Oral History Program Virginia Tanner Interviewed by Marci Farr 16 October 2008 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Virginia Tanner Interviewed by Marci Farr 16 October 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: Virginia Tanner, an oral history by Marci Farr, 16 October 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Virginia Tanner Application Photo March 21, 1952 Graduation Photo Class of 1954 Virginia Tanner September 16, 2007 October 16, 2008 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Virginia Tanner. It was conducted October 16, 2008 and includes her recollections and experiences with the Dee School of Nursing. The Interviewer is Marci Farr. MF: This is Marci Farr. I am interviewing Virginia Hunter Tanner. It is October 16, 2008. I am interviewing her for the Dee School of Nursing. She graduated with the class of 1954. Virginia, will you just tell us a little bit about your early life, your family, and your education? VT: I grew up living by the Dee hospital. I had a family of ten brothers and sisters. We lived on Custer Avenue and I went to Lorin Farr Elementary School. It is not there anymore. I went to Central Jr. High, then I graduated from Ogden High School and went right into nursing that Fall. MF: Why did you decide to become a nurse? VT: The reason was, that I lived by the hospital. We walked everyday back and forth to school and passed the hospital. I would see the ambulances and the people as they went in and I just thought it was wonderful. I used to say when I was a kid, “Someday I am going to stand on the inside of the door waiting for the ambulance.” So that really got me curious. I was really intrigued with it. MF: And the Dee, of course, because it was close. VT: Right, because I lived close to the hospital. MF: Did you have to take any tests? VT: We did. They gave us a sociology test. It was more or less I guess to see if you were socially adapt to be able to be a nurse. 1 MF: So that was probably the yellow paper I saw in your folder. VT: Yes. MF: That makes more sense now. VT: It was really simple, simple questions, logical questions. In fact, at the time I thought this is just kind of silly. Why are they asking these simple questions? But I guess there were people who didn’t answer them easily. MF: So what were your first impressions when you first entered? VT: When I first went in I thought that I wouldn’t have to do anymore schooling. I just graduated from high school and I took Latin, chemistry and all the hard classes because they told me I was going to need those for nursing so I thought well, when I go into nursing I won’t have to do that anymore, they’ll teach me how to take care of people. What a naïve idea that was. Once you were accepted into the program, the first thing you do is go to college. And instead of a high school level, taking an hour of physiology and anatomy and those kind of classes, which I took, then it was four hours of the same heavier curriculum. So that is what I did. That was a surprise to me. But it wasn’t bad enough that I—thought I couldn’t do the work. MF: That you didn’t give up. That is good. Do you remember what your first duties were when you first entered the program? As far as when you were on the floor did you have any first duties that you had to start doing? VT: The first thing they asked us to do was to learn how to take a temperatures and blood pressures, etc, and how to do AM care which consisted of washing the patients hands and face and getting them ready for breakfast and PM care 2 consisting of washing face and hands and a back rub getting ready for sleep. To take care of the patients we’d have to run over and do our care in the mornings and come home and get ready for school, go to school, and come back in the afternoon, in the evening, and do our PM care, and pretty well study the rest of the night. We were really busy. Those first two years, we called it—I thought I was kind of a slave. But we learned how to work. They taught us all about medicine, so we would take anatomy and physiology but we would take medical classes and learn—and then Mrs. Ruth Brown that I told you about, she was the instructor over us. She taught with others day to day working on the floor, and how to do bed baths, etc. The longer we were there the harder the assignments. Not only did we do the medical and the book learning but we also had to do hands on with the patients. MF: You didn’t learn one specific, you learned everything. VT: That is right. Right off the bat I was assigned—after six months—we started September, October, November, December and then I think the next March I was on second medical and I was the charge nurse eleven PM to seven AM over the floor. MF: That is a lot of responsibility. VT: It was. Now days they would question if we were competent after six months but in those days they needed nurses and we were turned loose to take care of the patients. MF: That is good. Your training was adequate enough that you were okay. VT: Oh yes. It was one on one most of the time. 3 MF: That is good. VT: I had a sister that had been a nurse, Mrs. Ruth Brown was her friend so she would say, “Miss Hunter, you have got to be