Oral History Program Grace Locke Willard Interviewed by Marci Farr 31 July 2008 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Grace Locke Willard Interviewed by Marci Farr 31 July 2008 Copyright © 2009 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Dee School of Nursing was founded in 1910 to provide training for nurses who would staff the new Dee Memorial Hospital. The first class of eight nurses graduated from the school in 1913 and the school continued to operate until 1955, with a total of more than 700 graduates. A new nursing school and home located just east of the hospital was completed in 1917 and all nursing students were required to live in the home during their training. This oral history project was created to capture the memories of the school's alumni before their stories disappear in the same way the Dee Hospital has disappeared. The oral interviews focus on how the women became involved with the school, their experiences going through training, and how they used the training. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management Special Collections All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Grace Locke Willard, an oral history by Marci Farr, 31 July 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Grace Hall Willard Application Photo June 6, 1948 Graduation Photo Class of 1951 Grace Hall Willard September 10, 2008 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Grace Locke Willard. It was conducted July 31, 2008 and concerns her recollections and experiences with the Dee School of Nursing. The interviewer is Marci Farr. MF: We are interviewing Grace Locke Willard, a graduate of the Dee School of Nursing, class of 1951. We are at her home in Ogden, Utah on July 31, 2008. Grace, tell us about your early life. GW: I was born to Lulu Fullmer and Carl F. Rudolph in Teton Basin, Idaho, May 22, 1920 and came to Ogden in October 1943 because a nice man who owned an auto parts store on 22nd and Washington Boulevard got lost elk hunting. They were looking for his body. They couldn’t declare him dead until they had a body. His name was Rudy M. Bertagnole. To make a long story short we never found his body until forty-three years later some elk hunter, Kevin L. Moore, found near Causey Dam his rifle, his skull, and several bones and his wallet and he could still read the name on his driver’s license. That is why I live in Ogden, because Mr. Bertagnole got lost in a snow storm elk hunting in Guildersheve Canyon October 18, 1943. MF: That is crazy. GW: It is. It is crazy. MF: Why did you decide to become a nurse? You said your sister Eileene Rudolph married Lawrence Glines October 22, 1947 on the “Bride & Groom” Radio show in Chapman-Park Hotel, Los Angeles, California. GW: Yes. They tell me when I was little, about three, I had a stick in my hand and a baby chick in the other hand and I said to my mother, “I didn’t hit it with the stick 1 it’s just crying for its mama.” So that is what was going on when I was about three. But anyway, you heard the story about me being registered to enter the LDS Hospital nursing school in Idaho Falls, Idaho January 1, 1941. MF: Yes, and then your mother, Lulu Fullmer Rudolph, died December 22, 1940. GW: Yes. It took awhile. MF: Because you still had your sister, Eileen, age 11, you had to raise. GW: Yes. MF: And you were twenty-eight, right, when you started the Dee School of Nursing program? GW: I was twenty-eight and everybody else was just eighteen. So they let me have a private room in the nursing home. I was there to study. I didn’t want some eighteen year old girl as a roommate. MF: That was just there for fun. GW: Yes, there were forty-four of us who entered that class and twenty-two of us graduated. It was exactly half. We picked up one or two girls who were ill and had been in a previous class and they finished with us. There were those just looking for a handsome intern they could marry, they all checked out in less than six months. MF: Tell us about your friend Ella Merrill. GW: Well she was within six months of graduating from the LDS Hospital school of nursing in Salt Lake and they (her and her boyfriend) eloped and went to St. George and were married. The news beat them back so they kicked her out. In the nursing classes up at the old Dee I always sat on the front row in an aisle 2 seat. I came back, 1949, after the holidays and someone was sitting in my chair and I sat down beside her and I said, “Who are you, I haven’t seen you before?” She said, “I am Ella Merrill and I heard some married lady broke the door down and that I could get back and finish my nursing here.” So she said, “They have accepted me.” Everybody thought we were sisters. We look alike. MF: You do look a lot alike. GW: Ella was 9 years older than me. She had a boy, thirteen and one eleven when she came back to finish. She