Oral History Program Gail Crisenhall Taylor Interviewed by Marci Farr 2 September 2010 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Gail Crisenhall Taylor Interviewed by Marci Farr 2 September 2010 Copyright © 2010 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The St. Benedict’s School of Nursing was founded in 1947 by the Sisters of Mount Benedict. The school operated from April 1947 to 1968. Over the forty-one year period, the school had 605 students and 357 graduates. In 1966, the program became the basis for Weber State College’s Practical Nursing Program. This oral history project was created to capture the memories of the graduates and to add to the history of nursing education in Ogden. The interviews focus on their training, religion, and experiences working with doctors, nurses, nuns, and patients at St. Benedict’s Hospital. This project received funding from the Utah Humanities Council and the Utah Division of State History. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management Special Collections All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Gail Crisenhall Taylor, an oral history by Marci Farr, 2 September 2010, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Gail Crisenhall Taylor Graduation Photo Class of 1965 Gail Crisenhall Taylor September 2, 2010 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Gail Crisenhall Taylor, conducted by Marci Farr and Sarah Langsdon, on September 2, 2010. In this interview, Gail discusses her recollections and experiences with the St. Benedict’s School of Nursing. MF: This is Marci Farr. We are interviewing Gail Crisenhall Taylor at her home in Ogden, Utah. It is September 2, 2010. She graduated from the St. Benedict's School of Nursing in 1965. Could you tell us just a little bit about your early life, where you grew up, a little bit about your family, where you attended high school? GT: I grew up in Ogden, went to Weber High School for the first year, and then they built Bonneville so we were the second graduating class. MF: Oh good. GT: Not so much. New schools aren't very fun. They are totally empty and they echo. We got to make all the school songs, all the school mascots, and all of that. That part was good. I grew up in Washington Terrace. My dad worked at Hill Field. He was pretty high up I guess. I think he was in weapons and maintenance. He got to skip the war because they didn't allow him to go because of whatever he was doing—he worked on the Atom bomb project and all that kind of crap. I had a twin brother. I just always wanted to be a nurse. MF: Did you take classes while you were in high school? 2 GT: I took chemistry and just your basics but we didn't have all that much to offer like they do now. You can't do pre-reqs to be in college and skip senior year and all that. You could just take your basic English, some chemistry, and biology and that kind of stuff. But basically you got it in college, no jump start. MF: Why did you decide to become a nurse? GT: I don't know. It was just always there. I always wanted to be a nurse and I was very excited when I got into St. Ben's. I can't really say much except that. That is all I ever wanted to be. It just seemed like that was where I was supposed to be. MF: Why did you select St. Benedict's? GT: The three year programs had a better context for just nursing. Degree programs were just starting. They always pushed that if you went and got your degree you were going to be a supervisor, you were going into teaching, you were going to do those kinds of things, do research—I didn't want to do any of that. I wanted more hands on. Three year programs always seemed like the better deal. Now it would be nice to have a combination where they got a little bit more experience with so much electronics and techno stuff. MF: So was this your first time away from home? GT: Yes basically. It wasn't that far since I lived in town. The nuns were very strict. You could only be out till eight o'clock. You had to sign in and sign out. You had a ten, a twelve, and a one a week and those were on the weekends. You had a ten on Sunday and you had to sign in. If you didn't sign in you were in big trouble. Luckily that didn't count for the kids in town so you could go home for the 3 weekend if you wanted to. There was a group of us that hung out together. Half would go to Judy's house and half would come to my house or Emily's house and spend the weekend. They probably didn't appreciate that but it worked out well for us. MF: Who was your roommate when you were in training? GT: Judy was one and Kay Easton was another one. When we went out of state they split us into three or four groups of four. So Kay Easton and I and Lillian Shaw, were in a group and then Judy—I can't remember who was in hers. One group went to pediatrics, one group went to psych, and one stayed at the hospital. MF: You went to Denver? GT: We went to Denver for peds and also went to Warm Springs, Montana for psych, three