Oral History Program Delpha Greaves Allen Interviewed by Marci Farr 22 July 2008 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Delpha Greaves Allen Interviewed by Marci Farr 22 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: Delpha Greaves Allen, an oral history by Marci Farr, 22 July 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Delpha Greaves Allen Cadet Nurse’s Uniform 1947 Graduation Photo Class of 1948 Delpha Greaves Allen September 16, 2009 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Delpha Greaves Allen. It was conducted July 22, 2008 and concerns her recollections and experiences with the Dee School of Nursing. The interviewer is Marci Farr, and Linda Thurgood was also present. MF: This is Marci Farr. We are interviewing Delpha Greaves Allen. It is July 22, 2008. We are interviewing her at her home in Washington Terrace. She graduated in 1948. Delpha could you tell us about your early life; where you were born and where you grew up? DA: I grew up in Grace, Idaho, in a small town. I loved it there. I had a really nice childhood. I worked in my dad’s grocery store. I graduated from the Grace High School and from seminary in 1945. MF: When you were in high school did you decide you wanted to become a nurse? DA: Not until maybe the last year and I started taking some of the sciences, some chemistry and a few things like that. There were a couple of my friends that wanted to go into it. We thought we would go into the LDS program in Salt Lake. When we wrote, they wrote back and said the class was all filled, that particular one in June but we could maybe put our application in in six months. I thought if I didn’t leave Grace in six months I was going to be stuck here forever. I was working in my dad’s store and help was hard to get because the war was on. My two friends and I decided to put our applications in at the Dee Memorial Hospital in Ogden. We got in right away. 1 MF: You just had to turn in your application right? DA: We graduated in May and got accepted in the June class. MF: That is great. Was this your first time away from home when you went to nurses training? DA: No, I had taken a trip to San Francisco. MF: Oh that is good. When you got there what were your first impressions? DA: The hospital looked really big to me when I first saw it. It was older, you know, it was an older hospital but it did look a little bit large. The nursing home that we were assigned to looked nice. MF: You had a housemother? DA: We had a housemother. MF: What was her name? DA: One was Mrs. Woods and the other was Mrs. Warner. MF: Okay. You had a roommate right? DA: I had a roommate. In my class…we started with forty in our class. They came from all over. They came from Minnesota, Illinois, Arizona, Wyoming, Nevada, and Idaho… We started, like I said, with forty but when we graduated we only had fourteen. MF: Fourteen? Wow, that was a big drop. DA: Yes. MF: You could not be married right? DA: You could not be married. If you were married, you were out of the program. 2 MF: So they just let you go? DA: Immediately, yes. MF: What were some of the classes or courses that you took while you were at the hospital and at Weber College? DA: We had Microbiology, Anatomy, of course Chemistry, several nursing classes, and Sociology, plus Anatomy and Physiology. MF: Were your instructors some nurses and the doctors from the hospital, correct? DA: Some of them were nurses and some of them were doctors. We had instructors that would come from the University of Utah. MF: Some nurses said they went on and got credit toward their bachelors from the U. DA: From the University of Utah, yes. The instructors came from there to us. We did not have to go down there. Did you know about the cadet nursing corps? MF: Tell me about the program. DA: They were short of nurses during the war so the government set up the cadet nurse’s core. If you joined they paid for everything. The only thing you had to do after you graduated was stay active in nursing. That meant active in a hospital not in a doctors’ office or industrial or anything. You had to be in a hospital. MF: Did you do that? DA: Yes I did. MF: Did you stay at the Dee or did you work somewhere else? DA: At the Dee. We entered in June and the war ended in August. They called us all together and wanted to know how many would be able to complete the program 3 if the government did not help and there were so many that said they would not be able to finish the program. So the government decided to finish paying for those who were in the corps; but that was the end of the cadet nurse’s corps. MF: Tell us about some of your classmates. You had a roommate, correct? DA: I had about four or five of them. My first classmate got married. She was from Idaho and she was in love when she came. She got married and left. I had another one and then we changed around a little. I had one that did get married and kind of sneaked in and out. She was not supposed to but she did. MF: You had a nightly curfew right? DA: Yes, we had a ten o’clock curfew. MF: You could not be out, no questions asked. DA: No questions. You had to be in at ten every night. MF: What was a typical day like at the hospital when you were on duty? What was your shift like if you were in the morning? DA: We started out just taking care of patients doing bed baths and simple things like that the first year. The second year you got to do more medications and more… MF: As a student nurse did you have to sharpen your needles and recycle everything you used? DA: We recycled. I don’t remember sharpening needles. We recycled a lot of the syringes and a lot of the needles. MF: When you were doing your sheets you couldn’t let them touch you at all? 4 DA: No, you never, nothing touched you, you had to learn how to fold the sheets without coming close to you. MF: What was P.M. care? DA: The patients all got their backs rubbed, their beds all straightened, fresh water, and you gave them their sleeping medication. MF: What did you do if you had a night off or had a weekend pass? DA: We went out with our boyfriends. Eventually my parents moved down here. That made it nice for me because I could go home and stay on the weekends. I would invite all my friends, they could come and stay. I had three and four sometimes on the weekends at my house. We went to a lot of movies, dances at White City Ballroom. That is the main thing I think. MF: That is good. Were you required attend church on Sunday