as good as Mary.” So she would always select me to be one of the first to try something new and give me that opportunity. MF: So do you remember who your housemother was when you first entered? VT: No. MF: Sue said the same thing. Who was your roommate? VT: Bonnie Judkins was my roommate. Bonnie Howard Judkins was my roommate the whole time we were there. Next to us was Sue Evans and Gloria Telleson. We used to tease Gloria a lot. We weren’t mean, just silly. All in our class were close to each other. MF: So what were some of the rules that you had to follow while you were in nurses training? VT: Well we had to be in at ten o’clock every night. We had to get up early and dress. We always had to dress full dress while we were in the hospital. They would make you dress and run over and do our care and run back and change clothes for college and run back and change clothes again. MF: So you always had to dress on professional… VT: Yes. MF: What were some of your favorite classes when you were at Weber College? Did you have a favorite? 4 VT: I liked Physiology and Anatomy so that was really good. We also had a class and I can’t remember what class it was but it was on germs and stuff. You people go to college so…do you know? MF: Like Bacteriology? VT: Bacteriology! Exactly it! I took a Bacteriology class and our instructor, I can’t remember his name, I think his last name was Young. The first day we walked into class this is how it was. When we walked into class he said, “Okay, anybody that sneezes in this class will fail the grade.” There was Kleenex sitting on all of our desks, little boxes of Kleenex. He was really scary. I thought that was such a shock. I was eighteen and I thought that is such a shock from high school to college to be told that and mean it. In bacteriology he was just crazy about germs. MF: So he was kind of a freak about it? VT: Yes. We also took a chemistry course from a professor and I remember one— can I tell mean stories? MF: It is all good. VT: They had some kind of a thing in chemistry, some kind of a compound that they put in water and it would cause electricity so it would light up a light bulb. So one day when we were in class we unscrewed the light bulb. The professor came in and he kept doing the same thing and it kind of upset him. So we were kind of renegade kids still young acting. MF: That is a good story. We love those. VT: That was mean. 5 MF: You have to have some stress relief. If you had a night off what is something that you would do with your roommates or girlfriends? VT: We had a piano in the dorm and we would gather around and sing. My problem was—it wasn’t a problem for me because I lived about four blocks from the hospital, just up the street and around the corner, I could be home in five minutes. I spent a lot of down time at my house. It was just funny because when I’d be home I’d say, “A quarter to ten, I’ve got to go back.” Here I am, I have to live four blocks away from home but I would go back to the dorm. MF: So could you go home for the weekend if you chose to do that? VT: Yes, we could do that. And most of the time I did because I was still young and my friends were at home and going to college so we could run around together a lot. MF: That is good. You couldn’t be married, right? VT: You couldn’t be married. MF: Could you be engaged at that point or not? VT: I don’t know. I think there was probably one or two at the last year we were there that might have been secretly engaged but for the most part no we weren’t. It was pretty flat, there was several that left because they got married. I think we started with a class about forty-two and ended up with twenty-four. MF: Wow, so almost in half. VT: That is right. MF: You mentioned you had a curfew. VT: Ten o’clock at night. 6 MF: Who were some of your instructors? Do you remember who they were? VT: Yes. Mrs. Marie Donaldson did a lot. Mrs. Verle B. Lesnan. Miss Louise Schofield taught us. Mrs. Ruth Brown and Miss Sumiko Fujiki, then we had a lot of physicians lecture and then the college professors would come over and lecture. We had Doctor William Stratford from the college teach us sociology. One day we snuck out and left him. We thought that was a good sociology class, I think we went swimming or something up at Rainbow Gardens. He wasn’t too impressed with us. But we got away with it, he was really nice about it. MF: Who were some of the doctors? You just mentioned a few. Do you remember the doctors you worked with while you were in training? VT: Doctor Catlan took care of us. He was kind of a strict doctor. Doctor Rulon Howe was quite the surgeon of the town, he and Doctor Dean W. Tanner also Dr. George Lowe, Dr. Louise Perry, Dr. O. E. Grua and many others. Doctor’s Dumke, Barker, and Louis were in together, those three older men. Doctor Charles Swindler taught our orthopedic class and he was the meanest doctor in town. He would come to class and teach us. I was in the operating room the last year mostly. In between all the training you would go to all the different floors so I was in the operating room and loved it. He was there and so he always said, “I’ll give you a bad time,” and he did. He would come in to class and start yelling our names. “Hunter, get up to the board and draw a long bone and name all of its parts.” That is what he would do. He hated Joyce shoes. In those days they were very popular. He stood this girl up on the table and bent her new shoe. “These are the crappiest shoes,” and he threw them. She started bawling. 