Oral History Program Faye Longhurst Ball & Helen Horne Farr Interviewed by Marci Farr 17 July 2008 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Faye Longhurst Ball & Helen Horne Farr Interviewed by Marci Farr 17 July 2008 Copyright © 2009 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: Faye Longhurst Ball & Helen Horne Farr, an oral history by Marci Farr, 17 July 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Faye Longhurst Ball Graduation Photo Class of 1946 Helen Horne Farr Graduation Photo Class of 1946 Faye Longhurst Ball September 16, 2009 Helen Horne Farr & Sue Naisbitt September 16, 2009 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Faye Longhurst Ball & Helen Horne Farr. It was conducted July 17, 2008 and concerns their recollections and experiences with the Dee School of Nursing. The interviewer is Marci Farr. MF: This is Marci Farr. We are interviewing Helen Farr and Faye Longhurst Ball at Helen Farr’s home. It is July 17, 2008. They are graduates of the class of 1947 from the Dee School of Nursing. FL: Forty-six. HF: Forty-six. MF: Forty-six. Sorry, forty-six from the Dee School of Nursing. HF: It had a very military component. The first year we were probees for six months. Then after we went through that probation period we were capped. We had one vertical velvet black stripe going up our cap. Then, the second year we had two stripes and the third year we had three stripes. They called us sergeants when we wore three stripes. When we graduated we got the band around the cap. That is how they knew who the graduate nurses were. Registered nurses always wore long sleeved starched white uniforms. They usually had 12 buttons down the front and 8 on each sleeve. The buttons were removed for washing uniforms and then replaced. This was very time consuming and tedious. Only an R. N. could wear long sleeves. The hospital laundry washed our uniforms weekly. We also had to replace buttons. We were given bath towels and wash cloths for the week. 1 Lucille Taylor subsequently became Director of Nursing, Rhoda Miner was Education Director, and Marie Manning taught us Nursing Arts. The doctors taught most of the classes. FB: That is a picture of our capping. HF: That is the capping ceremony. And see, there is the stripe around the cap. She was one of our directors there. And we have the one stripe. FB: On the left is Ruth Roghaar and she was the president… HF: Of our student body. FB: …of our student body. And there is Rhoda Miner on the right, our Educational Director. HF: Yes, there is Rhoda Miner. FB: That is a Massachusetts General Hospital cap that she has on. HF: It was such a cute cap. We all wanted that cap. It looked like a little dainty cap didn’t it? FB: Yes. HF: It was so cute but we had to have these caps. That was what our caps looked like. FB: I’ll have you notice. We had to have our skirt length so many inches from the floor. MF: That is great. So below your knees. HF: Oh yes. MF: Where are you at? HF: Let’s see where we are. 2 FB: I am right here, 4th from the left. HF: That is Faye. And that is me. MF: Where did this ceremony take place? Where did you have your capping ceremony? FB: At the nurses residence. MF: At the home? HF: Yes, in our nurses home. The nurses home, we had very strict rules there too. We had to be in bed by ten o’clock. Lights out at ten o’clock. We had a house maid called “Pitty-Pat.” She used to come running by the garbage cans. There were 2 students to a room. We each had a bed, desk, and small closet. FB: Housemother. HF: Yes. She was the housemother. FB: If we had guests she really interviewed them to see if we were going out with the right person. MF: Could your friends come sit at all in your room? HF: We didn’t have many guests. It was during the war. FB: The guests coming to the nurses home to the front door which was to the north back of the old Dee Hospital and would ring the door bell. MF: Yes. FB: There was this one little room that was the reception room so if somebody came to see you that is where you met them. There, someone could buzz our room to let us know we had a visitor or a phone call. MF: Yes. 3 FB: …and there was a buzz for each one being summoned so you knew whether it was you or your roommate that they were having come up to the front lobby. HF: I don’t think we ever entertained in our rooms that I recall. FB: No. MF: So it was just in the reception room. HF: I think we had one night out…was it one night a week or a month…what was it when we were freshmen? We didn’t have very much free time. It was maybe one night a month and two nights when we were juniors and then we had…I don’t know whether we had…was it three nights? Anyway, we didn’t have very many nights off and most of them we were on twelve hour shifts. It wasn’t the straight twelve hours if the hospital wasn’t busy. The student nurses ran the hospital during the war. FB: We went to class in the day time and maybe if you went to work at eleven o’clock at night and worked until seven o’clock in the morning and then went to school classes. MF: So you were just going. FB: Yes. MF: Did you have your training at the hospital and also at Weber College? FB: Yes. We had classes at Weber College. HF: We only had classes at Weber College for six months. However, the hospital was affiliated with the college so we received credit for our nursing classes. MF: Okay. 4 HF: That is when we were probees and then after that all our classes were at the hospital. We were taught by the doctors and some nurses. MF: The nurses taught you also? FB: Oh yes the Registered Nurses. MF: They had nurses