Oral History Program Edna Walchli Stratford Interviewed by Marci Farr 3 November 2008 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Edna Walchli Stratford Interviewed by Marci Farr 3 November 2008 Copyright © 2010 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Dee School of Nursing was founded in 1910 to provide training for nurses who would staff the new Dee Memorial Hospital. The first class of eight nurses graduated from the school in 1913 and the school continued to operate until 1955, with a total of more than 700 graduates. A new nursing school and home located just east of the hospital was completed in 1917 and all nursing students were required to live in the home during their training. This oral history project was created to capture the memories of the school's alumni before their stories disappear in the same way the Dee Hospital has disappeared. The oral interviews focus on how the women became involved with the school, their experiences going through training, and how they used the training. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management Special Collections All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Edna Walchli Stratford, an oral history by Marci Farr, 3 November 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Edna Walchli Stratford Application Photo 1952 Graduation Photo Class of 1955 Edna Walchli Stratford September 16, 2009 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Edna Walchli Stratford. It was conducted November 3, 2008 and includes her recollections and experiences with the Dee School of Nursing. The Interviewer is Marci Farr. MF: This is Marci Farr. It is November 3, 2008. We are interviewing Edna Walchli Stratford at her home in South Ogden, Utah. She graduated in 1955. Would you to tell us a little bit about your early life, where you grew up, about your family, and where you went to school. ES: Okay and actually, it was my birthday yesterday. MF: Oh happy birthday. ES: I was born in American Falls, Idaho, but moved to a little tiny town called Horseshoe Bend, Idaho, where my father was the superintendent of the power plant. When he retired we moved to Ogden and I have lived here ever since. I had an older brother who was eight years older than me and two sisters, one twenty-one years older than me and one ten years older. That’s because both of my parents had been previously married and both of their spouses had died and then they married and had me. Most of my elementary school was in Horseshoe Bend. It was a very small, three room schoolhouse, with eight kids in my class. I went to the fourth and sixth grades in Emmet, which was about twenty-five miles away. I graduated in ceremonies from the eighth grade in Horseshoe Bend. I went to my freshman year of high school at Emmett high, then we moved to Ogden where I was in the tenth grade at Mound Fort Jr. High and then two years 1 at Ogden High School. I graduated from there June 6, 1952. I was seventeen years old when I graduated. Then I went into nurses training. MF: Why did you decide to become a nurse? ES: First, I had always wanted to be a nurse and marry a doctor. I think it was because when I was a little girl the doctor in Emmett had owned the hospital, or something, and his wife was a nurse. I just always thought that was so wonderful. I just always wanted to be a nurse. That was the only thing. MF: That is wonderful. ES: I used to think, “I would not want to be a beauty operator, as they called them then, because that seemed like such dirty work, washing people’s dirty hair. Now, tell me, bedpans compared to washing somebody’s hair!” But I always wanted to be a nurse. MF: So you chose the Dee Hospital because it was close, convenient… ES: Yes, because it was here in town. MF: What were your first impressions when you first entered nurses training? ES: Well honestly it was a great day. I am sure I was pretty excited. I was probably also a little frightened. I didn’t know exactly what to expect but it was a fun time. Diane Stowe was my roommate. We had a wonderful experience together as roommates until she got married. Then I had another roommate for awhile. MF: Did you have to take any assessments before you entered school or did you just have to fill out an application? ES: Well, I apparently must have applied for a scholarship. I remember going to the hospital. Verle Lesnan was the Director of Nurses when I was in training, but I 2 think Edna Seidner was the Director of Nurses when I went to the hospital to talk to them about nursing, or about going to school there, before I ever entered. Then apparently—I don’t know if I was given papers to fill out for the Bamberger Scholarship, I don’t remember how I received that scholarship, but it was for $350.00 and five students received it. It paid for all of our school expenses: college registration and fees, room and board, books, uniforms, etc. for all three years (36 months) of training. MF: Do you remember who your housemother was? ES: Yes, Mrs. Peterson and Mrs. McGraw were our housemothers. MF: How were they? Were they strict or motherly? ES: They were pretty good. I wonder if Mrs. McGraw was a little more strict. We were the last class so things were so different for us than from other classes. By the time we were ready to graduate there were only nineteen of us left and some of us weren’t even living at the nurses home. Things were a little more relaxed I think. MF: Could you get married or could you just be engaged? ES: In the very beginning in 1952, I am not sure how many people could be married. There were some married students. Kitty Milligan had been married quite awhile. There were some others. I am not certain when they started allowing students to get married. In our