was a wonderful nurse. She never worked at the hospital. It was the public health thing; she worked for the city somehow in public health. Ella died December 16, 1997 at age 86. MF: That is good. Before you were in your training you had certain classes that you had to take. To qualify for entrance to Dee School of Nursing, I had to get three more credits—Algebra, Chemistry, and English. I did this at Weber College the summer of 1948. Do you remember any of the nursing staff? Both the doctors and nurses taught some of the classes at the hospital, correct? GW: Yes. GW: But after three strokes I have a hard time with remembering names. MF: That is okay. What were you required to do on a typical day shift? GW: Well for one thing my weight was one hundred and thirty pounds when I entered the nursing class and after the first year my weight was one hundred and ten. So I worked off 20 of them. I wasn’t just a fat housewife anymore. MF: You were hustling. 3 GW: I was hustling on my feet. MF: Did you have your meals at the hospital? And you stayed at the nurse’s home. GW: Yes we lived there. They fed us eggs every morning and I think that is what plugged my arteries. I don’t eat egg yokes anymore. I lost weight because I was on my feet running. MF: What was your favorite floor? You said surgery was your favorite? GW: Yes. MF: Like that was your favorite part to be in. So when you graduated did you stay at the hospital? GW: No I went to work in Doctor Milton Wilcox’s office and he was taking over Keith’s practice until he got home. Yes, here it is right here. I have it. I am sure that is a duplicate. I can read it if you want me to. MF: Go ahead, that’s fine GW: Grace Locke Willard class of 1951. I worked in Ogden with Doctor Milton Wilcox in the private office from September ’51 to May of ’53. June 1953 Doctor Keith Stratford returned from military service to resume private practice and I worked with him through January of 1956 and then February 1956 when a man handed him the key to that new railroad clinic building at 174 West 28th Street, Ogden, Utah. He transferred me to the new outpatient building built by Union Pacific Railroad for the care of their employees. That was an interesting demanding challenge and rewarding place to work for the next thirty years through June of 1986 when I retired. Throughout my nursing career I was an active member of the American Nurses Association, Utah State Nurses Association, and District 2. 4 I was awarded a lifetime membership in USNA and District 2 for my enduring support.” I can show you a picture of that. It is hanging on the wall. “I attended continuing education classes and programs and met accreditation requirements for license renewal through December of 1989.” I have a picture of that last license hanging on the wall. “In retirement I still enjoy travel and photography. I also take classes at Weber State University, an academy for lifelong learning as long as my health, money, and time last I plan to enjoy life. When people ask me my age I tell them in twenty-five years I will be one hundred. Well I am near there I am eighty-eight. I don’t have an ancestor on either side that has lived to eighty-eight. If I hang around until 22 May 2009, I will be 89. MF: Really? GW: So I am overdue. One more stroke and I am out of here. MF: Thanks for sharing your life sketch with us. We appreciate that. I am glad you are going to be at the luncheon. GW: If I am still here. MF: You will be. GW: That is a long ways away. MF: I know. GW: That is what I say. I don’t make plans for tomorrow. MF: That will be good though. GW: But I tell my guardian angels, Len and Shar Postel, who live next door… MF: Yes? 5 GW: “When you find me, don’t call 911; wait until I am cold and call Lindquist’s.”, I am not going to go through that. If I wake up with a tube coming out of every hole, I am going to be mad. And Harry, Doctor Harry Senekjian, says you have to put it in writing. Well I have. I have filled all the forms out. I do not want anybody to call 911 again. I did it when I had my first stroke. I pulled the phone off of the bedside table because I had crawled from the bathroom back into the bedroom and dialed 911. I will never do that again. So I have threatened them and they say, “Oh you can’t mean that.” I say, “I do.” So I have signed all the papers. Dr. Harry Senektian has the original copy in his office. MF: So it is set in stone so don’t mess with it. GW: That is right. Don’t call 911. MF: At that time were you required to attend church? Or was it a choice? GW: I have no clue about that. Maybe I broke another rule I didn’t know about. MF: Do you remember where graduation was held for your class? GW: I think it was right at the nursing home. That is what I remember. MF: Did you receive any kind of stipend at all while you were in training? GW: No. MF: You just got room