do some instruction. FB: Yes. And we were very fortunate, too. I think we were the first class that if we lived in the area we didn’t have to move to the nurses home until we had been in classes for six months or two quarters. HF: Right. MF: That is great. FB: The older nurses were jealous of us. HF: That is true because they had to start right from the first… FB: And move right into the nursing home. MF: And go into the nurses home. HF: There was a very, very high attrition rate in all the nursing classes, we started with fourteen didn’t we? FB: I think so. HF: We started with fourteen and ended up with seven. MF: Graduating from your class? FB: Graduating. HF: That is about what it was. We usually lost about fifty percent of the student nurses. Either they didn’t want to stay in or they didn’t like all the regimentation. Many times they failed because of their grades. 5 MF: You could not get married, right? FB: No. HF: No. FB: You weren’t allowed to get married. MF: So you had seven in your class. You were ’46, right? FB: ’46. HF: Yes. MF: Okay. That is interesting. You think, wow. I was talking to Dorothy yesterday and she said her class was like forty-nine and it dropped down to twenty-four. So totally right in half. FB: See, we were right in the middle. We went in in January of ’43. MF: Yes, in the middle of the war. FB: And let us see…Luana Bishop dropped out as did Edna Lichfield. HF: Neda Friar. FB: Nada Fryer got married. She was my roommate. Melba Brewer also got married. As soon as they got married they were out. Some of them tried to keep it quiet. Well Nodo’s husband come home on leave because he was in the navy and as soon as they found out she was gone. HF: My big sister, the same thing happened. We had big sisters who were the seniors when we were… MF: They took care of the probees, right? HF: Yes. She got married and they found out so we lost her. She was a good nurse too. 6 FB: Some of them went back later and finished maybe at other hospitals. MF: That is good to know. Tell me about your decision to become a nurse. What influenced your decision when you were growing up? Both of you. HF: Go ahead. FB: I guess what my decision was when I was a junior in high school, my mother became very ill and passed away. I felt so helpless in trying to take care of her and so I was interested in learning what to do. When I heard about the nursing program I went up and applied. MF: Were you from Ogden? FB: No I wasn’t. MF: Where were you from? FB: Rich County from Woodruff, Utah. MF: Okay from Woodruff. FB: I graduated from high school, came to Ogden, went to work at the Ogden Arsenal. MF: Okay. FB: When I heard about the program I went up to the Thomas D. Dee Memorial Hospital and was interviewed by Oetta B. Glasscock, the Director of Nurses…she was a half sister to Dale Browning the attorney here in Ogden. I applied and was accepted then I went back to quit at the Ogden Arsenal. You couldn’t work in defense and then just out and out quit. So I had to be interviewed by a Colonel Strohecker at the Ogden Arsenal. He says, “I will not let you just quit. You will flunk out in a couple of months so I will give you a six 7 month leave.” So I had a six month leave of absence and had to go back and be interviewed again by him. MF: To continue on. FB: …to continue on. MF: Oh that is interesting. That is a great story, you proved him wrong. FB: He was so adamant. He says, “Oh, you will flunk out.” HF: That was the reputation. FB: Even when I went and had my physical to go into nurses training. I went to Doctor J. B. Olsen. He said, “Do you know how hard it is going to be? I want you to really consider that you want to go in and stay.” He gave me this great big lecture. HF: When we were probees, all we were allowed to do was answer call lights and water flowers. One day, a graduate nurse asked me to get a standard. I had a nickel in my pocket and ran across the street to the drug store to buy a standard. When I returned and learned the standard they wanted was for hanging an IV solution. It made a good laugh for everybody. We worked hard. We were really, literally slaves in the hospital in many ways because we ran, we didn’t walk, we ran as students. We have seven patients to take care of and they were all bed-ridden. We didn’t know enough to get them up and ambulate them like they do now. MF: And there was the shortage of doctors because they were away because of the war. Did that make a difference? FB: The shortage of doctors and the shortage of nurses. 8 HF: Yes. MF: That made it so you were pretty much just doing everything. So tell me about what your decision was? HF: Well I was going to Weber College and the war came along in December of ’41 when the bombs were dropped in Hawaii. I thought about it for a little while and then I decided I ought to be a nurse. My brother-in-law was in medical school and he always thought nurses were special because I guess he had had some association with them. Anyway, that is how I decided. Then that spring quarter I received a Chi Omega Nursing scholarship to go to the Dee hospital. I went up and introduced myself to Mrs. Glasscock and she said, “Well, welcome.” And that was it. MF: That is wonderful. Did you grow up in Ogden? Where did you grow up? HF: I grew up in Ogden, most of my years were spent in Ogden, as a young girl. MF: So what were your impressions when you finally got to the nurses home? FB: I lived in an apartment in town. At first when I went in I lived in Compton’s home. You know Gary Compton’s mother and dad’s? HF: Yes. FB: They weren’t building houses or this sort of thing and it was hard during the war, anyway, I lived…there with four girls that lived in part of their house. And then I moved in with a couple of other girls into an apartment soon after. But then I got laryngitis and Rhoda Miner found out and she made me move up to the nurse’s home on May 17, 1943. 