Oral History Program Sister Arthur Gordon, D.C. Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 12 June 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Sister Arthur Gordon, D.C. Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 12 June 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii 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. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ 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 This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Gordon, Sister Arthur, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 12 June 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Sister Arthur Gordon Circa 2010 Sister Arthur Gordon 12 June 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Sister Arthur Gordon, conducted on June 12, 2019 at the Daughters of Charity Give Me a Chance Organization Center, by Lorrie Rands. Sister Arthur Gordon discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Alyssa Dove, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: Today is June 12, 2019. We are at the Daughters of Charity Give Me A Chance Organization Center. We are here with Sister Arthur Gordon talking about her life and memories for the Women 2020 project at Weber State University in the Stewart Library. My name is Lorrie Rands, conducting the interview, and Alyssa Dove is with me, thank you. Sister Arthur, thank you so much for your time and your willingness. I'm just going to jump in with my. First question, when and where were you born? SG: I was born in Chicago, Illinois on May 21, 1941. LR: Okay. And so Chicago, Illinois, how long did you live there? SG: I lived there until I was nineteen years old. LR: So what are some of your memories of growing up in Chicago? SG: Chicago White Sox. Chicago is a very interesting city. When I was growing up it was in neighborhoods. You could have an Italian neighborhood, you would have an Irish neighborhood, you'd have a Polish neighborhood, a Lithuanian neighborhood, a Greek neighborhood, and so you got to know all different 2 peoples you know. And when I went to school, I went to school with all different nationalities and had wonderful food for our seasons. LR: What kind of neighborhood did you grow up in? SG: I grew up in a predominantly Irish neighborhood. LR: Okay, are you of lrish descent? SG: Irish-German. AD: What were the names of your parents? SG: Margaret was my mother's name and my father's name was Arthur, I took that name. My baptismal name is Patricia. And I have two sisters, Susan and Kathleen, and a brother Dan, Daniel. AD: Okay, so that makes how many? SG: Four. Four of us, I'm the oldest. Firstborn. LR: When you were going to school, what are some of your memories of that? SG: Well, I went to Catholic school from the time I was in kindergarten through high school and it was disciplined but fun. And it was grammar school you know we were boys, girls together. There was lots of activities, fun activities. When I was in high school went to an all-girls school, Catholic schools at that time were all­boys or all-girls and I went to an all-girls school, but when we had proms or parties or dances then they would get together. So it was a fun time, I grew up in the 1950's. There was no war going on, except well the Korean War was going on but nobody ever talked about the Korean War, so it was kind of like a peaceful 3 time and you know it was great. There weren't drugs, we didn't have a lot of drugs going on at the time at that point. We did things together you know girls got together, guys got together and had dances and parties in the park you know. Parks were really important, because that's where a lot of sports took place and activities in the area. So the park system, the Chicago park system was a place where a lot of kids went. LR: What elementary school did you attend? SG: I went to Sacred Heart and I went to Saint Cajetan. LR: I know there was a Sacred Heart here in Ogden for a while, is that the same? SG: Not the same community. LR: Okay. SG: But the Sacred Heart is named after the Lord Jesus, you know so it was a name that's familiar. In a lot of different cities you might find a hospital or a school named Sacred Heart. LR: Okay. So as you were growing up what women did you look up to? SG: Well, my mother of course was one. And I think the sisters that taught me, I think they had an influence on my life. My mother because we didn't have a lot of money we were just low middle class if you want to say that. My dad was a truck driver, my mom was a stay-at-home mom. She made us feel like we could do anything or be anything, and she was very creative. She sewed and she could just be creative about everything. And I have that creativity in me and I think I got 4 it from her, you know lean be in a situation and somebody will say, "Well we need such and such," and I can think of, "Got that," because of her. And I just learned a lot of things. She taught me a lot of things that I remember to this day. I remember my dad had a young man that was his helper on the truck, he drove a big semi, and he had two little girls. And my dad came home and said to my mom, "Do you know if the girls have any of their clothes that they can't wear anymore? If you could give them to me then I can give them to this fella." His name was Junior. And my mom would take the clothes, and they would not be like tom or anything, and she would make sure they were clean. If they needed ribbon, she would put a new ribbon on it and then she gave them. She never put them in like a plastic bag, she put them in a box lined with tissue paper and put the clothes in it and the dresses. Because she thought that's what you should do, you don't just take clothes and put them in a plastic bag. So I remember that from her. I also remember things like if we'd be walking down the street, when I was little, and you would see someone who might like be crippled, a child who would be crippled or somebody who was maybe developmentally disabled, and she'd say, "Don't ever stare at people like that. They can't help it, you have to be kind to them and see how you might talk to them like you would talk to any of your friends. Don't ever stare at them." So those are the kinds of things I think about and what she taught me. LR: Now you mentioned some of the sisters? 5 SG: Ah the sisters. You could tell they liked us, they loved us, they cared about us, and they were interested in us. And they were great teachers, strict, but great teachers. So I remember that. LR: Was there anything in particular that stands out that they taught you? Besides just their general demeanor. SG: Well, I think their whole system of teaching. They were committed to provide really good education, and at the same time they wanted us to succeed, that's what I remember. They wanted us to succeed. And they got to know us, and they got to know our families, and they got to know what our strengths were, and kind of direct us then you know. LR: Makes sense. So were you encouraged to pursue an education as you were growing up? SG: Well, through high school yeah. But going to college, my family didn't really have the money to send me to college, so I went to work. When I was in high school, I worked as a nurse's aide. And then in high school I took business courses and I became a secretary for a company and I liked that. I like being a secretary, I'm organized and I like all that kind of stuff you know. I enjoyed that. But when I was in high school I had this idea, I thought I had a call to be a sister. But I was not encouraged by my family at all, they did not think this was the best thing at all. In fact, my mother said, "It's just because you've been taught by the sisters most of your life that you're thinking about this. And I think you should just put it out of your mind for a while." So I said, "Okay," so I did but it wasn't out of my mind. So 6 on my own, in the Catholic Church there are different organizations, communities of women, and I was taught by Franciscans and Dominicans and Sisters of Saint Casimir, but I didn't want to be any of them. I wanted to work, I wanted to become a sister that took care of the poor and I knew that's what the Daughter of Charity did, because in the Catholic newspaper every year they would have a special issue on them. And we used to wear those great, big, white hats they used to call "the Flying Nuns," that was our habit. We used to wear it. And I remember them holding a baby and I thought, "That's what I want to do," so I found out where they were in Chicago and I went on my own and interviewed them. I talked to one of my sister friends, who was a sister that taught me in high school, after I spoke with the sisters, the Daughters. And I remember this Daughter of Charity, I was saying to her that I felt like I was being called to come and become a Daughter and she said, "Well, I want to tell you the two hardest things. Number one, we can never go home, not even for a death in the family. And second, we have to get up at four o'clock in the morning," so she said, "I think you need to go home and think about this." So she took me on a tour, my best friend came with me, my best friend had no clue why she was going there with me. But anyway, so she took me on a tour of the place, it was a social settlement house, and as soon as I was there I just knew. I felt, "This is it. This is what I want to be." So she said, "I want you to go home for about a month and just think about this and pray about it." And I'm thinking, "A month!? No, this is what I want." I was still working at the time. The other two things she said to me, 7 "Number one, do you smoke?" I said, "Yes." And she said, "Are you going steady?" I said, "Yes." She said, "You've got to break off both of them. Start, if you're serious about this, then you need to start tapering off a little bit." I said, "Okay, fine." So I went home, I thought about it, took my time, I thought about everything and after the month I said, "Yes, I still want to do this." She said, "Your parents have to come you know and meet me, and the Superior." But I had to tell my mom and dad that I was going to do this. They were not happy campers. I had to tell them I could never come home and my father said, "You mean to tell me, I raise a daughter to be nineteen years of age and then if something happens to me and I die, you can't come?" And I said, "No, Dad." And that's the only time I ever saw my father cry, I've never seen my father cry before. So anyway, my mother was a wreck, she wore sunglasses all the time because she'd be crying all the time. But they went to see the sisters and they talked to them and