and board. GW: Yes. MF: Did you know anybody else, members of the Dee family except for Elizabeth Stewart? GW: I think she was probably the only living one at the time and she has been gone for some time. She was in a wheelchair in one picture but she lived for several 6 more years; she is the one who she paid for these rosters. I don’t think we have had one since ’06. MF: I don’t think so. GW: We don’t have an ’07. MF: She also paid for the big book that has everyone’s biography in it? GW: Yes. She was our piggy bank. MF: She is very generous. She loved the nurses. GW: Yes she did. We made her an honorary member. But she is gone and all the good things she did are not being done anymore. MF: That is true because that was her project. GW: The luncheon because that is the only time we meet now is just once to come and see who is still there. There aren’t enough of us left to bother to count. MF: I know it’s a challenge. GW: I’m not pushing to be the last one to go. MF: So you have kept RN obituaries? Is that what you have got here? GW: Oh yes, they are filed in the 2006 Roster. MF: All the obituaries and stuff. GW: Carol Hobson was my relief nurse at the UP Railroad Clinic when I went to Europe for three months in ’58 and she worked my job. When I came back in October of ’58 she said, “Don’t ever ask me to work this job again. I never worked that hard in my life and I won’t work for you again.” MF: Really? GW: So Faye Ball was my relief nurse. 7 MF: Yes Faye said she liked it, she said she enjoyed it. GW: Oh sure. MF: Well that is good. So what did you do while you were in Europe when you went there in ’58? GW: Well the first time…of course, my first husband, Howard Locke, when I went in to training he put up with it because I had to live at the nursing home. But he kept saying, “Well if you weren’t married to that hospital we could live in Salt Lake and I said nothing is stopping you from living in Salt Lake, and if you want to live down there go ahead. So he did, he moved to Salt Lake and we were divorced because I was married to the hospital. MF: Yes. GW: And that beat being married to him so I stayed there. Then what else? Let us see. School nurse, early life, education…oh my decision to become a nurse. Like I said, I was putting bandages on the little chicken’s legs when I was three. MF: That is great. GW: So I guess that is when I decided to become a nurse. MF: That is how it started. GW: I guess so. MF: You said you graduated in ’51, where was the ceremony? Oh okay. GW: We had a big ceremony held in the auditorium of the Dee School of Nursing. MF: You mentioned you retired June 30, 1986. Nursing certainly has changed over the years, don’t you think? You were trained in every aspect of the hospital and were trained on different floors. 8 GW: Yes if you were going to get through. Twenty-two of us made it and twenty-two of them dropped out. MF: That says something about your dedication. You learned so much. GW: Doctor Stratford was an interesting man to work with. Both his parents lived to be well into their 90’s. Now this picture was Merle Stratford and she was eighty-five, it was her birthday August 5, 2006 is when this was taken. He has had both hips replaced and he walks with two canes. But he had me stand up and said lets have our picture taken and he said to Merle, “Why don’t you stand up and have your picture?” And she said, “I can’t stand up that long.” She was very ill then. Myrle Wood Stratford, age 87, died 13 February 1008. MF: But at least you have this? (Picture) GW: Yes but we just buried her; Keith is living on the Peach Tree Assisted Living on Midland Drive. He is there now because he will be ninety-two on December 6. MF: This picture is the Lions Park, right, in Plain City? GW: Yes that is where that was taken. That was her birthday party, their daughter Kay lives out there. He was wonderful to work with and I worked for him five years in the office and the thirty years for the railroad and in December of ’85 he said, “I am going to retire, let’s go out together.” And I said, “You have got fortysix years with the railroad and I have to work six more months to have thirty years and I am not giving up the pension. He retired in December of ’85 and I retired in June 30 of ’86. MF: That is great. GW: But anyway, he was wonderful to work with. 9 MF: That is a great picture. GW: I should get out there to see him. Doctor Chelton S. Feeny who now lives in Alaska came for the medical meetings in May 2008 and he went out to see Keith and he said he is doing fine. How has nursing changed over the years? They don’t nurse the patient anymore, they nurse the computer. MF: They do, and the monitors do everything. There is no bedside manner. GW: No. MF: It has totally changed. GW: I am glad to be retired. MF: Alright well that is a great story. Thanks for sharing that with us. 10