months in a mental hospital forty miles out of town—that was fun. It was only twenty miles out of town and no cars. I owned a car but my mother wouldn't let me drive. How do you get by with that now? It doesn't work. We took the train to Denver but we could have driven. Of course, it was winter. We took the bus to Warm Springs because you could take the train to Butte but you still had to transfer to a bus to get out there. It was in the middle of nowhere. MF: So not a lot of fun? GT: Interesting—probably the best food of the whole deal when we were in psych. They had their own farm and had their own garden and everything. Everything was fresh. They spoiled you. Your housemother—if you'd work till ten o'clock at night she always had hot chocolate, cookies, or cinnamon toast or something. 4 Wandering around the psych hospital in the middle of the night with all the eerie's. Some things were really good. Carrying around a big set of keys wasn't so fun. Everything was locked in your room in your drawers. MF: As far as your training that probably was a good experience. GT: It was very interesting. It wasn't for me. I didn't understand how somebody would ever want to be a psych nurse. MF: How did you and Judy get along? Did you get along well? GT: Yes. MF: Do you have any funny stories about Judy or anything you remember about being roommates for your time in training? GT: Well it's not really funny but it is funny. I was working summers. I am a day person. She is a night person. I ended up working afternoons and she worked days. I don't know how that ever worked out but she wanted to go with my husband. He worked in the lab. I was trying to get them lined up and I had a huge fight with this kid who I thought I was going to marry and broke up and he asked me out and I went. There you go. She was not happy. She didn't speak to me for about a year but then she found out that they were second cousins. So see, that is funny. I thought that was pretty funny. She probably didn't think it was so funny at the time, I didn't either but what do you do? MF: So tell us about some of your classmates. GT: Oh we had Kathy Motichka, Diane Zufelt, Sister Mary Bernard, we had this group of us that—whenever we would go see the Prisca or whatever we would go 5 together. There was Zu, Emily, Sister Mary Bernard, Raeann Cook, Motichka, and Judy. There were six or seven of us. She must be taking our picture in here. Anyway, I found out—did you know Ogden had segregation? I did not know that until I was twenty—well, eighteen when I went to St. Ben's. After we would go to one of these field trips we would always stop and have a hamburger because we were away from school and we found out there were places that wouldn't let us in because of Emily. So we boycotted them—couldn't believe that they did that here. It was truly an eye opener for me because I didn't even think about it. I went to school with black kids. They were in football at South Junior High. One was the president of our school. I was like, "Hello? There is segregation here?" There was the nun, the black girl, and us so we just kind of all hung out together. MF: Do you still keep in contact with most girls? GT: I keep mostly in contact with Kay but like I said we ended up working. Zu moved to California, Judy ended up working more. She got a job with a physician and you grow apart when you get your families and get working you scatter and you lose track. I think Diane kept better track of most people because she ended up not working and she had the time. She did a lot of things at home as far as working. She had a day care and stuff for awhile. She had the time to keep in contact. When you end up with family and everybody's schedules are totally different it is hard. 6 SL: Did Sister Mary stay in the dorms with you or did she have to stay with the Sisters? GT: She and Sister Pacelli had to stay in the dorms. Not in the dorms but in with the nuns. Have you seen the buildings where the old hospital was where the dorms are? The dorms were shaped in an "L." This was our dorm and the second floor in the front part was where the nuns stayed. Judy and I had the room right in the front of our building. I don't think it shows the building but anyway, here are the nuns and here is the stairwell and here is our room. We were doing some stupid thing and Sister Berno came and Judy tried to hide in the closet. I can't even remember what we were doing. Sister Berno didn't even hesitate. She walked in and went right to the closet, "Miss Roe!" I think we were probably being a little noisy after curfew. She was very cute, a neat, neat lady. MF: She was your director or nursing, right? GT: She was the director of nursing, yes. MF: Is she still alive? Have you heard? GT: I don't think she is. I don't think she was a youngster then. I was trying to remember who was and who isn't. I know Sister Estelle is gone. But I haven't really talked to Sister Stephanie about who is and who