everything, and they came back and they knew this is what I wanted to do and so my father said, "Let her go, don't be negative about it. She'll be home in six months. Give her a chance, she'll be home in six months. But if you keep on her you know, just let her go. Let her have the experience." So that's what they did. And then, of course, in time everything changed, we could go home and my mother changed her attitude and all that. And then she saw that I was happy, and she met my other sisters there and saw that they were happy, she saw the work that we were doing so she was okay. But in the beginning it was tough. And when I went to tell one of my sisters that taught me in high school, I told her all 8 about this and she said, "Don't you think you should wait. Just wait maybe a year or so." And I thought, "lf l wait, I won't go. I know me. If l don't go now, I won't go period." She said, "Okay, go." And here I am. LR: When you graduated from high school, was that even in your head that you wanted? [Sister Arthur Gordon nods] So it was always something you were thinking about? SG: Well, I would say when I was in high school, I thought, like when I’ll say a sophomore, I thought about it and then I put it out of my mind. I just thought, “No.” But when I graduated I still had it. I just had a feeling inside that this is what I was being called to do. LR: So you said it was at a settlement house in Chicago, I’m just curious what that was like? SG: Well they had a daycare for kids. It was in a really poor area. So a daycare, and they had after-school programs for teenagers, which was really great I mean they taught the kids, a dance instructor taught them how to dance, got them off the streets you know. LR: Right. SG: So the sisters visited some of the sick in their homes in the area. So when I went to meet with the sisters, the one sister in particular, after my parents came and we were going to do it, she said, “I think it would be good if you came and lived with us for like a month or two, and then you get even more of a sense of if this is really what you want to do.” So that’s what I did. I didn’t actually live in the part 9 of the building where the sisters live but I had a little room and everything that was in the area. And there were some young sisters that had just graduated from college as social workers and they were doing some of their internship there, so they kind of watched over me. I worked in the day nursery with one of the women and then I would be there in the evening when the other kids came. I met with the sisters once a day and found out what they actually did and went to mass there because they had a chapel. And then it just fed me really, it fed me spiritually and I knew it more and more that this is what I wanted, this is what I was being called to do. LR: Okay, so spending that two months there…? SG: Very helpful, yeah. LR: Okay, I had a question about what motivated you to choose a religious life, but it doesn’t sound like it was anything that motivated you, it was just… SG: It’s something inside, it’s a call I think. It’s a call from the Lord that you feel inside. There’s nothing like, there’s not like you hear this word that’s, “Come, you have to go do this.” It’s just you know inside. I guess it’s kind of like when you meet the man you’re going to marry, and you know it’s right. That’s how I felt. And that’s where I felt like I was being called to. LR: That actually makes sense, okay. I kind of like that. Alright, so after that two months you spent there, what was the next step? 10 SG: The next step was to go to St. Louis, Missouri and that’s where the Provincial house was for the Daughters. The mother house is in Paris, France and then each country was like a provincial house. LR: Okay. SG: And I went to St. Louis and I became a postulant. And postulant is the beginning stage, it was nine months. And you learn a little bit more about the community, about the Daughters and their prayer life, and their heritage. I took some classes then too. And then after the nine months, I went to the next stage, and the next stage was called the seminary, it’s like the novitiate for other religious communities. It’s a year of special study and some, you don’t leave the premises, you stay there. It’s more of an interiorization, a time of more about prayer and spirituality, deepening your spirituality during that year. LR: Okay. SG: Take some classes in theology during that time. At the end of that year we got the habit, the big white one, and then went to college. Then I started my college, I didn’t go to college before. So I started college and I went into Nursing, started Nursing. LR: Okay. SG: And that’s what I was being called to. I thought I was going to be a social worker, but they really wanted me to go into nursing so, and I had as a nurse aide in high school so I thought, “Well, alright.” So I got a Bachelor’s in Nursing, Bachelors of Science in Nursing, an RN. And then after that I got sent on a mission, for the 11 first time, to a hospital. I went to San Jose, California and I worked as a nurse there. AD: And how old were you when you started your college? SG: Ah let’s see, I was about twenty, twenty-one, somewhere around there. LR: I’m going to kind of go back a little bit. You talked about how you were a nurse’s aide in high school, how’d you get into doing that? SG: Well I was sixteen, when you're sixteen you get a job. And so I knew somebody who was going to apply to be a nurse's aide so I said, "Well, I could do that. I think I could do that." So I went to find out and it was fun. Yeah and we got special training, and I worked right after school so many days a week, and I met fun people, nurses and people taking care of patients you know. LR: Right. SG: I remember I was going to, this is on the side, but I was going to a New Year's dinner-dance at a country club, I was invited to go to the country club, and it was snowing out and my father said, "If it's snowing, you're not going." I said, "Oh, Dad but." He said, "I'm telling you you're not," 'cause it was a ways from where we live. So I remember being the nurse aide and taking care of patients and they were saying, "Oh, what are you going to do for New Year's Eve?" I said, "I'm going to this dinner-dance, my father said if it's snowing," and it was snowing, "if it's snowing I can't go." I said, "Would you please pray that the snow stops?" They said, "Okay. We will, we will," and it stopped snowing and I got to go, and I came back to tell them. 12 LR: That’s awesome. SG: It was fun. We did backrubs in the evening, it was fun. But I never thought I was going to be a nurse, but here I am. LR: I’m also curious, I’m still back when you were living at home, what was your home life like? What are some of your memories of just growing up? SG: Well first of all, I was an only child for six years before my sister came. And we did everything together, I remember Sunday dinner, my dad was a truck driver so we always waited for him at night to have supper. We never had supper until my dad came home. And on Sundays we always had dinner together, and we'd get in the car and we'd go for a ride, you know it's what we did. And we went to my aunt and uncle's house and my grandmother's and my grandfather's on my mother's side, on my father's side my grandparents had died so we did mostly everything with my mother's side. If it was the fourth of July or Memorial Day, or any holiday, we'd all get together and go to a big picnic and everybody was there and my cousins. That's what I remember. LR: It almost sounds like you've always been part of a community. Your family was a community. Even high school was its own community, and then joining the Daughters. SG: Yes, and do you know I had very close friends in high school. Three of us went to grammar school and high school together, but there were eight of us who all went to high school together, and to this day we all get together once a year. So wherever I am they usually come, like two years ago they came to Utah and 13 rented one of those old mansions on Jackson down there in that area. So we still, all these years. LR: That’s great, that’s fantastic. SG: They're all married except me, and oh there was another one, one of our other ones just died a year ago. She was the only one, the two of us who weren't married. LR: Okay. SG: But we’re all really close and get together. We’re getting together in September, I’m going to California and I’ll see them there. They all come there. LR: Thank you for that, that was great. So the way I’m thinking about this hospital that you’re working at in San Jose, is it like the Saint Ben’s? SG: Mhm. LR: So it was run by? SG: A general hospital run by sisters, by the Daughters of Charity. LR: Okay, I’m glad I’m not too in left field there. SG: No, you’re right. LR: So how long were you at the hospital there in San Jose? SG: In San Jose, let me see. I was there probably about five or six years. 14 LR: Okay, and besides-I say 'besides' but I'm sure you were extremely busy as a nurse there, but were there other things that you did while you were in San Jose besides nursing? SG: Yes, you know that was in the 1960's, 'cause I'm old, and in the 1960's there were a lot of changes. The San Jose area was where Caesar Chavez was and he was in our hospital when he had to be hospitalized, he always came to our hospital and his doctor was on staff at O'Connor Hospital in San Jose. LR: Okay. SG: And I remember there was another couple of sisters and myself, besides working in the hospital we wanted to see what else we could do. And then East San Jose was more where the poor people were, some of the migrant workers were, so we used to go visit families in the migrant camps just to see what we could do to be of help to them and things like that. So that was a lot of awareness about what was going on with the migrant workers. LR: Were you ever able to meet with or talk with Caesar Chavez? SG: No, I never did. But I knew his doctor very well, his name was Jerry Lackner. It was in the 1960's and you know how the 1960's were. Well, I don't know if you know what the 1960's were like, but it was really an awareness of what was going on in the world and especially in the United States and in poor areas. I lived in California so the big thing was the migrant workers. 