7 When I really got in the operating room with him he was the nicest, sweetest, kindest doctor, did a lot of good, and did a lot of work at Shriner’s Hospital. He really did a lot for the old Dee. MF: That is good. VT: He really did. MF: So it was probably just his other persona huh? Isn’t that funny how they have other people that are like that? VT: Doctor O. E. Grua was another good surgeon. Doctor Naisbitt, Sue’s husband, I used to tend their children. We would tend their kids to make extra money so I tended his children a lot. MF: That’s good. VT: That was one of the things we did on the side to make money. Or if we dropped blood and broke the bottle—in those days it was glass. They took your blood… MF: Oh because it was in the glass containers. VT: Yes. Sometimes they would pay you for your blood if you wanted extra money. MF: That is too funny. So tell us about your capping ceremony. You had been in for six months? VT: Right. We went over to that church, Mt. Ogden Ward, and we all sat on the stand and we had music. I don’t know who wrote the words to the Dee Song but we had a song. We would sing that and just have a speaker and prayers. It was probably more LDS type thing. I just remember them for some reason—I wish I could have shown you the lamp that we all had. They lit a candle in this lamp and then we kind of knelt down and they put this white cap on your head. It didn’t 8 have anything on it. Then after the first year you got to put one black stripe perpendicular on the cap, the second year two stripes and the third year three stripes. You could easily walk into a hospital and tell how long the nurse had been in training, if she was a one year, two year, three years, or graduated. If you were graduated you put the string along the top. MF: All the way around the top. VT: That is the way they knew. Mrs. Edna Siedner taught the Professional Adjustments class. She taught us how to be and act professional, even how to fix the seams in our hose. We wore long dresses in those days—ankle length dresses, white, and they were crisp. So the hospital did them until—I am sure until we graduated they would do them so they were starched stiff. MF: Sue said it was hard trying to get those things open so you could get into them. It was like opening a cardboard box. VT: It was. So we did everything in them. Your parents were invited, everybody—so it was just kind of a nice ceremony to let you know you finally got a hat to wear. MF: Tell us about a favorite patient that you had or a hard patient? Do you have any that you remember? VT: No. I remember one of the first patients that I had. This isn’t a fun story. I had a patient that I took care of for a long time, maybe for a month. I gave her AM care, bathed her, and cleaned her room. I know one day we had a class where we had to go see an autopsy. That was gross but anyway we were there and I had a good stomach so it wasn’t too bad. But I remember when we got there, got in the room and sat down it was the patient that I had taken care of for a long 9 time. That wasn’t fun because, you know, you saw her and that was kind of a shock to me. MF: That would be hard. That would be hard to have to do that. So how do you think your training at the Dee, as far as your training if you have gone elsewhere, served you? It has probably made a difference as far as being able to get a job anywhere. VT: Yes. It did. It had a really good reputation. It was an accredited hospital and three years—at the time, Weber State didn’t have a nursing program, so this was a three year school and I graduated with a R. N. degree and it was just logical for me to go there and do that. MF: So after—you had your graduation ceremony in ’54, right? VT: Graduated in ’54. MF: Did you stay at the Dee Hospital after you graduated? VT: I didn’t. My neighbor was the manager of the Ogden Clinic so I went to work there. MF: Oh. VT: It was the old Ogden Clinic when there was just twelve doctors. I was hired with two other girls as working nurses. I did that probably for two or three years and then when I had children—I got married in the meantime, started having children—I worked from ten to seven at night or from nine to seven and that was too long to leave the kids so I went back to the Dee and worked in the operating room. The third year I was in training, I had all my schooling done the third year I spent time in the operating room, out to the TB Sanitorium (that is where the deaf 10 and blind school is now). We had to spend a month there and three months down at the mental hospital in Provo. The Mental Hospital was probably the hardest thing that I did. MF: That is what a lot of them has said, that that was so hard because they just didn’t have the drugs that they have now. VT: We all got our eyes opened to mental illness, and here you are like nineteen. By the time I was twenty years old, I had