Oral History Program Carol May Beutler Weeks Interviewed by Marci Farr 13 October 2009 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Carol May Beutler Weeks Interviewed by Marci Farr 13 October 2009 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: Carol May Beutler Weeks, an oral history by Marci Farr, 13 October 2009, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Carol May Beutler Weeks Application Photo 1950 Graduation Photo Class of 1953 Carol May Beutler Weeks September 16, 2009 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Carol May Beutler Weeks. It was conducted October 13, 2009 and concerns her recollections and experiences with the Dee School of Nursing. The interviewer is Marci Farr. MF: This is Marci Farr interviewing Carol May Beutler Weeks October 13, 2009. We are interviewing her in Ogden, Utah and she graduated in 1953. Could you just tell us a little about your early life, where you were born and raised, a little about your family and your education where you went to school? CW: I was born in Ogden and raised at 3737 Ogden Avenue. I have an older brother and two younger sisters. My dad built our home just before World War II and that’s where I lived all my life until I got married to an Air Force officer and we traveled around. It was fun. We had a group of eight friends and we just did everything together. The first one just died a little while ago, but the others still get together once in awhile. MF: Oh good. So you went to Ogden High? CW: No I went to Weber High. MF: Weber High, oh that’s right. CW: Because it was in the county then. We went to Riverdale Junior High and then Weber High School. None of them are there any more. MF: They are not. I was going to say I have not heard of the Riverdale one. Tell us about why you decided to become a nurse. What made your decision to become a nurse? 1 CW: Well it seemed like when I was growing up you could be a nurse or a secretary or a teacher. Those were the only three things you could be. I just thought nursing sounded the best and then I had a couple of MIA teachers that were nurses and I just thought that was neat. They kind of influence me, and I thought they were neat so I tried it. MF: So why did you choose the Dee Hospital? CW: Just because it was here and I was born there. MF: Because it was in Ogden and it was close and your family was here. CW: And my cousin had gone there, she had been a nurse. MF: Who was your cousin? CW: Madeline Harding. MF: Was she a year or two older than you? CW: She was about ten. She was from Willard. MF: That’s good to know. Were there any tests that you had to take? CW: I think you had to apply someway. MF: Just apply to it? CW: Then through high school there were three of us that got scholarships to go there, so that’s another reason we went there. MF: What was your first impressions when your first entered the school? CW: Scared to death. MF: Was it your first time away from home? CW: Yes, to live away. Even home was close but then you didn’t have your own cars to travel back and forth. 2 MF: So kind of strict policies as far as the rules and stuff. CW: Yes, but I was pretty calm. I was not a wild kid anyway. MF: So what were some of the first things you had to do when you entered the program as far as duties or things you had to start out with? CW: Just classes mostly and the first day on the floor they taught you all the stuff you were supposed to do for PM care. Mine was a man who was ambulatory. I thought what do you do? He can do everything himself. I felt kind of dumb. MF: Who was your house mother? Do you remember who she was? CW: If you hadn’t asked me I could have told you, that one that had been there forever. What was her name? There were two of them. The one was the main one and then one was the evening one. MF: Tell us a little about the nurses’ home. CW: It was fun mostly. You studied a lot and I happened to get a girl from Price as a roommate who was very, very smart. It saddened me that I really had to study to keep up with her. We still talk once in awhile. MF: So you just had just one roommate, two per room? CW: Yes. MF: Where were you at when you first got there? Were you in the basement when you were first in the nursing home? CW: I think we were on the top floor if I remember right. We were on the top floor because you know there was a ten o’clock curfew and if you were out later and if you had a date or something, you would throw rocks up at your roommate’s window so she could come down and let you in. 3 MF: I’ve heard about those and the fudge party, making fudge in the broom closet. You have told some great stuff. Tell us who your roommate was again. What was her name? CW: Paralee Johnston. MF: What were some of the rules you had to follow while you were in nurse’s training besides the curfew? Were there any