15 LR: So you said that's kind of where your awareness came for, trying not to put words in your mouth and trying to remember what you said, but going out and working with the poor and migrant workers, how did that shape the rest of your life? SG: Well it's always been part of who I am and part of who our community is, because most religious communities of women take three vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience. We take a fourth vow of service to the poor. So whatever work we're in, it has to be where the poor are. So you wouldn't find us in a wealthy area teaching school or whatever, we were always, we might be in a hospital but we took care of the poor in the hospital, the poor would be able to come to that hospital for care. Where we are right now, we're in the poorest area of Ogden right now, because that's what we would be doing. If we were in a school, we'd be in an area where the poor were. LR: Okay. SG: So it just formed who I was. Being in the community, it was natural that I would go out, and not just me, but we as sisters would go out and see how we could help and be available to that. LR: Do you have any memories of just, I don't want to say specific individuals, but are there stories that stand out in your mind that you'd be willing to share? SG: Well, I remember what the housing looked like. It was, it was pathetic. I mean when you know what the strike, when they did the big strike, or you've heard about or read about the big strike that took place because of the migrant workers. If you ever saw what the people lived with, lived in with their children, it was 16 terrible. But that stands out very strong so as a result we did a lot of things in the community and in our houses. We didn't have grapes you know because there was a big stoppage of buying grapes at that time, because they weren't improving the living conditions. I just remember, that's what I remember, the housing that people had to live like that and yeah. [shakes head]. LR: So after San Jose? SG: I was asked to go to UC Davis to get a Master’s in Health Services and to become a nurse practitioner. LR: Okay, that’s really cool. How long were you at Davis? SG: I was at Davis about a year and a half. LR: Besides going to school there, what else were you involved in? SG: Well, I lived in Davis with another community of sisters. And that was a bike town, so you had to ride a bike, you couldn't get a car on campus so I'd ride a bike. Well, all my time was spent either going to school or working in the clinics, and then on holidays or some weekends I would come into San Francisco and live with our sisters there for the weekend so I had contact with our own community. LR: Where is UC Davis? SG: Do you know where Sacramento, California is? It's close by, a little south of Sacramento. 17 LR: Okay. After you received your, I'm assuming you received your Master's in Health Services, is that right? SG: Mhm, yes. LR: Where did you go from there? SG: Then I went to Seton Medical Center in Daly City and I was in charge of all the outpatient clinics. Daly City, California, that's right on the southern border of San Francisco. LR: Okay. So you were a head of, what type of clinic was it? SG: Family and then we also had specialty clinics, because what we did is we had the regular family clinics but then we had like allergy clinic, orthopedic clinic, and pediatric clinic. And we got our doctors who were on staff, part of coming on staff in that hospital is that they would donate some of their time. So we would have, maybe once a month or twice a month, we'd have an allergy clinic, or orthopedic clinic. And then if we saw patients in the family practice clinic that had to see an orthopedist we'd refer them to the orthopedic clinic. LR: Okay. SG: And we had three clinics. We had one in Daly City, one in Pacific, and one South City, South San Francisco. LR: Did you work in all three of them? SG: I would spend some time in each of them, but I was in charge of all three of them. LR: That sounds like a lot of work. 18 SG: It was fun. LR: Was it? SG: Yeah, mhm. Well, I mean I had good people that I hired that were working in the clinics too you know, so. LR: Would you hire other sisters or were they professionals? SG: [shakes head] Yeah, health professionals. LR: Okay, so it was run by the sisters? SG: So for example, I was in charge, but I had a doctor that worked in the two outreach clinics and I had one doctor that worked in our clinic in the hospital. I had nurses that worked in each of them, I had a nurse aide that worked in them, I had a receptionist that worked in each of them. We also had a dental clinic in our place. And then I worked very closely with them because they all reported to me. LR: Okay. SG: And then I worked with physicians in the hospital because it was important for them to be the specialist like when we needed, and we took care of the poor, so when we needed somebody we had somebody that was committed in those different areas that would be willing to see them. LR: Did some of these health professionals have a hard time reporting to you as a sister or as a woman? SG: No. 19 LR: You never had that? SG: I don’t think so. I don’t remember, I don’t remember anybody. We became really close actually you know, really close. We had a woman, at the main hospital we had female doctor that was in charge and the outreach clinics we had a male doctor. LR: Okay. SG: They were all young, so no, and they wanted to be in that kind of health care situation. Being that kind of a healthcare provider, they weren't out to just make money. I mean they made money but it was not like you know if you were in private practice. LR: Right, that makes sense. What else would you do in Daly City? SG: Well, that took up most of my time, but I lived in a community with our other sisters. The other sisters had different positions in the hospital, some were in administration, some were hospital visitors, some were at the information desk, some were social workers. But we lived as in a community. LR: So did the clinic cater to just the poor part of the community or was it available to anyone who needed it? SG: It was primarily to the poor, and they paid something but it would be on a sliding scale, some people paid nothing, some people might pay five dollars or something you know like that but a sliding scale. LR: Could you see a difference that clinic made within those poor communities? 20 SG: Oh, well I could see the difference it made in the individual lives. Yeah, I could definitely see that. You saw people that had been, either children or adults, who had been suffering with particular illnesses for a long time and never could afford to go to any place, and then all of a sudden they got their diabetes under control, or a kid had a bad allergy and they finally got the allergy under control et cetera, or they had to have surgery and they had their surgery and it was good. So yeah, you know when people get good health care they have good lives and it effects the whole family then. LR: That is true. How long were you at Daly City? SG: About six years, then I went to Los Angeles. I've been back and forth. I was in Northern California and Southern California back and forth at our hospitals both times, and I came back twice to Seton Medical Center. LR: Okay. SG: When I was in Los Angeles I worked in community outreach. So we had a hospital in Lynwood, California which is in Southern California, like a little suburb of Los Angeles and was a poor area. And my responsibility was to reach in the community and see how we could best serve the people in that rea. So we had a lot of Hispanics and that was the time, if you remember, when there was the Rodney King riots? LR: That was in 1992? SG: Mhm it was, yeah. Well, I was leaving and I was in Seton at the time in 1992. But I want to just tell you how the community outreach affected that area. The name 21 of the hospital is Saint Francis Medical Center and it was a poor area. We were right next to Compton and Watts and everything. There was a small strip mall across from where we lived, it was on fire. I mean on fire. It was wild. Most hospitals went down on lockdown and Saint Francis didn't do that. What they did was they would take the big trucks and they would go to Costco or Sam's Club and get bread, milk, whatever they could get, bring it in to their big gym area and the people could come in there and they could sleep in there because they were so afraid. Some of their houses were burned down, you know the places where they were living, and they could just come and live there and we would feed them, and the people never forgot that. They never forgot it, so we never had graffiti on our hospital. We had gangs, we were surrounded by gangs, but we never had graffiti. For kids, young people who wanted to get out of a gang, they could come to the hospital and they had a whole program for them, and I worked with them for a while. So they had social workers that would help them and chaplains that helped them, because it's a big scary thing to come out of a gang. And we would give them jobs in the hospital that they could work and make a little bit of money, so they might work in the mail room, or they could deliver mail, or they could work in central supply and we would teach how to do things there then they'd get a little money. A couple of physicians in the Emergency Room could remove their tattoos. So those are the kinds of things that we would reach out to the community and touch. LR: Wow I had never heard that, about a place during riots that they could go. SG: Yep. 22 LR: That is one thing I do remember because I was a senior in high school and it was scary. SG: It was a pretty scary time, yeah. Very scary time, but like where we lived nobody ever touched our house because they remembered. You know, people remember when you reach out to them and give them a place of security. LR: I get that. I just think that's amazing. I know you've already said a whole lot, but is there anything else about your time in Los Angeles that stands out, that you remember? I know I'm really making you think. SG: No, it's all good stuff. It's all good times, and what makes it good is working with people. The most wonderful thing is working with people. LR: So were you there about six years again? SG: Oh, I would say between four to six years. I went back to Seton Medical Center, and then in 1992 I went to Africa for the first time. LR: Okay, and where did you start first in Africa? SG: Sierra Leone, that's in West Africa. And the interesting thing about that was I never dreamt about going to Africa. LR: Okay. SG: But what happened was our Provincial Superior was at a big meeting of all the Provincials in Paris and the Superiors. General said, because we're almost in every country in the whole world, she said, "You know instead of one country," like a first world country I'll say, "supporting a third-world country, maybe two 23 countries could help support so then it's not a big drain