9 HF: Most of our class members were not local. Just two of us, Marjorie McKee my roommate, and I were the only two local ones. MF: Oh really? HF: They all were not local. FB: You and Marge lived next door and grew up together didn’t you? HF: About three or four houses apart. Yes. We kind of decided at the same time because we were friends going to Weber College. It was amazing because when I think about it now we were the only two that were local girls that went in our class. MF: Everybody else was from out of town. HF: I think you and I are the only two left of our class. FB: Let us see, Marge…well…she’s gone. HF: Yes, you and I are…oh and Louise. FB: Louise… HF: There are three of us left. FB: …Barr. MF: Yes, from Idaho. FB: From Idaho, yes. HF: In fact, I think Alta Roskelley, the one you have already talked to is probably the oldest alumni now. SL: Is she? MF: She probably is. She just turned ninety-four. HF: Yes. 10 MF: On the twelfth. FB: A couple of years ago we would have had Edna Seidner… HF: Well yes Edna Seidner was Doctor Seidner’s wife and she taught us. She was a good teacher. FB: Yes she was. She was related to my roommate Nada Fryer. HF: Was she? FB: She used to come down and check on her. MF: Is that the one that married the intern? SL: I don’t remember. MF: Did she marry an intern? HF: No he was a surgeon. MF: Oh okay. HF: He had a lot of his graduate studies in Austria and he came back with a terrible accent didn’t he? We always thought he was an Austrian Jew but we didn’t really know. MF: We just came across…because we have been doing the records of the nurse files we have, I ran across a few things that one was secretly married to an intern. You know, all these little things we just love to find out. A little dirt. HF: Well those darn interns got a lot of our classmates… FB: In trouble. HF: …in trouble. The Director of Nursing at the hospital later on was one of our student nurses. She was a junior. I guess she was the only nurse, I don’t know…but she and a couple of the interns started drinking alcohol. They got 11 caught. She was expelled. They didn’t do a darn thing to the interns…nothing. She ended up having to take her nurses training in Idaho. She came back and eventually became the Director of Nursing at the Dee Hospital. FB: I was a patient that night recuperating from surgery when this occurred. HF: You were? FB: …when she was kicked out. I was working in surgery and had appendicitis attack. MF: Oh my goodness. FB: I was so sick and they kept checking my blood to see if I should have surgery. MF: Yes. FB: They ended up…I think it was Doctor Wendell S. Thompson…they called him back and it was Sunday night they did the operation and I could hear him talking. “Oh Sunday, why couldn’t it be a weekday?” I had fouled up the whole works. So they took my appendix out and there was no room on the surgical floor so they put me just around the corner in a maternity ward bed. I could hear those interns having a ball down the hall. HF: Oh really? FB: I couldn’t sleep. HF: The interns were good to us though. I had to say that. We had to pay for breakage. If we broke anything, we had to pay for it. FB: Yes. HF: I remember we would start early in the morning and take all the patient temperatures and give them the bed pan. So we had to get those thermometers 12 prepared to take their temperatures. We would place them in a big towel with maybe fifty thermometers. We would shake with our wrist to bring the thermometers down. If we broke the thermometers then we had to pay for them. MF: Did that come out of your pay? FB: Yes. HF: We could get an intern to sign for any breakage. Then we didn’t have to pay for it. MF: Well there you go. HF: So, you know, they helped us out in some ways that way. They started all the IV’s with rubber tubing. We had no plastic material. Another routine we did was called the “enema brigade.” Starting at 7 a.m. we would give enemas to all the patients on the floor who needed one. Then, we systematically went back to every room and emptied the bed pans in a hopper. We did get a little bit of money. What did they pay us? Maybe a little…we got something…a little bit of an allotment. FB: It seemed like it was fifteen dollars a month to begin with. HF: Fifteen dollars a month and that would go far. We had no social life. FB: We liked to go across the street to the drug store and have an ice cream cone. MF: So you know Catherine…Catherine Hogge who ran the store? Do you remember her at all? HF: Who? MF: Hogge’s? FB: Hogge. 13 MF: Catherine and Elmer Hogge across that had the Hogge’s Confectionery that was just on the corner. It was north of the hospital. Do you remember? HF: No. We remember Murray’s Pharmacy. MF: The one that is on the south. It is south of the…west of the hospital. FB: West of the hospital on Harrison Boulevard. HF: Well yes, west of the hospital. We didn’t know their names but we used to go over there and get some snacks once in awhile. MF: Yes. Did they feed you? They took care of the food? FB: Yes. HF: Oh we have to tell you…it was very militaristic there too. We could not eat in the same room as the graduate nurses. They had their own dining room and we had our own eating place. Very few people came to eat at the hospital like they do now. It was very segregated. We had to stand up when the Doctors came into the room. We had to give up a chart if we were charting, we had to give it to the doctor. We could not enter an elevator until we let them get in. FB: Let the doctor get in first. Doctor Hife…he was…you could tell he was just grinning… HF: That was funny. FB: …to get on the elevator before we did. He was so tall. He was the one that enjoyed being catered to. HF: But I think the thing I remember so much was how regimented we were. FB: We were to always use last names, no first names. MF: So very formal. 