other? CW: I don’t remember a lot. You had to be up at a certain time and to classes. Your hair couldn’t touch your collar when you were in uniform. Your shoes had to be clean. MF: You were not required to attend church at that time? CW: No. MF: Tell us, what some of your favorite classes you took were. CW: Anatomy and I didn’t like sociology and physiology, well physiology wasn’t too bad, but I like the set things not the brain things. That orientation was good. We had surgical and medical that were interesting. MF: What were some things you would do for fun if you and your roommates had a night off? CW: We would go downtown to a movie. We also did hand work and listened to records. We had to walk everywhere. We walked down to Weber College every day and walk back for lunch and then walked back down for class, so we got our exercise in. MF: I’m sure you did. Do you remember who some of your instructors were for the classes you had? 4 CW: I don’t remember their names. There was one, Ruth Brown. But there was a Donaldson who was there our first year. MF: Was it Marie Donaldson? CW: Yes, her. Lots of stories about her. MF: Tell us about your capping and pinning ceremony. CW: That was great. MF: Where did it take place? CW: It was in a ward that was right close to the hospital. We really felt we were somebody then to get that first stripe on our cap. MF: That was after six months that you got your cap and stripe? CW: Yes. MF: Did you start having shift work after that or did you have classes for another year? CW: I think we had classes a little longer than that. We would go on the floors for just a few hours I think. MF: So it wasn’t a long shift? CW: No, not yet. MF: Tell us who were some of your favorite doctors. CW: Dr. Curtis delivered my nephew and my girlfriend’s baby. Lindsey Curtis, he just died a little while ago. Him and Eva Jean Law, they were in charge of labor and delivery and wrote a book together on having a baby. MF: So what do you think was one of your greatest challenges while you were in nurse’s training? What was one of the hardest things you had to deal with? 5 CW: Just knowing what to do, mostly. There was some lady that used to holler from a room and you would always think (this is when you first went on the floors), “I don’t know if I want to go in a room like that or not.” I think that not knowing was scary, but after I got a little more confidence…I loved the patients. MF: I’m sure your confidence grew as you learned probably. So after graduation, did you stay at the Dee Hospital? CW: I stayed for about nine months and then I got married and moved away. MF: Because your husband was in the Air Force. CW: Yes, and I was in the psych ward and I don’t remember her name, but the head nurse was from the East. She didn’t like the West or Mormons. It was like the hospital was afraid of her. They wanted to fire her, but they were afraid too. So when she on vacation someplace, they fired her while she was gone. MF: Did you have spend a couple months at the psych hospital in Provo? CW: Yes. MF: It was three months? CW: Yes. There were interesting people down there. MF: That would be a challenge, don’t you think as far as trying to know how to deal with all that? CW: They just give them pills...and warehouse them. MF: How do you think nursing has changed over the years? CW: Everything. You can’t wear caps or dresses because it’s not sanitary and I think that just ruined our profession, because you don’t know the janitor from the head nurses. They are all just in scrubs. 6 MF: Do you remember a favorite patient? Or a patient that was hard? CW: We had to do case studies then, and I always thought mine was interesting. One was in maternity and she had a septum in her uterus. So she had three babies on one side, then this one was formed on the other side. And it was just a smaller area so they did a C-Section because they were afraid it would rupture. She was interesting and the baby was a doll. MF: Was she okay after that? Were the babies okay? CW: Yes. I mean that was her fourth one, I don’t know if she had any after that because I left. There was a little girl in pediatrics. She was a little Indian girl and she had been burned really bad and had scars that covered her body. So they were straightening out leg contractures. We’d give her a penicillin shot every three hours for months and you could hardly find a spot that was not rock hard to get a needle in there. She would cry and it was so sad for her. MF: That would be hard. What was your favorite floor that you trained on? CW: I don’t know. Medical, I imagine, or surgical. It’s kind of the same. They had an orthopedic floor. After I graduated I worked on OB/GYN, and that was interesting then too. MF: Tell us some of your classmates who you were in training? Did you have any from high school or just those you met? CW: Yes. Doris Poulson Stark, she just passed away about week ago. She got a scholarship when I did. I think she was the only other from Weber High. There was somebody else, but she didn’t last very long. MF: How did they do the scholarships, do you remember? 