class several people were married by the time we finished. Things were much more relaxed. MF: So you said your roommate was Diane. She was for the first couple years, right? ES: Yes. 3 MF: Who was your other one? Do you remember? ES: Then LuAnn Secrist, and then she got married. Her husband was in the Navy so we were roommates probably the rest of the time. MF: What were some of the rules you had to follow? Was there anything specific that you remember? ES: Well yes, we had curfew. I can’t remember what time it was. Probably ten o’clock, I don’t think it would have been as early as nine. Of course when you were on call, you had to stay around at the nurses home so you would be available to go to work when you were needed. On curfew I know there were some students who would usually put a rock in the door or something like that so they could come in a little bit later. MF: If you had a night off what was something you would do as a group or with your roommate? ES: Well we would date. There were lots of blind dating going on because there were always students who always knew somebody and somebody needed a date so you would do some blind dating. That was kind of fun. Of course, movies, we would go to a movie. We did thing, we would go up the canyon roasting marshmallows and playing games, going swimming up to Pineview. MF: Do you remember any of your favorite classes? ES: Some of my favorite classes? We had—Ruth Oka was a really cute instructor. She was strict but she was fun. She taught us operating room techniques. Doctor Curtis taught us OB/GYN down in the basement of the nurse’s home. I ironed for Doctor Curtis’s family, for his wife, while I was in nurses training to 4 earn a little bit of money. One day I was down in the delivery room and I stood there by the open door. He was delivering a baby. He saw me standing there and he said to the lady on the table, “See that young lady standing over there? She is the best ironer that we have ever had.” I thought, “I’m sure this lady, in the middle of delivering a baby, is really interested in what kind of ironing I would do.” Then also in class—whenever we would go to his class, I would always look at his shirts that he was wearing because I had ironed that shirts. I always felt pretty good about that. MF: Who taught you medical? ES: I don’t remember that. I remember that we had a doctor named doctor Alvord who taught something maybe pharmacology. It seemed like he had just come back from the army or something. LaPrele Neville taught nursing arts. Ruth Brown was absolutely marvelous. I loved her. I thought she was the best nurse there ever was, very strict. You were always doing something. When she was there you were always working. You didn’t sit down, you dusted or cleaned or whatever. She was a great nurse. MF: She is fabulous. We had a good interview with her. ES: Yes she was. And Mrs. Mass taught us. MF: Did you have instructors specifically for that or was it the doctors that were at the hospital? ES: I am sure some other doctors taught us and I just cannot remember who all they were that taught our classes. Mostly Marie Donaldson was an instructor and Mrs. Mass and Ruth Brown. In my little book Louise Scoville, said she enjoyed 5 teaching, but I don’t remember her as a teacher. I remember her as an assistant director of nursing. MF: That is interesting. Tell us about your capping ceremony. When did that take place? ES: I guess we got our caps at six months because we were on probation for six months. I have a picture of it there in my scrapbook. So, six months after we had been in nurse’s training was when we had a ceremony and received our caps. That was very thrilling and exciting. MF: You survived six months. ES: Yes. Our caps, as you probably already know, had one vertical stripe when you were a freshman, two stripes when you were a junior, three stripes when you were a senior and then all of those stripes were taken off and one was around the top when we graduated. MF: Okay. ES: It was exciting to get your stripes on your cap. MF: While you were in nurse’s training were there any doctors that you enjoyed working with? ES: Yes there were. Doctor Grua was a doctor that I enjoyed working with. Doctor Curtis of course. Doctor Pendleton was a new doctor who came while we were in nurse’s training. We had interns and residents that we worked with a lot too. So that was good. MF: Now the Korean War was already over—was it already over when you guys were in? I can’t remember. 6 ES: I am not sure but I think so, it ended in July 1953. Doctor Seager had just come back from being in the war. He was in one of the original MASH units. He used to tell us stories about that, Doctor Drew Peterson and Jay G. Olsen were doctors that could read EKG’s. Other people didn’t read EKG’s which amazes me—now everybody knows how. But if someone had one in the afternoon I think they had to wait until the next day when Doctor Peterson or Olsen came to work to read the EKG. Times have changed. MF: I think they have changed. So while you were doing your training what was your favorite floor? What did you enjoy the most? ES: We would be on each place for three months or so. The one I disliked the most or really didn’t care so much about was diet therapy in the diet kitchen. I worked in the diet kitchen the month before I got married on April 1, 1955, the year we graduated. I never really cared too much for learning about the diets that people had to have for various things. I worked in the diet kitchen and my report that month said that I was more interested in my forthcoming marriage than I was in learning diet therapy. That was probably true. MF: That was probably true. ES: But, I liked being in surgery, I liked pediatrics, surgical probably more than medical, I worked in the preemie nursery. Of course, we worked in all of the places. It seemed like wherever I was working I liked those places. MF: While you were in nurse’s training, what was your greatest challenge that you had to overcome? 