14 HF: Miss Longhurst, Miss Horne, Miss “So and So”… FB: So we learned to call each other by their last names so we wouldn’t flub up in front of a supervisor. HF: When we answered a phone it would always be like “Pediatrics, Miss Horne speaking,” or “Surgery, Miss Longhurst speaking.” When I started teaching at the college it was very difficult for me not to say Miss “So and So” because I was so used to doing that. MF: You were so used to that. That is interesting. HF: Never ever used first names. FB: Our first names were off limits. MF: Tell me about your schedule for the day. When you were on duty what was your schedule for the day? Or at night? HF: Well first we had to get up for…what did they call it…prayer? We had to have that prayer before we went over to the hospital? We had to wear hair nets, no hair was to be on the collar. We couldn’t wear jewelry or nail polish. FB: I don’t know…what was it called? Chapel at 6:30 AM. HF: I don’t know…we had to go up and a have a… MF: Devotional? A little devotional? HF: We would have a prayer first and pass inspection. Then we would go over to the hospital and have breakfast. Most of our schedules started at seven o’clock. Most of us didn’t start before seven. The night nurses would give the report. Everybody stood for the report and heard what was going on with the patients. 15 Then we were given our assignments and often we had maybe seven patients in the morning to take to bathe. We really had to run and rush. FB: Bathe and change beds. HF: We never could put any linen on the floor either like they do nowadays. MF: Really? HF: We had linen and bags that we put the linen in and you always had to be very careful to not let that linen be on the floor. We put linen on the floor. FB: It was contaminated if it fell on the floor. MF: That is interesting. FB: You had to learn to fold the sheets like this so it wasn’t up against you. MF: So you wouldn’t touch yourselves. HF: Right. We had to learn a certain way to put the pillowcases on so the pillows wouldn’t touch our bodies. Also, the opening of pillow cases never faced the door. MF: Oh my goodness. HF: They were very strict about that. FB: We had white uniforms on and we were not to let anything touch us. MF: That is really interesting. HF: As we were talking about our routine…I am trying to think…sometimes we wouldn’t get time to go to lunch. I remember that. FB: Yes. HF: We just wouldn’t have time for lunch. Often times if we were scheduled from seven to seven we would work like seven to three and then if there was a lull we 16 could have that time off and just be on call from three to seven. We were on a lot of twelve hour shifts and I remember as a junior I was put into obstetrics. I hadn’t had one class at all in obstetrics. They sent me over there. Most often they didn’t put us into some areas where we had had no… FB: No prior training. HF: …no education about it. We didn’t know anything about it. That, to me, was very traumatic when I was sent to the OB area without any…because I only had an older sister. I didn’t have any younger brothers and sisters. I knew nothing about… MF: So no baby experience. HF: No. MF: That would be a little frightening. HF: What else can we remember about it? We went to diet therapy. FB: Yes in the diet kitchen. HF: That was different. FB: Well the doctor would indicate on the chart what diet they could have. We, in the diet kitchen, were supposed to fix it. Say it was they were diabetic, you couldn’t have anything with sugar. We would take that tray up to them but sometimes you would have all these special ones you were just trying to get them juggled and get them up to them warm. HF: And then we had to make toast off of a long toaster which we put in the oven. That is how we made toast…in the oven. I remember making great big bowls of 17 custard. Can you remember doing that? Just huge bowls of custard and jell-o. We made a lot of jell-o and custard didn’t we? FB: I can remember that but even going through the food line…they always had a pudding or a custard. I got so tired of custard…I didn’t even make it after I got out. It took me a long time to like custard. HF: It was kind of a relief to go into diet therapy for awhile because we weren’t running our legs off. FB: That is right. It was a little more relaxed down there. I think the supervisor, the dietician, wasn’t as regimented as the ones on the floor. MF: That is good. It probably was a nice break. FB: Yes. HF: Yes. When we were assigned to the operating room, following the surgeries, we washed the rubber gloves, forceps and other equipment. Then we double wrapped them in heavy cotton material, labeled them and sent them to Central Supply to be sterilized. Nothing was disposable. All sterile supplies in the hospital were double wrapped, labeled and sterilized in big autoclaves in Central Supply. MF: So what about religion? Did you have to attend church or was it a choice? HF: We worked most Sundays. FB: We had to work most of the time. HF: I don’t remember ever… FB: We would go if there was one close by and we had it off but another thing we did...we had a chorus. Remember? 