isn't. They have got their little monastery here now. I know they treated Sister Mary Joe not very nice because she was from a different mother house. She was from Idaho. It shouldn't 7 matter but they treated her a little different. She was considerably older than us. I think she was probably in her thirties when she started nursing. MF: We'll have to ask then. GT: Yes, ask because I have no idea. They all look kind of the same age when they were wearing that habit. Here is Sister Mary Bernard. Sister Pacelli was from the mother house in St. Cloud. I don't even know whatever happened to her. I know Sister Mary Bernard is still in Idaho. Zu kept in touch with her. Zu is the one you need to talk to because she kept in touch with a lot more people. MF: We'll have to make sure we sent her a letter with her information. GT: Probably not. You probably don't have her information. She was in Sacramento and then she moved to Alaska by way of several different things. She called me out of the blue one day. MF: Did you ever get caught breaking any rules or sneaking out? GT: No we were really lucky. We were lucky we had friends. SL: Did you have to sneak through the tunnels or were their windows you could get in? GT: If you had a friend they could sneak you through the first floor windows. Or if you knew somebody that would let you in but that was all upperclassmen and they mostly didn't unless it was desperate. The dorm closed up and the only way to get in was the front door of the hospital and you had to sign in with the operator. You had to pass that and get to the elevator or the back elevator without anybody seeing you if you were going to sneak in. You couldn't do it through the ER 8 because you still had to sign a book. If you didn't sign the book you were toast. You had to sign the book. You had to sign out. If you could get out without signing then there was a possibility that you could actually sneak in. But no, they had you all figured. They had been doing it for years. They knew the moves. MF: What do you remember most about the Sisters? GT: Most of them were really, really nice and very, very knowledgeable. They cared about you getting through but they didn't cut you any slack. Some of them were nicer than others but that is everybody anyway, it doesn't matter if you are a nun or not. MF: Did they interact with the students? Did you have any activities? GT: We had activity night. They tried to teach us to knit and that was crazy. They had different nights. We would have picnics out on the lawn. Judy may not have told you when we had a shooting up there. There was a shooting at the hospital. We missed it because we were gone to Catholic instruction classes in Layton. They were having their weekly to do at the school and this wacko girl shot somebody else—Capharelli a younger student. MF: Was she in nursing? GT: I think she—we had first year girls in medical records and radiology in our class and then they switched over after that first year because we had terminology and a bunch of stuff that we all took together. Then they went their separate ways and this girl was in medical records and evidently she was—I don't know. I was thinking she may have been gay. I won't say it but I am pretty sure she was and 9 she had the hots for one of the juniors because Capharelli was a year younger than us. She was, "no way, " and this girl went ape and lost it and came out shooting and got her in the stomach. Kathy Motichka talked her down. But she was out there with Capharelli the whole night. She ended up having a five or six hour surgery. MF: How scary. GT: Needless to say they didn't let us back in because the cops were surrounding the building and all the nuns were... MF: Oh wow that would shake you up for sure. GT: Yes. I thought Judy would remember more than I did but evidently not. She and I were not there. Diane was probably there. I know she was working. MF: What were some of your favorite classes that you took? Did you have any? GT: Mostly the nursing and the patient care ones I enjoyed the most. They were all really hard. MF: Do you remember any of your instructors that you had? GT: Mrs. Etcheverry, Janice Hassell, Rosemary Sullivan, we have all these pictures. After looking at them I remembered who was doing what. Mrs. Etcheverry was military. I think she had been military. They had uniforms that were totally starched. You could stand them up. They were an A-line. They would do them in the laundry and they were so stiff you had to do this to get them apart. Then you could set them right over here if you wanted. Then you had to pleat them in the back with a belt. You got them every week. Mrs. Etcheverry wore— everybody 10 wore white. You wore a uniform always. I don't care where she went you would be covered and drenched in blood because you were a clutz. She could walk through and she never ever got a drop on her. I don't know how she did that but she never ever got dirty. I watched her for years. She was my