on one country." So the Provincial from Ireland said to our Provincial at the time, "Well what about it? Would you like to join with us and we would," and their sisters were already in Sierra Leone. So our Provincial said, "Well, tell me about it," and she said, "Come and see." So she went to Sierra Leone and saw what they were doing, they had a hospital there. LR: Okay. SG: So she came back and she said, "Why don't you come back with me and let's address the Province," meaning the sisters in our province. So they had a big meeting, we were all invited to come if you wanted to come. And the sister from Ireland spoke, they had photo slides and everything, and then our Provincial talked about what she saw and she said, "I think it's a good thing to do, but it's up to you as sisters in the province to say, 'Yes we should do it,' or not." And everybody voted to do it, everybody said, "Yeah, let's do it." So I was sitting next to my very good friend and she said, "Are you going to volunteer?" I said, "No, I just came because I wanted to. It was interesting," I thought, "I was listening to it." I mean I'm very patriotic. I'm not nationalistic, I'm patriotic. I mean I cry when they play the national anthem. So I said, "No, no, no. It's interesting." She said, "Okay." Then we went outside and they had posters and stuff and people were coming up, sisters were coming up to me saying, "Are you going to do it? Are you going to decide to go? Are you going to volunteer?" I said, "No, no, no. I just came out of being interested," you know? So then that meeting was over and 24 every year we make an eight day retreat, sisters make it, so I make my eight day retreat and during that eight days at some point in time you go see the Provincial and say, "Hi, how are you? Here's this. Blah, blah, blah." So when I went in to see her, she said, "You know you're the first person I thought of to go." I said, "Why me?" And she said, "Because I know you love the poor and I just thought you'd be a natural," that's all she said to me. She didn't say, "I want you to go think about it," she never said another thing. But the priest who was directing our retreat, somebody had told me he had been a missionary in China so I said to him when I went to see him, "You know somebody told me you were a missionary," he said, "Yeah." And I said, "What does it take to be a missionary?" And he said, "Why are you asking me that?" I said, "Well, I don't know if the Lord is directing me to this." And he said, "Well, I don't think I'm the right person to ask," and I'm going, "Oh great." And he said, "No, the reason I'm saying that is because I'd tell you to go tomorrow. It'll change your life, you won't be the same." He asked me questions about my health, he asked about my family, and then he said, "You know, you need to discern this. You need to pray about it and discern it, and if you'd like me to walk with you during that discernment time, I would." So he did and in the end I wrote to the Provincial and I said, "This isn't anything I would've ever thought of doing, but if you think I would be one of the best to go at this time, I'm willing to go without any reservations." And that's how I got there for the first time. You know, some people say, "Have you always wanted to be a missionary?" "No." LR: Talk about your time in Sierra Leone. 25 SG: So the sisters from Iceland had been there for five years when I arrived. There was another sister that went with me, another American, and we wen tot Ireland first for a week so that we could get to know those sisters. Because when they would talk about where they came from, or their hospital, or they’re from this area, we would know about it. I thought that was a really healthy thing to do. So after that we went straight to Sierra Leone and I was asked to teach the nurse aides. Now in that area the nurses acted like doctors almost and the nurse aides acted almost like nurses. So I was asked to train the nurse aides, and we had doctors on staff, two or three doctors, and then we had nursing. LR: Okay. Now were the nurse aides, were they more local? SG: They were all local. LR: Okay. SG: And in Sierra Leone the lowest strata of society were children, the next strata were women. Mostly only the men were educated. The women were supposed to stay home and take care of that. Even the Church to a certain extent, you know the men were the ones who were like the leaders, I don’t mean priests, but I’m talking about the lay-leadership were mostly men, not the women. So the women might have helped with catechetics, the religious side, but if they had to go off for a weekend retreat, no women would go because they had to stay home and take care of the kids. LR: Okay. 26 SG: So when we are starting a class this was the idea, I could take twelve students, six would be men and six would be women. If the woman was living in the home of her father or if she was married and she had a husband, the father or the husband had to write to guarantee that he would allow her to finish the entire program and not interrupt it at all. LR: Wow. SG: So we graduated six and six. LR: That’s fantastic. AD: Did you work with the patients? Like interact with the patients or was it more of an instructor role in Sierra Leone? SG: Well, I worked I was the instructor, that was my main job, but I did see patients. I'd make rounds with patients all the time, and I interacted with the student and the patient to make sure that they were doing the right thing. AD: What was that like to see the social strata and how the women were expected to be? SG: Well, you know it was amazing because the women were just used really by men. I remember a couple of things that stuck out in my mind though, I mean I don't want to say that every man, you know used people. But I remember when this trouble started in Sierra Leone, people were migrating. We lived in the bush, we did not live in a city. I lived in a bush so the only thing in the area was our hospital, and people started coming, moving into our area. And this fella came 27 with his wife who was pregnant, and she had TB, and she died in childbirth. And I remember him, and he was a tall, tall guy, and I remember him coming out, holding this baby, crying, and he was crying for that wife. You know, so not everybody was hard-hearted you know what I mean. And we hired him, we took him on then. He had a big hospital bill, I mean the hospital bill is not like anything we would have in this country but it was a hospital bill, and we said he could work it off. And we found out, in time, that he was a tailor, so he used to be a handyman and then we hired him to be a tailor because he could make the uniforms for the students and everything. Okay. So I remember that, number one. So I saw that there was a relationship, a good relationship there. There was a young man who was going to become a priest and they had the Mass of Ordination and it was in the capital city, and we had all gone to the capital city in Freetown at this parish. And there's this song that is famous in our church and it's like God saying, "I, the Lord of sea and sky, I can hear my people cry. Whom I going to send?" And then you sing, "Here I am Lord. Is it I, Lord?" So at this ceremony they had a woman from the choir stand in the sanctuary and sing the part of God, and the young man who was going to be ordained stood in the back, and as she sang the part of God he came forward, he'd come part of the way and sing, "Here I am Lord. Is it I? I have heard your calling in the night." And I remember that I thought, "What a powerful thing it was to choose a woman to be the part of God." Yeah, anyway. So the time in Sierra Leone was only two years because of the war. We were attacked, our village was attacked and we had to escape. It was bad. 28 LR: Yeah. So you were there when it started? SG: Mhm. LR: And had to flee? SG: Well, we evacuated twice and then came back, and the third time we had to close the hospital. Everyone was leaving, I mean all the patients were leaving and getting out of there. And all we had open at the time was the clinic and we had a TB unit so we wanted to make sure the patients didn't miss their TB treatment. LR: Right. SG: So the Pastor of our church was just across the way and our doctors were still there and we got together and he said, "I think we should go to the capital city and wait it out for a week or two, and if things quiet down we can come back. If they don't quiet down, we go home on vacation, wait 'til things settle down, it might take a month, and then come back." So that's what we were going to do, and we were going to leave after Mass on Sunday. So Saturday morning, about five o'clock, the guards came up and knocked on the door and the windows and was saying, "Sisters, they're entering the town. They're coming into our town. People are running out into the bush," the bush was right behind us. So the Pastor came over and he said, "I think we should go ahead and just get ready to go." We were practically packed anyway because we had evacuated twice, so we were pretty well ready. 