18 HF: Oh that was from the College. FB: Well let’s see…Roland Parry was the first one wasn’t he? HF: Yes and then Mr. Cragun. FB: Paul Cragun was the one that took his place. We sang at the graduations… HF: At Christmas time we sang Christmas carols. That was about all we did wasn’t it? MF: So was that…that was part of the tradition that they had every year? Now what about traditions at the hospital? Christmas, you said Christmas carols. Did you have any traditions for holidays at the hospital at all that you can remember? FB: No. I can remember working Christmas Eve once…very traumatic. HF: I don’t remember any traditions though. FB: No I don’t remember traditions. Great big long hall where there were so many patients…big wards. HF: On the second floor, yes. FB: Yes. The narcotic key, you had a pin inside your pocket. This great big patient got out of bed and he wanted a hypo and he wasn’t to have one. He was going to take the key off of me. MF: Oh my. FB: One of the other patients could see what was happening and had come to my rescue and I got a hold of the supervisor and the guy that wanted the key was a drug addict and we didn’t know. MF: Wow. HF: Well during that time though when we were students, that is when penicillin came about and we had to heat it up. It came in a wax container and you had to put it 19 in a pan of water and heat it up to draw it up into the syringe. Everything we did with hypos and everything came in pills and we had to use our own syringes. We kept our own little syringe box and we would draw up the medication. FB: We had to boil it first. HF: Oh yes. FB: Sterilize it. HF: Boil in water and then we would draw up the medication. We had to learn how to compute dosages because then we didn’t have it like it just comes out from the pharmacy. MF: In a bottle. HF: We computed all the dosages then. MF: So did you have to sharpen your needles with a little stone? HF: Yes and we would run it on a piece of cotton to make sure it didn’t have any… FB: Didn’t have any snags on it. MF: That is interesting. You pretty much did everything. You had training pretty much throughout the hospital. FB: Well and it seems like…I remember the first penicillin and I was working on pediatrics and we had to give them to those little kids and you had to give penicillin every four hours. MF: Oh wow. HF: For the first penicillin. FB: First penicillin. HF: We also did a lot of mustard plasters. 20 FB: Yes. HF: Now they hardly… FB: You don’t even hear about them now. HF: I don’t think it is ever heard of. MF: You don’t even hear unless you… HF: But we did an awful lot of those. Any little kid that came in with a cold got a mustard plaster on his chest. Most of our senior year we worked nights with one other student nurse caring for as many as 40 patients. We had large wards on the medical and surgical floors. We measured drainage from nasal drains and bilo bags; irrigated catheters, and emptied trays from oxygen tents that frequently ran over. MF: Tell me about your graduation. Your pinning and capping, let us do that first. You have your picture right here. FB: Yes that is the picture. It was at the nurse’s home. HF: The nurse’s home in our auditorium. FB: Well in fact, I have even got the date back there. MF: Now that was… FB: 22nd of October, 1943. MF: Now that was after six months, right? That you received your cap? HF: Yes. MF: Tell me about your graduation ceremony. HF: I can’t remember much about it, let us see. 21 FB: Well we finished up, went down and took our state boards in January in Salt Lake. It took two days. HF: Yes we were the January class. The school of nursing took two classes in a year then. They took a January class and a June class. There was one graduation a year. We had to wait until the June class was ready to graduate for us to graduate. In the meantime, I went down to the U of Utah spring quarter. They let me take twenty-two credit hours so I got my degree from the University of Utah before I graduated from our nursing program. Within 5 years, I became a R. N. with a B. S. degree. At that time, Rhoda Miner and I were the only 2 nurses in Ogden who were college graduates in 1946. FB: It was in June. It was long about the…no, it was in May. It was the end of May and it was down at Weber College wasn’t it? HF: We marched down to the Moench building at Weber College. FB: It was when the College was down at the campus between 24th and 25th street and Jefferson and Adams. HF: We marched from the Nurses Home. They had us wear our capes over our white uniforms. It was the nicest thing I remember. We walked from the nursing home down to the College and to the Moench Auditorium. I don’t remember anything about the ceremony but I remember we all received red roses. Do you remember that? FB: Well, in fact, we have got a rose here. Did we have the little Nightingale candle holder? MF: Is that when you took your Nightingale pledge? 