OB instructor. I got in trouble from her then too. She was orthopedic and no matter what she did she was always neat and tidy. She was very precise. All of our instructors were really, really good. They did follow you. They made sure you did everything. You had to sign off—she had to sign you off. They didn't just hand you over to the staff and say, "Do this." They made sure you did it. MF: Was that when you were just starting off on the floor? GT: No matter when. All the time on the floor they would check on you all the time. You would either work afternoons, go to school in the morning or work mornings and go to school in the afternoon. There was always a clinical instructor when you were in the hospital until you were a senior. Then they would still bounce in just to keep you off balance. You never knew when they were going to show up because they just wanted to make sure you were doing everything as you were supposed to. Handing them off like they do these days is very strange because I worked in day surgery the last fifteen or sixteen years and they just drop them off. They would say, "Oh we are going to have a meeting at one-ish. " "Okay. " We had to practice all of the things that we learned on each other. So you better get along with your roommate. MF: So how was that? 11 GT: It is scary to do stuff on people you know but if you can do it it probably makes you better because you get over that fear. IV's are totally different than they are now but the Gl tubes—there are a few things that we didn't have to have which was really good. When you did them on the patient the clinical instructor was right there probably five or six times before you were ever signed off to be able to take care of it by yourself. MF: That probably helped your confidence. GT: "I can do this." Especially when she is right there eyeing you like a hawk. MF: Do you remember some of the doctors that were there while you were in training? GT: No you are so caught up in just trying to stay alive and not screw up. Swindler, I remember him. Every nurse in the hospital was terrified of him. He had the Wecker shoes, we all had to have them, they are really good for your feet. This was before Nike, Reebok, and all those. They were a heavy leather shoe and all the floors were linoleum which now going back to which is a good thing for infection and you could hear him walking. All the nurses would scatter. He was really a marshmallow. I worked operating room and he taught me a lot. He worked every Wednesday for forever at Shriner's from the time he started his practice. Not that many people really knew, they just thought it was his Wednesday off but he worked down there every single week for I don't know how many years donating his time to Shriner's Hospital. He was a neat man. I think when he retired he worked down here at the mission and stuff. 12 Doctor Jorgensen OB was really nice and thoughtful. I learned a lot from him. We had interns at the time. We learned quite a bit from them. They would have different talks and try to get them to come to class and stuff. When I had the operating room I knew that was where I wanted to be. I spent the first thirty years there. I worked summers there one year after I had my training for my three months. My first time to scrub by myself was his first time to actually do something. It was entertaining. It was very simple like a biopsy but still very first time alone and his very first time alone. We were a team. It went okay except he dropped the specimen but it was okay. We became quite close. He was a very neat guy, married, and they lived in some apartments out back. He happened to be on OB rotation when I got there. Mrs. Etcheverry was the instructor. We are also called by the last name—Miss so and so. The nuns had an issue with that. You can't do that with a doctor. They went to school a really long time to earn that title and whether you like them or not you should respect the title. Anyway, he always called me Gail because of our mutual experience in the operating room. One day this Hispanic lady was in labor and the baby's head was turned. To me it was like all the baby had to do was turn and he said, "Oh you get to deliver this baby because I don't speak Spanish. It's okay, all you do is catch. She has had nine so it's not going to be a problem. " "Oh really? Is this payback for the surgery?" So anyway he let me deliver this baby. That was pretty fun. That was really neat and I got in so much trouble. It was a really great experience but Mrs. Etcheverry was livid. 