been out in the world and received a lot of eye opening experiences because it was hard in those days. MF: Sue was saying yesterday that the medical, as far as being able to take care of people, you were one of the best hospitals, there was still such a limited state of the art. VT: It was. Well you can imagine—we overdosed people with insulin. You would overdose them and let them lay in a coma and then bring them out with sugar water. You would have to put those tubes down into their stomachs all the time. That was kind of traumatic, just doing it. I was always afraid that they weren’t going to come out. It was a hard kind of thing but we did it and luckily all of the people lived. That is—probably psychiatric drugs has really made a lot of difference. MF: I think so, as far as the advancement. So you came back to the Dee. Did you go anywhere else or did you stay? VT: Nope, I stayed in the operating room at the Hospital or Surgical Center, all the time until I retired. So not until the last two years I managed the surgical center. MF: When did you retire? 11 VT: 1991. MF: Of course, nursing has changed over the years drastically. How do you think it has changed? VT: Well, being that I worked there for so long and had the training that we did, I was all for Weber State Nursing School coming in. My idea is if you want to do something bad enough and you learn a little about it, you will be a good worker whatever you do. If you want to be a good secretary, you are going to put that out. So I knew that the kids from Weber State that wanted to be good nurses are. You could train them—I noticed that they came over and we would train them but they got paid for what they were doing. Can you see the difference? I went three years and paid them for training. I didn’t feel bad about it but still you can understand the training that we got was so much more because it was so much more on a one on one. MF: And you had that extra year of clinical where you went on floors. VT: Right. Wherever you wanted to go into, like delivery, Sue went into delivery so she could deliver a child by herself. I was in the operating room so, by the time I graduated, they had a good nurse there that didn’t have to be trained anymore. Whereas Weber State you did on the floor training. MF: Exactly. VT: You go in if you understand that. Which, like I say, it didn’t bother me at all because there were girls that went two years at Weber State that were just as good as somebody three years that did not have the common sense to just do common ordinary things. That is the way it is. The thing, I think, that probably 12 bothers me the most is that when you walk into a hospital today, no matter how gorgeous the hospital, how upscale it is, you cannot tell me the difference between an aid or a nurse or a doctor or a cleaning lady. I am sorry but that really kind of bothers me. Edna Seidner would turn over in her grave if she saw today—my husband just had surgery this spring in the hospital and even though they were really really good, we got a long really fine, it is different. He got good care because he told them, “She was a nurse,” so then they were all…they knew I was going to check on them. But I think that is probably the hardest thing. I think you can do both ways. I think you can still wear pants and I think they could still be professional but it would sure be nice that they had to wear something to differentiate people. MF: Yes, that makes a difference. What do you think was your greatest challenge as a nurse? VT: Oh I don’t know, probably new procedures all the time. Just being there and the time spent. I loved it. I love nursing so I really loved the operating room. I could have gone sixteen hours a day in the operating room just to stand and operate because I loved it. So to learn the new doctors coming in, like for instance, Doctor Tanner used to do everything. Most of the doctors would do all kinds of surgery from head to toe. They could take care of all patients and do all kinds of general surgery. But nowadays they are all so specialized—that is what starting coming in. So then we had to switch over and learn that. We had to learn to work cardiology, neuro surgery or to learn to work orthopedics, OBGYN and that 13 is probably the biggest challenge—and laser, just learning the laser and learning how to do new procedures. That was probably the biggest thing. MF: That would be a challenge. So with your classmates, do you still get together with them? VT: Yes. MF: The ones that you graduated with? You are still in contact with those that are still alive? VT: Most of them, yes. Twice a year we meet and usually we’ll have a party on the side, some of us. MF: That is good that you still keep in contact. You lived together you kind of had to rely on each other. VT: Oh yes. MF: You could get through by yourself but it is easier when you have somebody that knows what you are going through. VT: Oh we had to rely on each other and help each other. We would get in trouble— I’ll have to tell you, if you want to hear… MF: Oh yes, please do. VT: One day I got in trouble, I’ll tell you what it was for. When we used to, like I told you, we used to have to dress in the