22 FB: We are holding the little Nightingale holder. HF: I think we had lamps didn’t we? FB: …lamps, the little lamps that we held. HF: We had little Nightingale lamps that… FB: …Nightingale lamps...it had a little handle like this and come down like this. HF: Yes. I have got on here some place. I don’t know where it is. FB: It seems like we are holding that with the rose in the other hand. HF: I think that is it. I think they gave us a dozen roses when we graduated. FB: When we graduated. HF: That was really impressive for us. MF: The June class. They did the two classes together. HF: Yes. So that is…where is that little book I gave you? That shows in ’46, it shows all of our group together because we were combined. It has quite a list because that June class was a bigger class than our class. There were probably twelve or fourteen of them. MF: Makes it just a little bit more, huh? HF: Yes. MF: Did you know any of the Dee Family? Were you associated with any of them? HF: Yes. FB: Yes. HF: I remember Maude D. Porter. She started a clinic at the hospital. FB: Yes. 23 HF: And Anne Rasmussen was one of the first nurses there. I remember her. I have a history here of the medicine. Do you have this book? SL: Yes we have that one. HF: That lists Anne, I think, in here. Let us see. FB: Okay, here is the Dee Hospital nurses paper. I have just got the first page of these Dee-Lites…do you have any of them? SL: We have a few but not many. FB: I mean if you need copies of this I will make them. That is our graduating class. MF: Oh, great. FB: You can have that. MF: Thank you. That is good because I don’t think we have that. HF: Here it is. “On December the 12th, 1941, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Public Health Service pointed out to the Ogden Chamber of Commerce and the Weber County Commissioners the urgent need for additional hospital facilities.” So that is how the cadet nurses started. Our uniforms were gray wool tailored suits. MF: Oh okay. HF: I am trying to find out something about Anne Rasmussen in here. It must be here somewhere. FB: Lawrence Dee was made an honorary member of our group and he used to come to some of our alumni meetings. He was very visible at the hospital. MF: That is good. What about Elizabeth Stewart? Were you associated with her? Did you know her? 24 FB: Oh yes. HF: Who? MF: Elizabeth Shaw Stewart. FB: Elizabeth Stewart. HF: She was just wonderful. She did more for the nurses’ alumni than anybody in Ogden ever did or could. She was made an honorary member of our association. MF: Oh good. HF: That is how we were able to publish all these rosters and biographies. FB: She paid for it. MF: Paid for these? HF: Yes. In fact, we had a difficult time getting the last one printed because they didn’t realize that Elizabeth had sponsored so many of them. We did get the money for it through the Foundation of the hospital funding but it has to go through the foundation office. It was Elizabeth Shaw’s money. She used to come to every one of our reunions. In fact, I have a big picture downstairs. Do you have that picture? FB: Oh yes. HF: Has anybody shown you the big picture of our alumni group? SL: Which? We got a 2000… MF: 2000. SL: …from Alta. HF: Alta Roskelley…that is probably the one that has Elizabeth in a wheelchair. 25 FB: In a wheelchair in front. We have two different pictures. HF: The second one wasn’t a very good one. FB: No it wasn’t as good. HF: It wasn’t very well focused. FB: They didn’t have the names on it. I need to double check with you because you have got more names than I have. HF: Anyway, I can remember Anne Rasmussen, I can’t find her in here. I know I read about her in here. FB: Here is another Dee-Lite paper. This is January 22, 1946. Now I have the whole thing on both of those if you want me to make copies of them. MF: Thank you. FB: It is interesting because we knew the nurses that wrote the different things. MF: Anything that you have is wonderful, we appreciate it. HF: Are we repeating a lot that Dorothy told you? MF: No you are fine. Everybody has their own story so we are glad to hear it. FB: Here is another thing you might be interested in. Do you have our Dee song? MF: Do we have the music? SL: We have the lyrics but not the music. FB: You have the lyrics to these school songs? SL: We have the lyrics, yes. MF: But we don’t have the music. FB: The tune is taken from Cornell University and this is the music. MF: Oh good. 26 FB: That is the music that they used. I am partial to this because I have a grandson that graduated from Cornell. MF: Good. FB: But the lyrics were written by Allison Martin, laboratory technician. HF: We used to sing that school song… FB: At our alumni meetings. MF: When you meet, yes. HF: Yes, every alumni meeting we sang the school song. We had to have the words in front of us but we sang it. FB: And Johanna… HF: Rogers. FB: …Rogers usually played the piano for us. HF: JoAnna. FB: JoAnna. Doctor Rogers’ wife. HF: She has passed away. FB: She is gone and he is gone too. MF: Now after you graduated did you stay at the Dee? I know you went on, taught at Weber, right? HF: No, my first job was the night supervisor. If you don’t think that wasn’t strange…I was the night supervisor right after I graduated and I was trying to supervise girls whom I had been in the nursing home all the time. MF: That was kind of a weird deal? 27 HF: Then, at the same time, they asked me to do some teaching. I was teaching some of those same students that I was in the nursing school with. I thought I knew everything, I was so smart, just brilliant, there wasn’t a thing I couldn’t discuss…no question I couldn’t answer. Then when I started teaching I realized there was sure a lot I didn’t know. But that is what I did. Then I became the head nurse on Pediatrics just before I was married. And I don’t remember what you did Faye. Where did you go? FB: I had visions of going in the navy but I didn’t. My last six months of the cadet period I went into public health. The supervisor was LaVerna Peterson, R. N. HF: That was in Ogden. FB: In Ogden here. MF: Okay. FB: So I worked…well actually, the public health building was up on the third floor 203 24th street. I reported to LaVerna Peterson…oh she was a marvelous nurse. I think that only two of us that went into public health was myself and Shirley Luddington. MF: Alta talked about it too. Alta did that too. FB: Did she do that too? MF: She went in public health too. FB: Well she must have been after me. SL: She was before. HF: Elma Helfridge was in public health. FB: Yes but she was an RN before and she had gone to public health. 