nurse, and I think Jackie could do it.” So she helped me do that, and taught me so much. I was her medical nurse for a year, and during that year I met another young girl who was working there – her name was Barbara Burt – she knew about St. Benedict’s. Barbara was anticipating going into nursing school. We worked the same three to eleven shift; she was an aide, and I was an LPN. So anyhow, we got to talking, and I think it was through Barbara that I decided to try 3 for St. Benedict’s, because it was close, it was three years, and I could earn my entire three-year tuition at St. Anthony’s if I worked really hard that year. I was living at home with my parents, and by this time – let’s see – my son Bobby was probably about three. Daddy told me one night when I got home from work that being an LPN was okay for my mother because she had gone to LPN school the same year that I went, but she went to the other hospital. He said, “That’s okay for your mother, but that’s not okay for you. You know, you’re young, smart, and you have a child to take care of.” They offered me the opportunity to continue my education. They offered to completely take care of my son – financially, send him to school, everything, for the time that I was in school. So this beautiful door opened, and I walked through it. MF: That’s great. JC: When I made application at St. Benedict’s, they asked me a lot of questions – I didn’t think I had a prayer of being picked up. You know, I was a divorced Catholic with a child. MF: That’s true – that would be a challenge. JC: Another minor miracle at that time was when I came home one day, and there was my letter that said I’d been accepted. That was also such a great time, but it also presented the most painful time I think I’ve ever had in my life, was when I said good-bye to my son. MF: I’m sure, to be separated from him. 4 JC: Yes. But one of the things that made it tolerable for that first year was that my dad worked for Union Pacific, so he had a pass. I traveled on that pass for three years, every weekend the first year, coming and going from St. Benedict’s, so I could be home to be with Bobby. I was gone through the week, home on the weekends. That’s what I did, and that made it tolerable for me. What would happen was that I would work really hard all week long so that I would have no homework. I was finished by Friday, and I think the train left around seven from – I can’t remember. MF: Union Station? JC: Yes, at the Union Station down there. So Barbara Burt and I would go jump on the train, and be home by midnight; Barbara also had a railroad pass. Bobby would wake up in the morning and there I would be. We would have Saturday and Sunday together, and then the train back to Ogden left at three o’clock in the morning, so Barbara and I would get back on the train at three o’clock and we’d go to sleep and wake up – I think we’d get there around six, and we’d have one hour to zoom from the station to St. Ben’s, get tidied up and be on the floor by seven. MF: That is a crazy schedule. JC: It was a busy schedule. And you know that the conductors wouldn’t even check our passes after a while, they just knew we were on the train. They would say, “The girls are here, be sure we get ‘em up, don’t let ‘em miss their stop, make sure they get to school.” They were kind of in it with us. We would get on the train and go to sleep, knowing they’d wake us up when we got to Ogden. 5 MF: Well, that’s good. At least you were able to work that out, because that would be hard to not be with your child. JC: It was hard, but we did work it out. Who knows about what kind of trauma it left, but that was long ago. MF: Who was your roommate while you were in training? JC: The first couple years it was Barbara Burt, the other girl from Pocatello. I don’t know why we switched, but Linda Fazzio was my roommate for my senior year. MF: Do you have any funny stories about Barbara? JC: Well, you know, there weren’t a lot of funny things that happened. I was so focused that – being a divorced Catholic in a Catholic school – I kept my nose clean and to the grindstone. MF: I’m sure you would have to. JC: I wanted to excel; I wanted no blemish, because I really was kind of scared that if I did anything that was out of character that maybe I’d get booted out of school. I had a lot riding on this. MF: You were older, too, and that probably made a difference. JC: I was older, and had a child. I would have died if I had disappointed my parents when they had opened this door for me. MF: Absolutely. Tell us about the sisters – what do you remember most about the sisters and the interaction that you had with them? JC: I think my favorite sister was Sister Estelle. She taught us anatomy and physiology, and she taught it in such a way that it was exciting, and I looked forward to her classes all the time. I remember Sister Boniface – I wasn’t really 6 too particularly fond of her, but I’ll never forget that minerals and vitamins have no calories. I missed that on a test. MF: But you’ll never forget. JC: I’ll never forget. If I get that on a quiz show, I’ll pass. Then Sister Berno – she was a character unto herself. I don’t remember if she really taught us anything, but she was a quintessential nun. You know, she could – even in those long, stiff dresses that they wore, she could hustle down that hall so quietly. You were always on guard. It was really a great time. Now, the thing that really impressed me a lot is that – I was older, had a child, so the thing that I really kind of enjoyed watching were the young girls that came into this Catholic school. The young Mormon girls, that were so innocent. In my mind, I called them “The Innocents”. You know, they were like little deer in headlights for that first six months or so. There wasn’t a lot I could do about it, I was pretty scared myself. That’s one of the neat things I remember, is just watching them bloom and become women themselves. We were such a good, cohesive group, and supported one another. I think the nuns turned out some pretty competent nurses, I really do. I’ve had a great amount of confidence in myself in any situation that I had in nursing. MF: I’m sure, because every aspect of the hospital, you were trained in. You probably had no reason to