mornings and run over and give care and run back and get ready for school. So Mrs. Brown would always check on us to see if we did it right. That afternoon I remember sitting in class and she came in and she says, “Okay, Sister ‘so and so’ you go back over. You didn’t do this. And Sister Hunter, go back and take care of the oxygen tank that you didn’t take 14 care of.” I had done everything right but in the olden days they didn’t have piped in oxygen. They just had oxygen tanks, big oxygen tanks and the gauge on them. Off of the gauge was a bottle of water so that the air went through the water so it would be moist when it went into the person. I had only left the bottle half full instead of filling it up to the top like I should have. So I had to leave the class, go get dressed, hose and everything, go over there, hat and all, and fill the bottle full of water. That was how strict they were with us. They watched everything we did so that things had to be just right. It is interesting when my husband had surgery and they come in and started an IV and threw all the covers on the floor, like the caps off of the IV and things like that, they just drop them. Some of them pick them up but I was reminded of the “olden” days when we kept things perfect. MF: You had to do everything. You had to reuse everything because there was no disposable anything. VT: No. That is right. We had to sterilize the thermometers and sterilize the syringes and needles. MF: Did you have to pay for breakage? VT: Oh they threatened but they didn’t. No, I don’t think I ever had to pay for anything other than blood. That was too expensive. So they would do that. It wasn’t that bad. MF: That is good. So when you were in nurses training, what do you think, as far as when you were first going through, was it a stressful experience? VT: Oh, the whole thing was stressful. 15 MF: The whole process. VT: Well it was just out of your comfort zone the whole time. That was something—I don’t know why in my mind I thought I was just going to waltz in there and start taking care of patients, making the bed and all those kind of things. But it was stressful. We had to not only do correct procedures and drugs and chart them right because somebody could sue us if we charted wrong. Not as bad as today but we jumped up when the doctor walked in the room. We opened the door for them. We gave them the chart and we opened the elevator and they got on first that was ridiculous, too. That was the other extreme. We really went from one extreme to the other, I think. It wasn’t necessary to be that structured. It was a lot nicer when we worked in the operating room where people started acting like human beings to us. A lot of doctors were still down the line and you had your place and you better know where your place was and stay in it. I was lucky enough to work with Doctor Tanner a lot. Of course, my name was Tanner so that helped. He was good to me. There were a lot of doctors that—we got things thrown at us at times. If they didn’t want an instrument they would throw it back at you. I don’t think they allow that anymore. MF: No, it is equal. You are both there to do a job. VT: But once I went to the clinic I became friends with most of them. After years and years—they become your friend and so it was okay. MF: That is good. VT: But it was stressful. Learning, especially new procedures, I remember they had a thing called a cantor tube. It was used if you had a bowel obstruction. 16 Nowadays they can scope you just easy, they put you out and just scope you with an instrument that has mirrors, lights and a camera. We didn’t have anything like that. The cantor tube had a balloon on the end of this long red tube and it had mercury in it to make it heavy and we would wind that thing up and put it down somebody’s nose and make them swallow it. It would go down into their stomach and it went clear into the intestines and it would have graduation lines all along this tube and every day or so they would x-ray to see where it was. It was used to break through the blockage. There were a lot of old things like that that you had to learn to do, to catheterize somebody, everything was kind of a little traumatic thing until you learned. You could always kill somebody. I guess that was always it. MF: That would be a scary thought. VT: If you gave the wrong medication and a lot of girls did. Luckily enough I didn’t remember one stressful time—probably when I was in my second year—that I was on medical floor and there was just me and an aid and somebody died every other night for a month. MF: Holy cow. VT: We had wonderful interns there with us. We had an intern—that was one good thing in those days, that we could have interns. But that was hard—it was stressful, because it was life and death, and we were young still. MF: So much responsibility, though. VT: So much responsibility—we did—a lot of responsibility. MF: Oh gosh, that is stressful just thinking about it. 17 VT: But we did it. Once you learned it and you did it and you accomplished it—every year when we would have those ceremonies and you get to put that stripe on, you knew why you had done it. You knew why you deserved that. You had