7 CW: I think each high school got two or three to give every year. It was like a hundred and fifty dollars and that was enough to buy our uniforms and our capes and our classes and everything for our first year. MF: Did your scholarship renew or was it just for the one year? CW: Just for the one year, for the hundred and fifty dollars. MF: That’s good cause then you didn’t have to worry about any of that. Do you remember any of the members of the Dee family? CW: Not personally. We would see them every once in awhile but that’s all. MF: I know Elizabeth was a big force for the alumni association and very involved. CW: Yes. She was. She would volunteer in the nursery for years and years and just rock the babies. She never had children. MF: So she would just come in and do that? CW: Yes, hours and hours she would volunteer there. MF: I know she wanted to be a nurse, but never got the opportunity. CW: They were quite a family. I had a patient that was a cousin to them, and she said they were always taught that they were to give to the community, because they were always wealthy. They were taught that they were to give back and she says, “I can’t do much,” cause she was older but she says, “I have a whole list of people I call just to see how they are.” MF: Just to see how they are doing. That is so nice. That is how it should be. Because you know her grandma was the one that started the hospital, Elizabeth’s grandma was. That’s a great thing they left. We forget sometimes 8 where we get places with other people involved. It makes it nice. What do you think was one of your most stressful experiences during nurse’s training? CW: I remember I was helping Dr. Rich with a dressing and I handed him a safety pin that was closed and he threw it across the room and said, “You don’t hand me a closed safety pin.” I thought okay and never did that again. MF: How do you think your experience served you for your life? CW: I thought it was good. The skills you learned were always useful. MF: Everybody has told us they could go anywhere and get a job, because they knew they were decent. CW: We went to our first assignment in the Air Force. It was Mississippi. They had two little hospitals. I went to one and they said go home and get your uniform on. MF: So you went to Mississippi. Where else did you nurse? CW: I worked in Virginia a little bit, in Alexandria. MF: Then you came back to Utah? CW: After the Air Force we did. Like thirty-five years ago. It’s been a long time. MF: When did you retire from nursing? CW: I was sixty-one and I’m seventy-six. Fifteen years ago. They kind of helped me out. They were replacing the RN’s with aides and so if you were just close to retirement, they encouraged you and I wasn’t one that had to work. MF: So were you at McKay-Dee when you retired? CW: Yes. I was in Rehab when I went back. MF: The one where it was on the side of the old hospital, where it kind of connected. 9 CW: Yes. It was there first and then they moved it over to the sixth floor. Dr. Bender was the doctor in charge and he was so good, but I guess the hospital did not give him what he wanted. So he left and after that it went down. They had the railroad send a lot of theirs, amputees mostly, then they didn’t send them anymore. When I first went back to working on that floor there was little Alvi and she had been jumping cars on the railroad and she fell off and cut both of her legs off and I heard that it just about did her arm, but at that time her arm was okay. She was just in her twenties, just a young girl. MF: It’s hard to see that part of it isn’t it. CW: Yes, interesting. There was one man that got run over and they took the heel off this foot that was amputated and they put it on the bottom of the other. His foot was off, but his leg was there. They put the heel on there and he walked on that. He came in there because they had to move it just a little bit farther. MF: Tell us a little about your graduation ceremony. CW: I think it was Dr. Tanner, not Noel his brother, he was our speaker and I remember him saying it doesn’t matter how rich or poor you are, you put your pants on one leg at a time. That everybody is basically the same. It was great. It was something that you really looked forward to. MF: Did you have it at the same church that you had your capping ceremony? I know there were some at Weber College. CW: No that was the classes that started the next year at Weber College. I don’t know where it was. Kind of doesn’t seem like it was at a church. It was at the LDS Mount Ogden ward chapel, 1953. That was