13 MF: Oh I am sure. GT: She said, "You are going to get kicked out of school. You can't do that anymore." He gave some big lecture; I can't remember what on, on OB and got me out of trouble. It was like, "Wow." That was pretty fun. I think I was the only one in the class that got to—all it was was catch. He really was right but still an amazing thing to do that. MF: I'm sure your other classmates were like, "really?" GT: Yes pretty much. MF: What would you do with your classmates if you had a night off? What was something you did together? GT: Not that much to do then. Basically you didn't get off all that much time and you were doing stuff you shouldn't—some of us. Some of us were drinking and we weren't supposed to—trying to meet some guys. Judy went to school with a girl— we became friends—Joan Walsh and her dad was military. She graduated when she was sixteen because she started school in Japan because he was Air Force. She started school when she was four—smart. She went to Utah State and majored in language and math—math because there were more boys in the class. So we would go up to Utah State and visit with her. MF: Did you do much with Hill Air Force Base? GT: No. MF: Did they have dances or anything like that? GT: They did but we only went a couple of times. We didn't do that very much. 14 Basically with all the school and study you didn't have time just to keep up. You were in the library every night until you fell into bed. If you skipped you were in trouble. Just keep your head above water. MF: Surgery was your favorite rotation? GT: Yes. Peds was interesting. Like I said we got to watch a surgery and then I knew right then—that was before I went to OR and I thought, "This looks like it could be pretty fun." MF: Why do you think surgical was so interesting? GT: I don't know. I liked instrumentation and I liked the techniques. You felt like you were helping people. I had a couple of experiences working as an aide—it seemed like all the really nice people died on you. MF: That is usually how it works. GT: That is how it works. I have got too close to a couple of pre-cancer patients and when you are eighteen that is kind of devastating. I think you need more psychological prep which probably if they still had their program you would have had a little more preparation for that death and dying thing. I just liked the instrumentation and the fact that it changed all the time. MF: That's true. It probably wasn't the same thing. GT: It wasn't the same. Even though you did the same surgery something new came out every month. They didn't even have cautery when I started hardly. Everything you cut and tied. You spent the first hour cutting suture enough to do a case where now it's hardly any. 15 MF: Which was your least favorite floor or rotation? GT: Psych. No question on that. A patient tried to kill me and got me mixed up in her delusional system. I almost got kicked out of school because I couldn't get the instructor to believe this lady was out to get me. MF: That would be a little scary. GT: She was supposed to be my patient to diagnose. I said, "She is crazy. She tried to kill me." That didn't get them out of it. I started talking to people I wasn't supposed to because they had some teenage kids in there that had different problems. So I started talking to them instead which was the big mistake. It almost got me kicked out. The one girl I was talking to.had been admitted to that psych hospital when she was like ten years old. I don't know—she had anger management. I don't think she was schiz—I can't really remember what she had. I know she had this huge weight problem and she hated herself. I don't know— we just talked, she got on a diet, kept out of the white room with padded cells, she kept out of that white jacket with long sleeves and then when that lady caught me—I always watched for her and she caught me in the big recreation room that they had. I didn't see her and she caught me from behind and you weren't allowed to hit them. I couldn't even get out of the—you know. That girl just came and just smashed her. MF: Wow. GT: She saved my life, I think, but then she said, "I want to go home with Gail." I thought, "I am dead." So then it came out that I really did have a problem with 16 this lady but I shouldn't have been talking to the teenager. "No, she can't go home with you." MF: But it was a good thing she saved your life. GT: Yes. I really didn't like psych. MF: That would be so scary. You never know because of the unbalance. GT: That was before all of the meds came out. That is when they were just walking them into the shock therapy and you held them down. I didn't like psych. MF: That would be so hard to watch people go through that. That would be hard. GT: Didn't like psych at all. MF: Do you remember any of your patients that you cared for? GT: Not by name. Names are gone. There were these two really neat people, one man and one lady who had a really bad cancer and they just stayed on medical until they died and what neat people they were. Other than that, no, I don't remember names that much. MF: Do you remember any experiences when you were in Denver or in Hastings? GT: I didn't go to Hastings. MF: You talked about Warm Springs. What about Denver? GT: You went through all different sections of the hospital. It was like surgical, medical, cancer—it was a big learning hospital, a big teaching hospital. They