28 HF: But after you graduated you went right in to public health. FB: No my cadet period, my last six months. HF: I am saying right after you graduated, what did you do? That is what she asked. FB: Oh after I graduated I worked at the old Dee Hospital and for awhile and then I went in to industrial nursing. MF: Oh okay. FB: After I got married. Actually, after I graduated I worked public health through the week and then I worked Saturdays at the hospital. Then when I got married I went to work at the American Can Company as an industrial nurse. MF: Okay. FB: I worked there up until I had my first baby and then when she was six months old I went back until I had the next girl. And then I worked relief in Doctor Feeny’s office and Doctor Stratford’s office, I even relieved down at the SP railroad. They had a little hospital kind of clinic out in the middle of the yards. MF: So the railroad hospital, right? FB: Yes. MF: Alright. FB: I worked for Nan Kennedy down there. MF: Good. FB: Then I worked for Grace Willard, she was working for the UPRR. So I worked the relief for the UP nurse and the SP nurse and then I worked down there relief…I wasn’t working full-time but different ones would get me to work for 29 them. I worked vacations for Julia when they had the Picking House where they butchered the sheep in west Ogden. HF: Etcheverry…Julia Etcheverry…yes. FB: No, Julia Johnson. HF: Oh. Yes. FB: That was industrial nursing there. MF: Oh good. FB: But I ended up…when Grace Willard retired I went back to work full-time at the Union Pacific Railroad clinic. That is where I retired from. MF: And that is where you retired from. That is good. So you went on and taught at Weber…you continued on right? HF: Well, when I was the head nurse on pediatrics I was married and then I had two children. I was asked by St. Benedicts hospital nuns if I would help them get their school of nursing started. I went to an interview with Sister Mary Margaret and she asked me what kind of salary I would like and I said, “A million dollars.” I still remember saying that, as a guess. Anyway, I taught nursing at St. Benedicts for about three years and then there was a need for a part-time faculty at Weber. Leola Davidson asked if I would come over and talk to Ruth Swenson. Ruth Swenson called me when they first started the nursing program in 1952 but I had little small children and I didn’t really want a full-time job then. So I went over to talk to Ruth about a job then and she guaranteed me it would just be two days a week. That lasted about one-quarter and I soon became a full-time faculty member. 30 MF: That is great. What a great opportunity for you to teach. HF: I thought I had the world by the tail because there was only Rhoda Miner and me with bachelor degrees. Just the two of us in Ogden. That was a big plus to have a bachelor degree. Actually, what I wanted to do was become an airline stewardess. My husband, we weren’t married then, took me to the airport to make an application to become a stewardess. He didn’t really want me to do this but I really wanted to travel and see the world. When I went to apply, they told me I could not qualify because I was not tall enough. You had to be 5’4”. Before the war, all the airplanes were small and after the war the airplanes got larger so I could not become an airline stewardess. That was a big disappointment in my life. FB: Nursing was the thing to do. I even wanted to be an airline stewardess. HF: Oh we all thought that would be great because we could travel. FB: I went and interviewed and I couldn’t because I had to wear glasses. MF: Really? Oh how funny. HF: But then they wanted nurses for airline stewardesses. You could not apply if you weren’t a nurse. MF: That is interesting. HF: We thought that was going to be a great job. It didn’t work out for either one of us. FB: No. But you couldn’t wear glasses on the plane. MF: Really? FB: And, of course, this was before contacts. 31 MF: Before contacts. That is interesting. That is interesting that they wouldn’t let you. HF: Yes. Not tall enough and wearing glasses dropped us both out. MF: Something you can’t do anything about. FB: You had to be single. MF: You couldn’t be married either. FB: You couldn’t be married and be an airline stewardess. HF: No we couldn’t be married either. But I didn’t want to get married then. FB: We were going to see the world. HF: I had been engaged all during the war. When we were in training I was engaged to another fellow and in fact, I almost got kicked out of nursing because he used to write me letters and they would say “to my darling wife” and Pitty-Pat must have opened one of my letters one time. I got called in and I said, “I am not married.” I really had a hard time convincing them that I wasn’t married but I wasn’t. FB: You remember Rhoda Miner’s mother that come to substitute for the Housemother. HF: Yes. FB: She came down from Spokane, Washington and filled in for the housemother that was ill. She really was a sweet lady. HF: We liked her. FB: We liked her because she wanted to really protect us and to be our second mother, you know, kind of thing. MF: Yes. 32 FB: She kind of took a real interest in me because she