if you were not working? DA: They had the church service down there. We were obligated to go to that every Sunday, it didn’t matter what religion you were, you still went. MF: Do you remember if there were any traditions associated with the Dee Hospital? Was there anything that you remember during the holidays? DA: No I do not remember. MF: Tell us about your capping and pinning ceremony, when that took place. DA: You got your capping the first year and the one stripe on your cap. It was kind of like a candlelight service. It was exciting to get that cap. Second year you got the second stripe and the third year you got the third stripe. When you graduated 5 you got the stripe around the cap. All the patients could tell whether you were a junior or a senior. The stripes gave you more permission to do things. MF: Do you remember where the ceremony took place? DA: It took place in the nurses’ home. MF: Tell us about graduation, when that happened. You mentioned you graduated in 1948? DA: There were fourteen of us. We walked from the Dee Hospital for the traditional walk from 24th street down to Weber College with our capes on. I do not know if that building is still there or not. We each received a large bouquet of roses. They had a ceremony and my whole family was there. I think I had about ten or fifteen people there. I was given a lot of presents. MF: While you were in training did you receive any pay? DA: I think the government paid us a little bit. MF: Do you remember your rate of pay at all? DA: No I do not. MF: Do you remember any of the Dee family? DA: I remember Elizabeth Dee. She was made an honorary member of the Dee Alumni Association. MF: She was wonderful. DA: Yes she was. 6 MF: That was her thing. It is interesting, as we’ve learned more about the Dee family members how they were involved with different parts of the hospital. Elizabeth was involved with volunteering and the nursing aspect of the hospital. DA: She is a very gracious lady. MF: Very wonderful lady, Weber State would not function without her. After graduation you mentioned you stayed at the Dee Hospital correct? DA: I did. MF: Did you stay there until you retired? DA: For the most part. I left for a little while and went to work in Tracy, California but most of it was at the Dee. MF: When did you retire? DA: 1986. MF: Do you have any other memories that you would like to share with us of the hospital, any things you remember about anything from your time at the Dee? DA: There are so many, like what? MF: Anything you would like to share with us. DA: Well one thing, we lived in the nursing home everybody was really close with one another. When you were on duty you worked really close together. You never went off duty without helping your co-worker there that was on the unit. Let’s say she got behind or could not do it all; you were always there to help. You always worked together. I think you worked together more closely. I had a lot of good experiences at the Dee, during nurse’s training. 7 MF: How do you think nursing has changed over the years from when you were just getting out of nurse’s training to when you retired? There is quite a change don’t you think? DA: With all the electronics, yes that is one of the major things that has changed. The two year program changed because we were in the hospital so much more than they were. It was still a good program. MF: It was and I think during the war everybody said that there was a shortage of doctors so you nurses pretty much ran the hospital. You had to take care of pretty much everything. DA: We did. MF: Linda did you have anything you wanted to ask your mom? LT: Tell us about some of your friends you went through the program with. Who was the best friend that came with you? DA: Karol McClellan, Maxine Johnson, Carrie Madsen, Pat Bundy, Betty Jean VanDyke, Mildred Salisbury, and Doreen Mordaunt. There was only fourteen out of forty. LT: How many of those are still around? DA: There is just Mildred, Doreen, Me, Orpha, and Yoshiko, she is in Washington. I would say maybe five or six. MF: Are you coming to the luncheon in September? DA: Yes. 8 MF: We have been invited to come and are very excited. We are hoping that the nurses who haven’t seen the article; we will be able to talk to them and let them know what we are doing. DA: I do not miss many of those. I go to all of them. MF: I am so glad. That will be wonderful. I think that is the last of the few little questions I had. Is there anything else you wanted to add? LT: What about when you moved into the new hospital? DA: That was a big move. Eventually I became a head nurse on the surgical unit, the very unit that I did not want to go to. They asked us when we graduated, “What unit would you like to work on?” and I said, “Any but the third surgical.” because we had a nurse that was rather difficult. I did not want to work under her at all. That is right where they put me was on that unit. Eventually I became head nurse on that unit. MF: What was your favorite unit to work in? DA: I liked surgical and orthopedics. When we moved from the Dee Hospital to the new McKay Dee that was a big undertaking. You had to plan, move the patients and have the care at the old Dee and then care as you moved the patients over to McKay Dee. It was a big, big job. The hospital was all new, everything new. MF: And of course everything is not in the same place. DA: Oh no, totally different. LT: She stressed about that a lot. DA: I did. I stressed because I thought I’ll never find my way. 9 LT: She did. She was worried about getting lost. I remember my dad saying everybody is in the same boat. Nobody knows where to go. MF: Exactly. Nobody knows. DA: Yes. MF: You retired in 1986 and were the head nurse on that floor? DA: On orthopedics. MF: Did you love that? Being able to do the nursing for your professional life? DA: I did. MF: Your training at the Dee served you well I think, don’t you think? DA: Definitely. You could work any hours. After I had Linda and Pam, my other daughter I went part time. You could work any hours, any shift you want because they needed nurses so bad. For a few years I worked twice a week until Linda went into the first grade full time, then I went back full time. MF: It worked out well for your family. DA: Yes it worked out good. I could work three to eleven and my husband could work days. MF: So you could still be with your kids? DA: Yes. MF: Thank you Delpha. We appreciate you letting us come. 10