would make rounds and have all these different talks. Every week you would go to rounds and meet the surgeons and the residents and everybody would discuss one patient. I remember one on juvenile rheumatoid arthritis that was really 17 interesting. When I ended up on my surgical rotation that little baby was also on the rotation. When they were discussing it she had this tumor up here and they said it was going to be a three hour surgery so you can come watch it for your morning. You worked in the morning and went to school in the afternoon. I said, "Okay, I can do that." So this tumor ended up being a twelve and a half hour surgery because it connected to one in her throat. They had to go all the way through. She was probably eight months old. I got to watch that whole thing. I got to take care of her the next morning. What I remember the most was she was in an incubator just because of the oxygen and all that kind of stuff. They didn't have all the monitors like they have now. There was a stethoscope dangling and she was still intubated. "I am wide awake and let me out of here." She was up there batting all these things and playing with all this stuff. They took the tube out and she acted like she never had any surgery. Kids are amazing. They are so resilient and so quick. Even now, when my grandson had his surgery, the parents are more freaky than kids. They will get hernia repairs at eight months or nine and they are crawling as soon as they have a nap, get home, they wake up and it's like they never had anything done. They are off and running. Except for tonsils. Tonsils slow you down. Anything else they are quick and keep on trucking. To me that is the most amazing is kids. MF: Do you remember where your capping ceremony was held? GT: In the school. MF: Was it just in the nursing home? 18 GT: Yes in the nurse's dorm. MF: What do you think was probably your greatest challenge while you were in training? GT: Getting through. Just keeping your head above water and not getting kicked out. It seemed like every time you turned around somebody else was gone. And psych, psych was the greatest challenge for me. That was not my—I think you figure even now when you go to school you hit all the spots. You hit medical, orthopedics is pretty much gone, they hit peds, psych, you spend time in all these different units and then after you graduate some people float for awhile and they still hit all the units. But you end up gravitating to one usually that you end up staying there. I ended up in operating room. As soon as I hit the operating room I said, "Can I work here?" Judy hit operating room and liked it, then she went to the ER and ended up head nurse in the ER. I never wanted to be a boss, too much paper. It wasn't any fun. Why spend all your time in politics and meetings? Then she did OB and then came back to the operating room. You just end up in a spot. There were actually people who liked psych. "Good for you. I am happy for you." Now, I think it would take longer to figure out what you liked just because you spend such a short time. You had three months in each group. You pretty much figured it out before you ever graduated from school. You knew where you were going to end up or at least try to end up. MF: So did you stay at St. Benedict's after you graduated? GT: I did. 19 MF: You were there for forty years? Is that what you said? GT: Forty-four. MF: You just retired. GT: I just retired. I also worked for a surgeon because I worked full-time for about five years. Then I ended up part-time two days a week because I was trying to get on with this surgeon full-time but he never would hire me full-time so I ended up more than full-time. The other three days I ended up with him. I was grandfathered. I was probably one of the first surgical assistants in the state. Then we traveled. Between call, the operating room at St. Ben's, and his call. He had an airplane and we got to travel before they had a bunch of hospitals down south. We went to Mount Pleasant, Preston, Malad—he would take his airplane down and have to buzz the hospital. They would come out and get you most of the time. We had to thumb sometimes. "This is real class boss. He is in a suit and I am in my whites and we are thumbing a ride on a cattle truck. This isn't my idea." We went all over the place. St. Ben's is a little hospital. It is bigger now but compared to McKay and all these other ones it is small. I actually think it is better for care. You are less of a number, less of a robot situation. You go down to these tiny hospitals where they had an operating room and they treated you like you were from the Mayo Clinic. That is not a bad thing. They only did tonsils and stuff in the little hospitals. We would take a couple of instruments and stuff. They don't even to gastric anymore. 20 We would take out somebody's stomach. They would be just dumb founded. It was pretty fun. MF: Well we appreciate you letting us come and visit with you.