paid that price and so by the time we finished you can see why it was great thing to become… MF: That is a great accomplishment. VT: And still to this day people think I know everything. Somebody will call, “Who do you think I should go to?” I don’t know any doctors, hardly, anymore. People will call just to ask you questions or what do you think about this child or “I have got a rash.” It is one of those things that you are forever doing. MF: That is probably good though, if you can make them feel better until they can get in. I always do that to my friend because she is a nurse. VT: You do. It is a common thing. MF: It is a comfort because you know they have been through it, they know the training. We appreciate you letting us come visit with you. That wasn’t too painful was it? VT: No. MF: Did you have anything that you wanted to ask her? MJ: I was just kind of wondering, you had mentioned that you had sisters that had gone into nursing and you grew up right by the hospital, did you know a lot of people that had gone into nursing beforehand? VT: No. MJ: It was just your sister. 18 VT: Well my mother had a friend who delivered me at our home. As far as my friends, I was the only one that pretty well went in. MJ: How did your other friends feel about you going into nursing? What did they think about you being a nurse? VT: They—it was okay with them. They all had their own little careers. Everyone would go away to college. The only thing that bothered me, kind of hurt the first year, I thought, “I think I’ll go into nursing but I’m going to join the choir at Weber State,” because I sang a lot and of course, they told me that I couldn’t join the choir. I wasn’t going to be able to do that. It was more hard on me. I knew I had to be in at ten o’clock at night and all my friends—and I had like twenty lived close by. My friends I grew up with, we are all old, but we still meet. That was the hard thing. I was the one that was left out then. MF: Because you had to go home. VT: They could still all go to college and having a great time going to dances and stuff. MJ: Did they ever kind of question why you had gone into nursing? VT: No they just always knew—I had talked—one of these days I am going to be a nurse. I always knew when I was just a kid, from the fourth grade on, I think, probably that I wanted to do that. MF: That is good. VT: And loved it. MF: That is a good thing. You have to like what you do. It is okay to like your job. Don’t you think? 19 MJ: Yes. MF: It is okay to be able to enjoy what you are doing. VT: It is and I had great friends that I worked with. In fact, Tuesday I was to lunch with some of the kids from the surgery center that we still get together with. So it is a lifelong friendship. MJ: Do you think there was any—kind of along the same lines, was there perhaps a little more respect or esteem for you because you had chosen to go into this? VT: Probably. Probably so because it took me a little longer. Not that secretaries weren’t anything. Now, today, I would love to be a secretary. I managed the surgical center the last couple years that I worked so I had a couple girls that were secretaries and one said, “Let me teach you how to get on the computer and do this.” And I said, “No, I’ll never use that.” So we went on a mission in, ’92, and ’93 and the first thing they said, “You are in the office and here is the computer.” I gave all the shots to the missionaries. I was in Fiji so I worked with Australian doctors. They treated me as if I was a doctor. I could call when the missionaries got sick, they would say, “What do you need?” That really helped the mission because I had that training. MF: So it has served you well. VT: It has. MF: That is so wonderful. MJ: Was there a sense of the general community? VT: I think so because the Dee family was very important. They were. There was always a lot of love and respect. I think the doctors in Ogden—everybody kept it 20 on that type of a level. They were almost little Gods. They thought they were too. But they were, they were on that level of respect so if you could work with those people you were respected. They were the rich people that lived up on the hill. Not so much anymore because there are a lot of people that have a lot of money that are not doctors now but in those days—you look back fifty years ago. MF: Did you know any of the Dee family? VT: I knew Sister Stewart. Mrs. Stewart. MF: Oh Elizabeth. Mrs. Stewart, she is the one that I knew and had met because I was on the committee at one time. MF: Oh for the alumni? VT: Yes. So she would always pay for all our mailing. She is a sweetheart. She gave a lot of support to us. MF: When she was growing up she wanted to be a nurse but it just didn’t work out. I think that is why she volunteered with the nursing program—that is why she did what she did. VT: Yes, we considered her as one of us so she would come to our meetings and she would just give us money and support. MF: It is nice to have those books. It is nice to keep in contact with those close friends and know where they are. That is good. Well we appreciate your time. Thank you so much for letting us come visit. I’ll make sure I get your pictures. 21