29 And we were going to sit down and have breakfast and with that we could hear gunshots. So we said, "Okay!" We just started throwing everything into the back of the car. And it would be like say across the street, it was dark, and you don't have street lights or anything, so it'd be like across the street and we could hear, as we were putting stuff in the car, we could hear the gunshots. I was never afraid, to tell you the truth, but that time I thought, "Uh, I'm going to get shot in the back. I just know this." So we got in the car and our house was up on a hill like this [plateau] on a compound and when you get down a little further that's where the doctors lived. There was a young doctor and his wife and a three-year­old from Holland and another female doctor from New Zealand, and that's where their housing was. And then you went a little further, and that's where the hospital was, and that's where the gate was to go out. So we got everything and he said, "We need to go now." So we got in the car, we started going down and then we could see the doctors coming out and their car went out. When we hit the main gate to go out, there was lights all over the place and there was say like right over there to the door [about 10 feet away], was a soldier. There was just four of us, four sisters, two in the front and I was on the passenger side, there was a driver and two in the back. We rolled down the window to say, "What's going on?" because we took care of the soldiers, and with that he picked up his AK-47 and aimed at us. So I threw myself down on the seat, the driver threw herself over the steering wheel and gassed the car and took off. They blew out the windows in the back, but nobody got hurt; they were trying to disable the driver, you disable the driver you've got everybody. They 30 shot all over the side of the car, but fortunately, they didn't hit the tires or anything. LR: Yeah. SG: But as we were going, I could see kitty-corner that our pastor, in his truck, was slumped over the car. I was sure he was shot. We kept going and we saw the doctors’ car overturned in a ditch so we kept going and warning all of the people that they had entered our town. We were trying to get to where the Chinese had a hydro plant and so they had a means of communication. Well what happened with the doctor was they were shot and the car was overturned over in a ditch. The doctor's wife was killed instantly, as was the little girl, the doctor was hit mortally, but he was still alive. The female doctor was in the back of the car, so she was trying to get him out of the car and they came over to her and said, "Get up here," they wanted her to get up. And she said, "Let me just take care of him." They wanted money and ammunition, well, they didn't have any ammunition or anything, and they could see those two were dead. And she said, "Just let me stay here with him," and they said, "Get up here." So they made her get up, and then they put the car on fire, and they took her hostage. In the meantime, we kept going and kept going past trying to get to the Hydro­center, and we finally got there to send word back. In the meantime, she was behind a big boulder and she said, "That's it." They were throwing grenades and she thought, "This is it, I'm dying." But at one point it got quiet, so she put her hand up and they were saying, "It's a white hand! White woman, white woman, white woman," it was the Sierra Leonean soldiers and they had driven out the 31 other ones, so they took them. She said, "Take me back to the sisters' house," so they went back to the sisters' house, and she knew where there was an extra car and she thought maybe we were there, but we were gone. And so they got the car, and they got to the Hydro-center. We got word to Freetown to come and get her, to airlift her out, and then we got home. LR: Wow. That’s crazy. SG: It was very crazy, yeah. LR: So the plan didn’t really work out then. SG: No, no it didn't work out the way it was supposed to. So we went to Freetown where our sisters were, the capital city, and it was shocked. Everybody was shocked, I mean the government, because they had never killed missionaries before. So everybody, everybody was coming to the sisters' home and center. We were finally able to get the bodies, the government went in with a convoy and went into the area to get the bodies out. And then we flew to Amsterdam, and their families were waiting, that was ... bad. And then we went on to America. LR: So did they ever go back? SG: No, we never went back. And Mother Theresa’s sisters, have you heard of Mother Theresa? LR: Yeah. SG: Well, her sisters were there. They were by Freetown the capital, but they were down by the wharf, and rebels came in and just killed them all. 32 LR: That's crazy. SG: Yeah. So I was there from 1992 to 1994, then I was home for about a year. LR: When you say home, what do you mean? SG: In America. LR: Okay. SG: This is home. I was in California, I went back to Saint Francis in Lynwood and I worked there for a year, working in a clinic. Then our sisters were asked if they would go, by Catholic Relief Services, if they would go to Angola because Doctors Without Borders was there, and they had just come to the end of a thirty year war, and the Doctors Without Borders you know go in for a certain length of time and then they leave; they go in for emergencies, but they had been there for almost a year and they had to leave. And so they were saying, again this hospital where they were was in the countryside, and so they said, "Really it's the only health facility in the whole area," so they were saying to Catholic Relief Services, "You need to keep this. You need to stay here so we can go." CRS wanted an assessment done, and they asked our sisters if they would go and do an assessment. I was asked if I would go, so I went with two other daughters. And we went and we met with the government, there was some other religious community there, not in our area, in another area. We met with the local people, the higher up people, we met with the Doctors Without Borders and everything, and in the end we had to write up a whole assessment program and we said, "Yes, it is something we should do. First of all, they need the hospital to be there 33 and it would be good if the sisters could go." The people spoke only Portuguese because that country was settled by the Portuguese. LR: Right. SG: The other sister said to the sister and me, and I'm the nurse and one of the other sisters was a pharmacist and a nurse, she said, "Well, who's going to go? We're the only ones who know this place." And I said, "Well, I could come back." And so she ends up, "Well, okay I'll come back," and volunteered to come back. And so we did, there was four of us that went and one was an administrator, I was over Pediatrics and TB, and the other sister had like the central supply, and one did the pharmacy. And when we got there, the patients were sleeping on the floor and they had nails in the wall and that's where they hung the IVs. No beds. No running water. They got one of the other, I forget what the other organization was called, NGO Organization built a well so we got water to pump. And we had no doctor, but the U.N. Peacekeepers were there and there was an Indian contingency that had a doctor so normally we'd just go to them. So anytime we had somebody who had a difficult medical situation, we'd go run and get the doctor. The idea was that we would be there three years with Catholic Relief Services and that we would train the native staff to takeover. We'd rehabilitate the hospital and train the native staff, that was our goal and that's what we did. Because it was the country, you know young people always think life is better in the city, that's where all the money is, that's where the experience, but there's nothing. I mean they get there, there's no job, they're living in the streets. It's the 34 countryside, at least they can grow food there. When we got there the war had just been over, so when the Communists left, which was Cuba and Russia, they killed all the animals or took all the animals. They had no animals. So Catholic Relief Services brought in animals so they could begin to populate, they brought in seeds and farm equipment so that they could plant. I remember in the little area where they sold vegetables and stuff, the potatoes were like that big [quarter-sized], the chickens they looked like they were from a concentration camp. But by the time we left, they were up. I mean they had really progressed. And we were able to get beds from the government in the capital city, we asked them if they would bring hospital beds and then we would paint them. Got them all painted, and we got new mattresses donated, and we got some money that we got from Catholic Relief Services so we could buy mattresses. We got doctors to come, and then in order to get the nurses to stay, we said to the government, "If you would give us one or two nurse educators, we'll provide the housing and give them a stipend, a living stipend, to train the local people," and they did. We trained thirty nurses, and the thirty nurses were both men and women, and they had to sign a contract that if they got their RN they would stay there and work, which they did. LR: Oh, that’s smart. SG: So that was one. We also built a nutrition center because there was a lot of malnutrition. So we did that and it was good. AD: So where is this? 35 SG: In Angola. It’s in West Africa, it’s a little south. Sierra Leone’s up here and here’s Angola’s down here a little bit. LR: The language barrier in both Sierra Leone and Angola? SG: Oh, Sierra Leone was colonized by the British so they all spoke English. LR: But in Angola? SG: Angola's all Portuguese. LR: Yeah. How did you...? SG: Well, we took some Portuguese classes. I took Portuguese lessons before I left the U.S., and then when we were there we got somebody to come and teach us Portuguese every day in the afternoon, and we all lived with a little Portuguese dictionary in our pockets because we were in charge. Well, we had key people in each of those areas you know, but you learned, that's the way you learned because in our house we spoke English, but as soon as we walked out we never saw each other. One was in the pharmacy, one was over here. So you had to do everything in Portuguese and pretty soon you learn you know. But I can remember talking to the nurses, and I'd be giving them instruction and they'd be looking at me like this [squinting eyes] and then all of a sudden they'd go, "Oh! Si, Inna," then they'd get what I was saying, because they were thinking, "What in the heck is she saying?" LR: Oh my gosh. 36 SG: But anyway by the end of three years we were fine, we were doing okay. But I learned a lot of lessons there too. Most of those young men were like in their twenties, some of them hadn't had a chance to finish high school because they got dumped into the war you know, and so that was another thing we had. And they're smart, they were smart. I mean if you said to them, "Let's do brain surgery today," they'd say, "Okay, let's do it!" They were game for anything and their brains were like sponges, they wanted to learn everything you know. And I remember this one fella. The guys especially, when the market was healthy again, they would go to the vendors in the capital city and they'd buy stuff and bring it back. And the guys all loved to get sunglasses. You know those little things that say, "Made in China" or somewhere, the little sticker? They thought that was the coolest thing ever so they'd wear these sunglasses with these things still on. After we had the classes, I started interviewing nurses to hire, that was when I had Pediatrics. So I interviewed this one young man who I know was smart; I knew he would be great and he had a nice personality, 'cause you have to have somebody who can work well with the moms. LR: Right. SG: So he came in for the interview with his sunglasses on so I said, his name was Joao, I said, "You know Joao, you can't wear your sunglasses. Like when you're talking to the mom, you have to be able to look at her in the eye and not just be wearing your sunglasses all the time." So he said, "Okay Sister," so he took off his glasses, he