knew that my mother was dead. After she left she wrote to me. MF: Oh good. FB: She sent me a graduation gift. MF: How nice. FB: And when I got married she sent me a gift. And we exchanged Christmas cards until she passed away. MF: That is great. FB: She was a great housemother. MF: Oh that is great. It is nice to have that because you need that. Your new little job you are starting and you need some protection. FB: That is right. Well we had been in a little while before she came but she came to help out. I can’t even remember which one of the housemothers that was ill. They had to have somebody there. HF: We were Rhoda Miner’s favorite class. She always said that about us didn’t she? FB: Yes and we were a small class. HF: She would invite us over to her home there for waffles. Several years later, she moved to California. I corresponded with her until her death. FB: We came in right in the middle of the war and she just really mothered us. And then for her mother to come down and mother us… MF: So it was a good thing. That is great. FB: She was great. 33 MF: I like that. That is a fabulous story. HF: There were two of us who ran this whole medical floor at night. There was this one woman that kept turning her light on. It went on constantly. I would go answer it and she really wanted nothing really…maybe to be turned. I think she was lonely, but Pat Mordaunt said, “I am going to fix this so we will not have her turn that light on again.” She took a flashlight and then she got underneath the bed. The woman didn’t see her come in. Pat was underneath the bed and said, “I am the devil, if you don’t quit turning on that light I am going to come and get you.” She sneaked out of that room and that women didn’t turn a light on the rest of the night. But that is the way Pat was. That class got into more trouble than any class I remember. FB: Yes. HF: There were dare devils. FB: Devils. HF: I have to tell you one thing too. That class started coloring their hair so the whole nurse’s school started coloring hair. Do you remember that? FB: Yes. HF: We all had red or orange hair. FB: I didn’t because mine had red highlights. MF: You had red in yours. HF: You had red in your hair but most of us had red hair and Rhoda Miner called us in and she said, “You have got to stop this hennaing. You all look terrible. We have carrot-tops.” 34 MF: That is a great story. HF: I did talk to Yo Oka before you were coming because I thought I would like to know how the Japanese girls felt through their nurses training. MF: Yes. HF: We never heard…neither Faye nor I…we were talking about that this morning. We never heard them say anything. We were all friends. There was no animosity in the nursing school. Yo Oka was the one who told me that Mrs. Miner had her and Fumi start taking classes at Weber College. Then the Cadet Nurse program came through so they were legally able to enroll in the nursing program. Yo said the only person that never wanted her to take care of her was a nun from the convent and that is the only experience she ever had. MF: Really? HF: I never did call…I did talk to Fumi about it but I thought that was unusual that they were so accepted. They were accepted in the nurses’ school too. We liked those girls. MF: Wonderful. HF: …part of our student body. MF: Oh exactly. Would she mind if we called her? Do you think if we gave her a call…Dorothy gave me Yo’s number and Fumi’s. Do you think either one of them would mind if we contacted them and asked them about an interview? What do you think? Or would you guys like to do that and have them call us? What do you think? HF: Well I asked… 35 FB: She has already talked to Yo. HF: …Yo if she would like to come up today but I guess both of them have had some health problems. But that was their story. MF: Okay. HF: I am sure if you wanted to talk to them on the phone they would be willing to talk to you. MF: Do a phone interview they would be okay? HF: Yes. FB: And Grace…this is Grace Willard here. MF: Okay. How has nursing changed? HF: Today, education is remised in many comfort procedures. We were taught to give P.M. and H. S. care. We went in and gave the patients a fresh basin of water and a washcloth. They could wash their face and hands and get refreshed and then we gave them a backrub. Then at nighttime…you always, when you helped a patient get ready for bed, you always gave a backrub. Now that has gone by the wayside. FB: That is gone. MF: Nobody fluffs your pillow… FB: They don’t do that. MF: …comes and makes sure you are okay. FB: And say, “Is there anything that we can get you?” HF: Now I think a lot of nurses tend the machines more than they do their patients. FB: And they have to know how to do the computer. 36 HF: That is what I am saying…tending machines. FB: Yes. HF: All the machines…not only the computer but all of them. MF: The monitors. HF: They look at different monitors and they nurse monitors more than they do the patients, which is too bad. There is also a great deal of paper work they have to complete. When we were in training, patients did not have insurance. They were very ill when they came to the hospital. MF: That is true. It is too bad because there is not that personal interaction. HF: The art of nursing has lost a lot there. MF: It has. HF: Oh my gad. FB: You probably only need our graduation pictures but anyway. You have those probably. Your husband was the photographer. HF: I heard you say that you were coming. That is nice. MF: We are. We are very excited about that. Thank you for letting Sarah and I come interview both of you. We enjoyed this very much. 37