7 ES: Oh I don’t know. I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what my greatest challenge would have been. MF: That is what Sue said. She said it was wonderful, it wasn’t really too hard. It was just a fun time. Plus you were so close as far as roommates and your class. ES: I got along with kids in my class and got along with the nurses. Maybe some of the head nurses would have been a challenge sometimes, I am sure that they were. But really it was a good experience. Some things were easier than others, of course. MF: That is true. So when you graduated—you graduated in 1955, was it September? ES: September sixteenth. MF: Did you stay at the Dee? What did you do after you graduated? ES: After we graduated we took our state boards down at the Capitol Building in Salt Lake. I said at the time they were hard. After you have done something that is hard but then you’ve passed, you will say, “piece of cake, it wasn’t that tough.” I vowed that I would never say that they were easy because I thought they were hard. Maybe other people thought they were easy, but they were hard. We were there for a couple of days doing state boards. Then I left and flew up to Tacoma, Washington to live with my husband who was stationed at Fort Lewis in the military. I went to see about at Tacoma General Hospital and had an interview. I didn’t know that I had been hired until on Monday I received a card in the mail saying—that Monday and Tuesday were my days off and I was to report to work on Wednesday. So I worked on the surgical floor at Tacoma General Hospital. 8 MF: Do you think you training at the Dee—probably served you well as far as you could get a job anywhere? ES: Yes. Actually, I had thought maybe I would go to Madigan General Hospital because I didn’t even have the results of my state board. You could work at the Army hospital without the results of your state board. I don’t think I had even been there to see about a job because I had gone to Tacoma General and did not expect that I would get a job until I knew if I had passed my state boards but they hired me. MF: How long did you stay up there? ES: Until April, we were there about six months. Then Dale was released from the Army and we came back to Ogden. I worked for the next four months in the nursery, I think, and on surgical floor. MF: At the Dee? ES: At the Dee. Then my husband went to Law School at the University of Utah. So we went down there. I loved nursing but I just was not interesting in working a lot. I was the kind of girl that just thought when you were seven months pregnant you didn’t work anymore. I was pregnant then so I didn’t even try to get a job. A lot of kids, especially the ones in the delivery room would work right up and be working there when they would go into labor, but I never did. Every time I would decide that I would like a baby, I would to get pregnant, and then I would work seven months and then I would quit. Before our second child was born, I worked part time in Salt Lake on Pediatrics at LDS Hospital two nights a week while my husband was in law school. We moved back to Ogden when he finished school 9 in 1960 and I wanted to get pregnant again and I went to St. Benedicts to work. I worked two nights a week there in the psychiatric unit. That place was smokefilled because of the patients and a lot of them were alcoholics and just had lots of problems. We were downstairs in a very enclosed area and I would come out of there and could hardly talk from all the smoke in there. MF: So quite a difference from the Dee. ES: It was a good experience working there. I had some patients that were good patients. I learned to like salami sandwiches there. I had never eaten salami and one of our patients wanted salami all the time. I started eating salami and really quite enjoyed it. MF: Did you retire or did you still just do your two days? ES: No. Then I just didn’t work. Several years later, I don’t know how many, I had a friend in my ward who was a nurse and she did some things out at Roy Hospital. So for just a little bit I would go out and help assist when they would do some foot surgery or something like that, but only a few times. Then I just didn’t work anymore. MF: And you have stayed in Ogden since, right? ES: Yes. MF: How do you think that nursing has changed over the years? What do you think as far as technology? ES: At one point I had decided I was going to go back and renew my license because I had let it expire. Had there been some kind of a program that I could have been in and had some structure, maybe I would have gone ahead and renewed my 10 certificate but there wasn’t. I went to St. Benedicts with the idea that is what I would do. You had to work for a month with a preceptor there, and do some classes on your own, they put me in ICU with an isolation patient. I had not worked for years. I said at that time the only thing that was the same as when I worked last was that they took the temperature in the same place and they gave an enema in the same place. Now they don’t even take the temperature in the same place and I don’t know if they even give enemas. We used to fill a bucket with hot sudsy water and it had a long hose on it and boy those enemas were— they would say, “High, hot, and heck of a lot!” They changed that long ago. So that is one thing that I think totally changed. MF: The advancements in medicine… ES: So much and things that we didn’t even have. Now you can get a degree in this or this or this. They didn’t even have