had an eye missing. And I said, "Well what happened to your eye?" He said, "I lost it in the war," I said, "You can wear the sunglasses." But it 37 taught me a lesson, I should've said to him, "Why are you wearing your sunglasses?" He could've told me, "Because I only have one eye, I lost the eye in the war," I would've saved him the embarrassment you know. So they taught me a lot of things. One time, when we got the beds to paint and everybody was going to have beds, the day before I said to the nurses, "We have to have all those beds moved out before nine o'clock in the morning, 'cause doctor makes the rounds at nine o'clock in the morning. You gotta ... " [Sister Gordon says "Pow!" like a gun going off] So I said, "You have to get them out nurse," he said, "Okay, we'll have them all ready." So I came over the next day, we had morning report, I went right in there and I said, "Are all the beds, are the all the children moved out? Are they everyone?" Blah, blah, blah, blah. And they said, "Good morning, Sister," the most important thing to do was to say, "Good morning," and then, "Are the beds moved out?" So they taught me lots of things. It's great. LR: So you were there for three years. SG: Three years, then I came home. Then I was home for six years. And then I was asked to serve on our Provincial Council as Health Counselor for six years. And then after that, I knew that the sisters in Ireland had opened a new mission in Kenya; my mom had died in January 2005, so after she died then I volunteered to go to Kenya, and I was in Kenya for six years. Then I came home after six years. LR: When you were on the Provincial Council, where were you at? 38 SG: I lived in Los Altos Hills. For a while I lived in Los Altos Hills, which is just north of San Jose CA, and then I moved to L.A. and I lived in L.A. I was responsible for visiting all of our hospitals and the sisters there, and serving on boards, and everything. LR: Did you get bored? SG: It’s completely different, I know. LR: It’s very different from what you had done. SG: Yeah, it was different. But you know, I'm a people person so I like people and I worked with the sisters, that was the best part 'cause when I went to the different hospitals I'd visit with them. I'd go with them to their duty and say, "How are things going?" et cetera. I served on hospital boards so I knew all the doctors, I knew all the people in administration, and I could ask the right questions. So when I went to board meetings and heard reports, I knew how to ask the right questions and that could affect change 'cause I had some authority. So it was okay. LR: Okay. SG: Yeah but when I heard about the [opportunity in Kenya] and my mom had died, and you know I couldn't have gone anytime while she was still alive 'cause she was in a nursing home, in a wonderful, wonderful nursing home. So I volunteered to go to Kenya. LR: And this was in 2005 when you went to Kenya? 39 SG: Yes. I came home in 2011, the end of the year 2011. LR: Okay, so talk about your time in Kenya. SG: Okay, so when I came to Kenya there was another American who had just been there a month before I arrived. It was just outside of Nairobi in a place called Karen, that was the area, and there was one sister who was from Ireland and one sister from Nigeria, and they were all Daughters of Charity. The one from Ireland was home making retreat so there was just the sister from Nigeria and then the sister from America, she was from the East Coast, and myself. So we were asked to go-and there was no work at that time, they didn't have a ministry. When the sisters moved into this area, this house where they were, they had women coming looking for food, looking for money, and you know you don't help people by just giving them money and food. So they started teaching them some sewing, she did, the sister from Nigeria. She said, "Let me help you learn a trade and then we'll pay you with some money, but we'll pay you with food also." So that was the only thing that was going on. I think there might've been eight women that were doing that. The other two, the other sister was a social worker, I was a nurse, we were supposed to go and check and canvas the whole area, and we went with a parish priest and a catechist, a senior catechist. We went to all the slums in the area and we found the poorest slum and we said, it wasn't far from our office, and we said, "That's where we should go." He said, "Fine, good." So we started going with a catechist to visit, now everybody in the slum knew the catechist, they didn't know who we were and we were white, Americans so they were wondering what the heck we 40 were doing there, because that slum was made up of all the other outcasts from the other big slums. So he took us around to say, "Hi, how are you?" And we came consistently so they got to see us consistently. We would go visit people in their home, and if they were sick, we would decide what was wrong with them and then we would refer them to the local hospital. We would write a note to tell them who and send them to the hospital. Some things we could tell them what to do without any problems, and then pretty soon we set up a little clinic in the area. We did that for about a year or so, and then we saw the little kids. There were kids who were like preschool kids playing in dirt. I mean like in these slums you've got open sewage, no running water, I mean it's pathetic you know. And there's these little kids that are playing in dirt and there's like nails sticking out here and so we said, "Why don't we do a little daycare?" So we were able to purchase this one building and we got it fixed up really nice and painted, and we hired two women and they were like the daycare teachers and all these little kids came and learned their ABC's. So they did that and then we worked with another organization, a catholic organization that wanted to set up a comprehensive care center for all patients or persons with HIV/AIDS 'cause it was prevalent at the time. So together we built a center and I was in charge of that center, and it was adults and children. So I hired all the doctors, the lab techs, the counselors. We had a team that went out every day to the different villages and we got to test people, encourage people to get tested. Especially if they were pregnant, because if we could get the women 41 tested early enough, and it was positive, we could get them on medication and their babies would be born HIV-free. So we did a lot of that, a lot of education out in the villages. LR: That’s cool. SG: Then I came home. LR: Was there a language barrier in Kenya? SG: No. Everybody speaks English, it was a British colony. Well, you know everybody has a little accent, they have little dialects but everybody spoke English, they learned English in school. LR: Okay. What was one of the things that you learned from Kenya that stand out in your mind? It seems like you learned something each place you went. SG: In Kenya, of course it was the time when AIDS was such a prevalency there and people were ostracized, I mean some families, although the government really tried to do education. People were just, you know they saw so many people dying so that's what they believed, and that when they died somebody else in the house was going to get infected and they were going to die, and they didn't understand. So to begin to try to educate people you know and to let them see that they could get better, and once they could see that, people got stronger once they were on the medication. And once you're on the medication it stops the virus from progressing into AIDS, if they don't keep on the medication the virus progresses into AIDS and you die. There's no cure for AIDS, you just die. That's it. So that's what we would tell everybody, "You can get on the medication. You 42 can live a normal life, you can have a job, you can get married, you can have children. But you have to stay on that medicine." And that's what we did and we could see a change taking place, and we called our place the Dream Center. And we saw people get better, you could see, and then they started being advocates. The challenge was the children. The children would take the medicine until they got to be teenagers, the medicine makes you strong again, and they don't see the need to take the medicine anymore. And that's what we had, that was our challenge with the young people is you have to keep on it, have to keep on it. But you could see people who were really, really weak and you thought they were going to die, they get on the medication you see it, they're eating properly. You see a whole change in them. So I would say that whole AIDS epidemic thing was life changing. LR: So you came back here, well come back to the United States in 2011? SG: 2011, yeah. LR: And you didn't come here [Ogden, Utah] until 2016? SG: Yeah, I came here. I went, I was home for about a month and then I was sent to Seton Medical Center, my third time at Seton Medical Center. LR: Okay. SG: I was the vice president for a mission. So I worked with the administration, I worked with all the staff in the whole hospital to make sure that our mission was being lived out, the values were being lived out and that kind of stuff. 43 LR: And then what brought you here? SG: Well, we sold that hospital. So I was home, I left that hospital in December of 2015, and I was "home" home for a while there living in a sister's home. And I got called in one day by the Provincial and she said, "We have a need." I said, "Okay," because I was waiting to be missioned someplace. And she said, "We'd like you to go to Utah," I said, "Utah?! I don't know one thing about sewing. Not one thing about sewing!" And she said, "We're not asking you do it," I said, "Well, what are you asking me to do? I'm a nurse!" I said, "What are you asking' me to do?" She said, "We're asking you to be the administrator," I went, "Oh." So I said, "Well," and she's showing me pictures 'cause she had been here and she was showing me the pictures of the people, and I was just like blind-sided if you know what I mean, I was like, "What?!" So after we got talking for a while and she's explaining the whole thing, and she had been here visiting, and what they're doing here, I said, very respectfully, "Sister was there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?" And she said, "No," and I said, "I think I need to go," I had to get out of there 'cause I was like "What!?" So I got home, and I remember when we left the hospital it was a very painful thing to sell our hospital and the priest who was our chaplain at the time said to me--our house was on the same property as the hospital, and our dining room had windows from the ground floor up to the ceiling and it looked out onto the parking lot and the hospital-and he said to me, "You can't stay here. It will break your heart every time you look there and the staff are gonna be calling you saying, "Oh sister, it's not the same. Can't you please come and do something?" 