not the year. That was the year 10 before mine. We had big sisters, and mine was Jackie and she had two of us for little sisters. MF: Jackie Swearingen? CW: Yes, she was mine and she gave me some little angels over there that I still have. She was a year ahead of us. She was the best ever. MF: She was Melva Crookston friend right? CW: Yes, they were best friends forever, I guess. And she had two of us for little sisters and the other one lives down in Orem and she comes up to our luncheons every year. She is such a sweetheart. She was late coming in. But Jackie was a neat big sister to us. Then we went over communicable disease in nursing, and went to the TB Hospital. It’s not there anymore, but there was a big article in the paper not too long ago about it. There was a lot of Indians in there, you know these young boys that were huge, big boys and they would get on the scale and weigh like a hundred and twenty-five or something because the just sat so much they didn’t get to exercise. MF: Is this your graduation book? So you said Eva Jean Law was your instructor? CW: She was our instructor in the OB/GYN classes. MF: Okay. Well good. Marie Donaldson, right there. CW: Yes, she was kind of the head of the nursing program. MF: Okay so she was in charge. Well these are great pictures. CW: A lot of them are dying off. 11 MF: I know that’s exactly why we are doing this project, because we need to get everybody. It is so important for this history. Because once you are gone, nobody’s going to know about it. CW: Yes. MF: Because you even said that the Dee Hospital and nobody knows what you are talking about. CW: Yes. MF: Oh you mean the McKay? No not that one. Well these are great. CW: Well the older people would know. MF: Exactly. CW: There was one girl that was in the emergency room and she would be there at night all alone and they would bring these drunks in that needed stitches and now you look at it now and she was really something. MF: It’s totally changed. Oh these are great. Thanks for sharing this with us. Oh and you had the only male graduate in your class. Right? CW: He was the first. He’s dead too. And this time at our luncheon and found out that Leah Johns had died and she got married in training and you weren’t supposed to and so it was a secret. Even her parents didn’t know it. She was across the hall from and she says, “I want you to know that I got married, so that if I get pregnant I want you to know that I was married.” MF: So she just barely died. Leah Johns is that what you said? CW: Yes, she lived up in Washington. I haven’t seen her for quite a few years. MF: So she kept that a secret and it stayed a secret? 12 CW: Yes and her folks gave her a big wedding after. MF: After she graduated? CW: Yes. MF: Oh my goodness. Wow. Do you know how many were in your class as far as graduating members? CW: There was forty that started and forty that graduated. MF: You all stayed. CW: No, twelve from Logan came down. Twelve had dropped out of our class. MF: Oh you know Dora Peterson is from your nursing grade right? CW: I think so. MF: ’53 or ’54 I always get the two confused. Because it would be Dora Leskow. CW: Oh yes. MF: She’s’53. There you go. CW: Yes, so she was one of them. MF: That’s right because they were up in Logan and their hospital as far as the school closed, something happened and they came down. It was like their senior year. CW: They weren’t too happy about that, but they were fun. MF: That’s right I forgot about that. Well I appreciate you letting us come visit with you. CW: As I was saying, did you ever go down in the catacombs? And she says no I never heard of it and now I think it went from the nursing home over to the hospital underground. It was dark and spooky and damp. I remember there was shelves that must have been for food storage, but once in awhile we would go 13 down, not once in awhile, we did it once. My little sister was Kathleen and she was brave and she took us down there. I guess some of them would sneak over there and get bread and come up and have toast. MF: Nobody could see you? CW: No. MF: Do you remember the little confectionary? Hogge’s Confectionary across the street? CW: Yes. MF: It was north of the hospital. It may have been Murray’s. I don’t know if it was Murray’s at that time or if it was still Hogge’s. I can’t remember. CW: Hogge’s I think. MF: Was it still Hogge’s? CW: We used to get our laundry soap over there and little things. MF: Catherine lives out in my ward. The one that owned it. CW: Oh, does she? MF: Yes, so I have to ask everybody, do you remember Catherine? CW: Probably if I saw her. MF: If you did you would know. She is so cute. We appreciate you letting us come visit with you. Is there anything else you have thought of or want to share with us? CW: You just have so many memories of things you did. 14