those things when I was in nurses training at all. Like I said about the EKG’s. They are at every nurses station. They can watch monitors and know what is going on. I know when we used to do patient care and maybe they needed hot packs we would have a container that would have really hot water in it. You would dip a towel in it and wring it out, that wasn’t easy. You would wrap it up in another towel and take it to the patient. You would have to change that frequently. All that wringing… MF: They just have microblankets now. They are so nice. ES: Everything has changed. MF: Do you still keep in contact with the people you went to school with? 11 ES: Yes, very much. In fact, we have had several parties at my home through the years. I have pictures in my scrapbook of our fifty year reunion which was here at my home, nineteen of us graduated. I think about twenty-five started. But nineteen of us graduated, and by our fifty year reunion two were deceased, one was teaching at a college in California so she couldn’t come, one was on a mission in Florida and one just didn’t come because she didn’t want to. So there were fourteen of us here for our fifty year reunion. Some of them had not seen each other in fifty years. MF: Wow. ES: It was wonderful. I happened to be the president of the Alumni Association at that time, which I have been two or three different times. We had our reunion the day before and our alumni luncheon was the next day. It was wonderful. Yes I keep in touch with lots of them. MF: It is nice because I think you had to rely on each other. The Weber nurses don’t get that now. ES: No. MF: You have your sisterhood that you created because you had to rely on each other. You ran the hospital and all these things that you did. ES: It was a completely different thing. We did live together and because we did, we have the association. You have seen our little booklets that we put out periodically. Also, because I have been an officer several different times, I am aware of a lot of people from years past other than just my own class or the class ahead of me. 12 MF: That is kind of fun because then you get talking and see the difference between ten years. It is amazing. ES: When we went into training, Diane and I lived on the West side of the nurse’s home which was kind of the old side. Most of our class lived on the other side. There were maybe just a couple of others, maybe four others, that lived on the West side. Also on that side were the nurses who were transferred from Logan because they had closed down their school of nursing. So we became friends with them—they were seniors when we went into training. MF: So that would be like Dora Peterson. ES: Yes, Dora Leskow. MF: I grew up with her daughter in Clinton. That is how I knew her. ES: So we knew them. MF: Did you have anything you wanted to ask her or are you good? Alright, I think we have got all of our questions. Is there anything else you thought of you wanted to share with us? ES: Oh, what were some of the things? I was going to tell you about one of my patients. They don’t do this at all anymore. They didn’t really even do it then really, but she had horrible, terrible bed sores and they tried a little experiment of putting her in a sawdust bed. I don’t know who all else took care of her but I took care of her. There she laid in sawdust and trying to do patient care on her was not easy. We had some kind of a little lift we could hook her up too so we could bathe her. She was just laying in sawdust. They don’t do that anymore. MF: So how did that work? Did it work at all or was it just kind of experimental? 13 ES: No, I don’t think that worked very good. Also, when I was in training—student nurses from Salt Lake probably St. Benedicts, and the Dee all went to the TB Sanitorium for six weeks. By the time I was there, there were only three of us who were out there at that time because we were the last students out there. I had just been married the month before. My husband was stationed down out of Las Vegas. He would come home every weekend. LuAnn Harris had been married the month before. She got pregnant on her honeymoon so here she was sick the whole time while we were at the TB Sanitarium. Joyce Udy was the other one. She would say goodnight to a boy at the front door and walk out the back and there would be another one waiting for her. That was quite the six weeks. I don’t remember our instructors in Provo. Provo was very interesting. I enjoyed being at the State Mental Hospital, we were there for three months. One day I went on to the division—I was just wearing street clothes and I didn’t take my keys with me. I guess I went to visit some patients and as someone was going in, I just walked in with them. When it was time for me to leave there were some people that were leaving so I ran after them and said, “Keep the door open so I can come out with you!” I kept calling to them and they just shut the door because they thought I was patient, as I was dressed like one. I didn’t have my keys. Unlike the patients that had to stay, I could go to the nurse and say, “Would you please let me out?” They had wonderful cheese that they made there. They made cheese and bread. We always had bread and cheese at the nurses home. That was really 14 good. Sometimes we would eat at the cafeteria and some of the patients, the ones that weren’t so bad, would be eating there. They had good food. That was interesting. Graduation was wonderful. We carried a dozen red roses and walked to the church for graduation. MF: Well we appreciate you letting us come visit with you. ES: Thank you. MF: Glad you finally made it home. We kept saying, “Oh we’ll have to get her when she comes home.” ES: Oh it was great, a good experience. 15