44 He said, "You can't stay here." And when I knew we were gonna leave in December, everyday I would say to the Lord, "Please let me know what you want me to do. I'll do anything you want me to do, just don't say, "Go out and find a job, go find some place and see where they need you," just tell me what you want me to do." So after I came home and I got over this, "What!?" I took it all to prayer and I thought about this and I thought about what Father said, "You can't stay here," so coming here [to Ogden] was gonna take me away, And, "Tell me what you want me to do," and she said, "We have a need." So I said, "Okay, here I am," so I called her back and I went to see her and I said, "I've prayed about this and I think this is where I'm supposed to go." So that's how I got here. LR: So what is the main mission of Give me a Chance? SG: The main mission is to empower low-income women and children by teaching them a marketable skill so they can become independent and self-sufficient, that's the purpose. LR: Okay. SG: So this center serves only women and children, and what we do is we teach them the skill of sewing. It's a professional skill, so they can learn how to sew things for themselves, for their children. They learn how to do alterations, and alterations is a very important skill to have these days 'cause it's hard to find places that provide alterations that are affordable, so they can learn that and they can learn how to quilt. They also can learn English as a second language, 'cause the majority of our women are Hispanic, and they can learn computers. And 45 besides learning, 'cause it is a learning center we don't give out food, we don't give clothing, we don't give money, we educate; it's a learning center, but it's also a place for them to come to socialize to feel safe. Many of them are single moms, some come from abuse situations, and it's a safe place for them to come. And some have been just cooped up in a house and they find friends here, you know you can see them progress, you can see when they make something and the pride that they have in that. We have a big fundraiser every summer, and part of the fundraiser is we do a little fashion show where the women who have made things can model. And they're so proud of that, you know, that they've done this. And they can learn English as a second language, one woman got her citizenship papers because one of our tutors helped her do it all online. Another one is learning to get her driver's license and the teacher is helping her. So they learn. They have beginners and then the advanced, and with the advanced classes, it's fun you can hear all of them laughing and everything because they're role playing. So like for example if they're going to the doctor, and they're going and they don't have a translator at the clinic so they have to be able to say and speak what their complaint is, what their symptoms are, and how long they've had it. Because now they have to bring a child with them and if they don't have somebody to translate, it's embarrassing to have a child translate for you if you're the mother you know. So they learned how to do that back and forth with an instructor but then with each other. Or if they're going to go to school for parent­teacher meetings, we have a lot of moms who can't speak English or it's 46 very limited, so they learn how to say what the questions you want to ask the teacher. Or if l'm the teacher, what are the questions I'm going to be asking you? What am I going to tell you about your child? So they do that interplay a lot. LR: That’s great. SG: So that's the purpose of this place. And for the children, most of the children, it's an after-school tutorial program, it's not an after-school daycare where we're just taking care of kids until their parents can get out of work. It's a tutorial program, so these are children who are struggling in some ways in their regular school because in the home the only language spoken is Spanish and the parents for one reason another can't or have difficulty helping them with homework. So we take kindergarten to sixth grade 'cause those are the fundamental grades, and we have volunteer tutors who work with the children. The children come at three o'clock in the afternoon after school. The first thing they do is get a snack, and they can visit for about twenty minutes with their other kids 'cause they don't all go to the same school. Then they go to their classroom; it's kindergarten, first grade, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth. And the first hour is tutorial, the tutors will say, "What is your homework?" and it's almost all reading and math. It's not trigonometry, it's kindergarten through sixth grade. So that's what they'll do, they'll help them with the reading. And they'll try to get every kid to read with an adult for at least twenty minutes. LR: Okay. 47 SG: Then after that hour then they all come together in this one room. And the tutors take turns, one day it might be a presentation on history, it could be on geography, it could be on art, and everybody’s involved in it, the kindergarten up through sixth and it’s interactive. We have a music teacher who teaches recorder, guitar, and the accordion for children. So we have three or four children who have taken the accordions. I have three children-sized accordions, which is an instrument that is kind of lost art these days, and the kids love it. SO they have that for half an hour, and then at five o’clock they go outside and play because they just need to have some activity, and then at 5:30 their parents come. If it’s raining or snowing then they’re in the big hall and they can jump rope, they have basketball, they have ping pong. LR: Has it always been set up this way? SG: Yes, it's nine years old this year. Next year, it'll be ten years and it started on 26'h and Washington in a store front, and this is the poorest area in Ogden. It started when one of our sisters came and found that this was the poorest area, and she had talked to different organizations et cetera, and she saw what was already available and we didn't want to duplicate that. LR: Right. SG: So what she identified was the role for women and children and to educate the women. So it started with sewing over in that building there [pointing east] and then three years later this building became available. And they moved everything here, and what they kept over there and developed was the store that sells 48 formal attire, so it sells these beautiful, updated fashions for weddings, quinceaneras, proms, first communion, confirmation. They're lovely, brand new, and they're affordable for the people in the area. They also offer alterations to the public, so anybody can go and get a zipper fixed on their jacket or their trouser shortened or whatever, they do it. And our advanced students do the alterations, and two of them are so skilled that if you went and you were looking at a beautiful, say a wedding dress, and it needs to be shortened 'cause your short, it's very hard to hem any kind of a formal dress, they can do all that. They can do all that. Or if you love this dress but it's a little too big here, they know how to take it in and it's perfect. So they do all that. LR: Wow. SG: And then in addition to their regular selling, the alterations, we also have a training program for women who might be interested in learning retail management. So if they are, they can come and we do an interview and everything and make sure that they're vetted properly and they can learn how you deal with customer service, how you order merchandise, how you rotate merchandise, how you put everything on the computer, how you handle cash/credit cards/etc. During that time they can get a stipend and depending on the length of their training, however it's tailored to each individual, at the end they get a very good recommendation letter to get a job. LR: That’s amazing. SG: So it's a way to empower women and help them be self-sufficient. 49 AD: What role do you think education plays in empowering women? AD: What role do you think education plays in empowering women? SG: What role does education play in empowering women? Well, first of all, it teaches them language, number one, because language can be a great ba1Tier and it can keep you in a ghetto if you're afraid to speak; so being educated as far as the language. Being educated in the area of computers, I would encourage you to go on our website and look at the video because you'll hear one of the women saying, "You know, today there's hardly anything you do that you don't have to know how to work a computer, and now I have this opportunity." All of our classes are free of charge, so you know it's a great opportunity for them that they couldn't afford you know normally. I mean, there are other classes for computers and ESL but you have to pay for it. Now they do have it at the library and they're good, that lady at the library is wonderful. Our two teachers came to me, two of the women volunteers, and said, because they could see that the women weren't speaking English, "We'd like to be able to start an ESL class, would that be okay?" I said, "Sure." "We'll do all the research," so they did a whole critique. They did set up a whole schedule of their teaching, and then they went and talked to the teacher there and said, "This is what we want to do, are we on the right track?" She said, "You're absolutely doing the right thing. You're doing exactly what I'd do, but you should get certified," so we got the two of them certified. The women come here 'cause we're small, we're not big, so it's safe, they feel secure. And then they're learning a skill so that frees them up so they can become independent, that's what education does. 50 For the children, you know when we had summer school, we have summer school going on now it's on Tuesdays and Thursdays, last year for summer school one of the teachers said, "Let's start talking to the children about college," this is kindergarten through sixth grade, they said, "because you know, we don't have any of the parents, they don't have any role models 'cause nobody in their family, most of their parents didn't graduate from high school. They don't know anybody who's ever gone to college." One of them said she asked the kids in her class what they wanted to be. One girl