worry. JC: They taught us to think. MF: That’s true. Did you ever have any activities with them? JC: I remember one time, a very painful time, we put on a Christmas play. I think because I was older, maybe they thought I was smarter, but I had the lead in that 7 play and I had to memorize pages and pages. It went off pretty well, but that’s about my biggest interaction. It took a lot of time, but we made it through it, and it was kind of fun. MF: Do you remember any of your instructors that were there? Not the sisters, but any others? JC: I wish I could remember the lady that was kind of – I think she was married and divorced too, but she was one of the lay instructors, and she was really dynamic. I’m sorry – I’m seventy-five years old now – my memory fails me quite often. MF: Do you remember any of the doctors? JC: I can remember Dr. Swindler; some of the other docs I can remember, but I can’t put my finger on their name right now. MF: That’s okay. JC: I remember the interns more. But anyhow, there was an interesting thing that happened to me one night – and this happened to a lot of the girls, I’m sure. I had gone into my career, into a Catholic hospital, never really intending to be married again. But while I was in Hastings, Nebraska, I met a young high-powered lineman, and married him six months later. I was a senior at that time. The next thing that happened is that Jim applied for a job in Huntsville, Alabama to run the emergency room at the Huntsville Hospital. We moved down in 1978. He worked for three years revamping the ER business here in this little Southern town. It’s big, now. Then he decided that he wanted to do what he was trained to do, which is to be an internist, and asked my daughter and I if we wanted to go back to Denver, and we said no. We opened a private practice, and 8 I worked for fourteen years managing the office. He was my “best employee.” That was the history of my nursing career, was the time I spent at St. Anthony’s Hospital in Denver, and the time that I spent here, running our office. MF: I’m sure that was probably a great thing, to have all your skills. JC: It really worked well. I just really have had a marvelous time being a nurse. I can’t say I’ve had any really big unhappiness or anything. MF: Did you go to Children’s Hospital in Denver for one of your rotations? JC: I did. First we went to Hastings, Nebraska for our psych, and then we went right from there to Children’s in Denver. Then, six months later we were back in Denver. Children’s was kind of difficult for me. It was the only C I ever got. It was because it was so painful. I was reminded every day that my son was not with me, and I was taking care of sick kids. MF: How long were you on your rotation? JC: It was about three months in each place. MF: That would be hard, to be separated. When you were at St. Benedict’s, which was your favorite rotation or floor that you were trained on? JC: I really loved OB. I don’t know why I didn’t go into OB, but I ended up in medicine, which I thoroughly enjoyed too. MF: That’s good. Can you tell us a little bit about your capping ceremony? Do you remember about when that took place? JC: I think it was about six months after we started school. We started in September of 1959. I think we started right on Labor Day, because I thought, no school starts on a holiday. We did. It was really a great time for me because my mother 9 and my sister brought my son to capping ceremony. I received fifty dollars because I was at the head of my class. I was able to pay my brother that money, because he bought me the nursing cape I needed for the capping ceremony. MF: Did that take place at the nursing home? Do you remember where that took place? JC: It took place somewhere there at St. Benedict’s. MF: Tell us a little bit about graduation. Do you remember where graduation took place? JC: Well, you know, I’m scratching my brain to think about where that was. It was in a church, and it was significant for me because I was the smallest. I had to lead the ceremony in there, and my lip was all swollen up – I was having an allergic reaction to something. And my husband couldn’t be there. We’d gotten married – and then I had to stay on a little bit longer, since I had about another couple of weeks that I had to finish up. MF: So have you retired from nursing? JC: Yes. I was trying to think about that. I think I haven’t worked for about fifteen years. Let’s see. I am, this year, going to let my license go. Because we still are required to have twenty-four Continuing Education Units every two years, and it costs a hundred dollars for the license, and about four hundred dollars for the conferences. I am going to miss it, but I figured, you know, I’m seventy-five years old; what am I going to do with it? It’s going to hurt my pride to let it go. MF: But you’ve worked hard, and I’m sure it will be okay. 10 JC: My husband’s been retired for about three years now. He was chief of medicine at the University here after we closed our private practice, but he’s always taught in our medical school here, we have a really nice medical school. MF: I’m sure your training was probably beneficial, and the things that they taught probably just made all the difference in the world. JC: It really did. And you know, I think my husband was always more comfortable while he was a student because we lived on what I made, and yet – not saying that washing dishes and all that isn’t an honorable thing to do, but I think the fact that I was a professional, he really appreciated that. MF: That’s true, because then he didn’t have to worry about finances. JC: Right. Even though we didn’t make a lot of money, we did manage. We came out of medical school owing only $1,500. MF: Wow. That’s great. JC: Kind of unheard-of. MF: That is unheard of. That’s great. JC: We managed pretty well. Of course, we did without and did what we needed to do, and besides the house payment, we had two kids. MF: What do your kids do? JC: My son is in law enforcement; he has his degree in counseling, and he is a counselor at a prison in Boise. My daughter works for a company here – she never did go to college, so she’s an instructor, and has done okay. MF: That’s great. We appreciate you letting us interview you for our project.