said, "I want to be Superwoman," another kid said he wanted to be-I don't know what you call them, but those are those big guys that look like not exterminators, but I forget what you call them, they're like those big power guys ... Transformers or something. LR: Okay. SG: That's what they want to be, some guy, I mean, I don't even know what those are, but that's what they want to be. So she goes, "Oh my God, I can't believe this." So what they did was they went to Weber State, they went to the University of Utah, they went to the local college tech here, Ogden Technical College, and got banners, got stickers, wristbands, stuff; they started talking to them during their break when they came for breakfast break, because it starts at nine. Like one of them is studying to be a nurse, and she said, "I want to be a nurse, but in order to be a nurse, I have to go to college. In order to get into college, I had to get good grades in high school, and my grades in high school were dependent on my grammar school, in my primary school, like where you are." And they said to them, these kids, "You can be anything you want to be, but you have to be in 51 school, and you have to get good grades, and you have to go to college." One of the teachers said the same thing, she said, "I went into teaching because I love working with children. I love working with you. I want to teach. I want to help kids learn and grow, but I had to go to college, and in order to get into college, I had to do the same thing. I had to get good grades in grade school." We had one of our fellas on our advisory board is Javier, you know the famous Javier restaurants? LR: Yeah. SG: Well, he's the youngest one. The youngest Javier is a lawyer, and he's on our advisory board, and he came and talked to the kids. And he said, "My parents came from Mexico. They didn't have anything, but they made sure every one of us went to college, went to school so we had to get good grades in grammar school and in high school, and we had to study just like you're studying, and I had to go to college so I could learn to be a lawyer today; I speak both languages and so I'm valuable to people, because I can speak English and Spanish just like you, but you have to go to college." So when he was talking to the kids, by this time now summer school is over and we're into regular school time, the after school time, and they've continued talking about college. And he asked the kids, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And one kid says, "I want to be a veterinarian. I want to take care of animals," another kid said, "I want to build houses. I don't want to build the house, I want to draw what the house should look like." These are the same kids that were saying they wanted to be Wonder 52 Woman and these other weird people. So they're continuing to talk like that, look at the difference. LR: Yeah. SG: You see how kids think it's a possibility, because most of the kids see their parents cleaning toilets some place you know. But they can do it, they can do it. So that's what education does. That's what education does. LR: Wow. SG: And one of the other things, I told you we had a music teacher who's wonderful, and I had two fellas from it's called now Ogden On Stage. It used to be Ogden Symphony and Ballet, but they changed the name to Ogden on Stage. LR: Okay. SG: And most of their big things that they have are at Weber State so they came and said, "You know, we'd love to do something for your kids to start educating them towards music and plays and things." So they give us free tickets for our kids, and they've gone to see Peter and the Wolf, they went to hear the Utah Symphony with this famous violinist who plays. So we take the kids, and before that one of the fellas, Andrew, came and met with all the children and he taught them etiquette when you go to a performance, what you do and what you don't do et cetera. And our kids have been exposed to that, they'd never be able to be to see that and their parents could go with them and 'course our teachers went and our music teacher and she coordinated the whole thing. I gave her that, that 53 was her job to coordinate all that, but it's wonderful. That's what education does. Does that answer your question? AD: Oh yeah. LR: So you’ve only been here for about three years? SG: Three, in October it’ll be three years. I’m here until they tell me to go someplace else. LR: Okay. A lot of people who’ve come here and never lived here find that they never want to leave, and having been all over the world, I wonder if that wouldn’t be true for you? SG: Well, I would say no, it's not that I would never want to leave. No, because I'm used to going wherever I'm needed you know. I do miss the ocean, but I love the four seasons. LR: Right, well you get that here. Sometimes. SG: Yeah. But you know really the thing is the people and I have wonderful advisory board people, they're all volunteers and they are out in the community all the time so they're the eyes and the ears, they represent what we do here. The people are, it's what we're here for is the people. Yeah. LR: Wow. I’m at a lost for questions right now. You just had a really good one. SG: I just want to say one other thing. LR: Yeah. 54 SG: You know, there are four of us that work here; I'm in administration, there's one sister that's in charge of the sewing, but she's also a licensed educator so she volunteers during regular school time, she tutors two days a week after school. One sister's a musician and an artist, she teaches art and music, and then one sister is a teacher, and she's the assistant director of the after school program. We're only four sisters, there's no way we could ever do everything we do without the people who work with us. LR: Right. SG: All are volunteers. In the sewing department, we have three women who help Sister teach sewing/quilting, and in ESL we have two women who teach that, we have two women that teach the computer class. We have sixteen, seventeen volunteer tutors in the after school program, that's not us, they are it. They are our right and our left hand and they're all committed. They're all committed to the people, to the women and the children, they see it as a valuable thing. I mean they inspire me, I tell them that all the time, "You inspire me really." Because they have, many of them are retired. Well, you know when you're retired you can do anything you want, you can get up and go and you can travel here or you can go travel there, but they commit themselves. Some come one day a week, some come two days a week, some come every day. The ones who are on the advisory board they help, you know we get a certain amount of money from our religious community to support the place, but it's not the whole thing, we have to raise the money so we have two major fundraisers a year. We just had a golf tournament, this is our third year of the golf tournament, and we have a couple 55 from the advisory board who coordinate the whole thing. I mean that is a lot of work, a lot of work. They coordinate the whole thing. We have our big event is in the summer when we have the catered dinner out in our garden and we rent a gigantic tent and it's catered by Union Grill. And then we have the women who have done some of their sewing, they do part of a little fashion show. The other women who have been in the art program have their artwork. And the children, during the summer, the children can come and paint, take art classes, and they're all on display so people can see the fruit of what they're supporting. LR: Right. SG: But the volunteers, there is a big place for them in Heaven. LR: I didn’t realize there were only four sisters. SG: Only four of us. LR: And the rest are volunteers. SG: All volunteers. LR: And they’re just local? SG: They’re all local. All from Ogden: North Ogden, Central Ogden, and South Ogden. Some come from West Haven. LR: Okay. That is just amazing. SG: Yeah, it is amazing. But they believe in the work so. 56 LR: Right. I do have a final question, but somehow it seems strange after everything. Before I ask this though is there anything else that you’d like to add? Any other story that you’d like to share before I ask the final question? SG: No. LR: Okay. Well, the final question, this is the question that we’ve been asking every woman we’ve interviewed. And it’s how do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, or you personally? SG: Well, historically, you know the women who were courageous enough to put their lives on the line to get this done is amazing. I mean, that’s a big, big step in history that they created, and I’m grateful for them, so nobody will ever forget that you know. It has influence today on all of us. For our community, voting is a very important thing because of social justice. So we have one sister who is responsible for looking at all the different issues, in relationship to specifically the poor that we need to take stands on and vote or call your representative or whatever. So that’s a given. For me personally, I lived out of the country. I lived in countries where voting was fraudulent, so it’s such an honor to be able to vote. And for me, it’s a cherished thing because I know what it’s like to live in a country where you can’t do it and your vote is worth nothing because it’s all fixed. So I say to everybody when it’s time for voting, no matter who you’re for, “You’ have to vote, that’s your right.” And if you’ve lived with people in countries where people don’t have the right, you appreciate it so much more, so for me it’s a great privilege. I remember going to the American Embassy and saying, “Yeah, I have to vote,” it was by mail, but you have to vote. One of our sisters wanted to vote 57 by mail, and they sent her the vote, and it didn't have the ballot in it, and it was like the last day, they were closing the Embassy. So we went, and she said, "I have to vote, I have to do this. They made a mistake," and they finally opened it up and let her go in. LR: That’s crazy. Wow. SG: It’s something I treasure so I encourage everybody, especially young people and young women. Young women have to get out there and be heard because you have a voice, but some say, “Well, it doesn’t county anyway and doesn’t make any different,” but it can make a difference. LR: Thank you, I really appreciate your time. You’ve given us almost two hours and I appreciate that, it always shocks people when they notice how long they’ve been sitting, but thank you so much. SG: You’re welcome. LR: This has been just amazing. Thank you for your time, and thank you for what you do. SG: Thank you, thank you for your support and encouragement.