Oral History Program Melva C. Crookston Interviewed by Marci Farr 1 August 2008 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Melva C. Crookston Interviewed by Marci Farr 1 August 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: Melva C. Crookston, an oral history by Marci Farr, 1 August 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Melva C. Crookston Application Photo February 1949 Graduation Photo Class of 1953 Melva C. Crookston September 16, 2009 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Melva C. Crookston. It was conducted August 1, 2008 and concerns her recollections and experiences with the Dee School of Nursing. The interviewer is Marci Farr. MF: This is Marci Farr. We are interviewing Melva Castleton Crookston, a graduate of the class of 1952. It is August 01, 2008. We are at her home in Ogden, Utah. We would just like to know a little bit about your family, where you grew up, where you were born and raised, where you went to school. MC: I went to Bear River High School and I had one brother and one sister. We walked to school a long ways in the snow and rain. MF: Why did you decide to become a nurse? MC: You know, it is funny, I took this biology class and I really loved it. This biology teacher just made it so interesting and then I just decided to become a nurse. MF: When did you decide to come to the Dee Hospital? MC: Well, I applied at both hospitals and the sisters at St. Benedicts had us in and had a lovely tea and they were so dear. The doctor I worked with in Tremonton said, you know, “The sisters make better nurses.” MF: Yes. MC: But then when I looked further into it and the Dee was affiliated with the University of Utah. I would get college credit. So I went to the Dee. MF: That was your choice. MC: Yes, and I was glad I did. I got a scholarship there. MF: Oh good. MC: And I roomed with a girl that I had gone to high school with. 1 MF: That was good she was your roommate. MC: It was a good experience. MF: Do you remember who your housemother was? MC: Her name was Mrs. McGraw. She was a sweet little old lady but we were pretty hard on her. MF: You gave her a run for her money. MC: I think we did. I remember one night we went on a little outing and we got in too late and of course we all smelled smoky because we had built a campfire and were roasting hot dogs. It was up in the canyon. It was so late and we got home and, of course, we took our clothes off and took them up on the roof. She could hear us rattling around up there. MF: Trying to air them out. MC: She came to our room and of course we were in our pajamas real quick and she said, “Have you been here all evening?” And we said, “Well no.” And she said, “Have you been to bed yet?” And we said, “Well not quite.” MF: Trying to get around it. MC: Yes, she was a sweet little lady. MF: What was it like when you were there as far as the training, very strict, very orderly? MC: It was quite strict, we worked really hard. Mrs. Seidner was the supervisor of nurses, she was actually the head of the nurses. She worked over in the hospital. She seemed so strict. She checked to make sure that our shoes were clean and that we had hose on. 2 MF: Yes, so you had to make sure that you had shoes polished, right, and hose mended. MC: Oh yes. And clean uniforms, of course, the hospital washed and ironed our uniforms so there was no excuse for coming in a dirty uniform. MF: When you started your training you started out as a probee right? For the first six months. Did you just start to learn about the hospital, where things were? Tell us about being a probee. MC: Yes, we were on the floor. You know, I was trying to think it was quite soon after we got there, we were in schooling for awhile and then we were on the floor. I remember one of the first times I was on the floor I went into this room, the man I was assigned to, and he was kind of half off the bed and he was dead. MF: Oh my goodness. MC: And it was not expected. I remember going back to my room that night and crying and thinking I don’t know if I want to be a nurse. I mean I was only eighteen and it was good. MF: Yes that is true. When you had your capping and pinning ceremony, where did that take place? MC: It took place down at the Fourth ward and that is down on about 23rd and Jefferson. MF: Okay. MC: I remember after, the bishop of that ward said, he was quite upset, he said, “We don’t allow candles or fire.” And we had the candlelight ceremony, we came with our burning candles. So we were glad we didn’t tell him. 3 MF: Just ask for forgiveness then. MC: Yes. MF: So after that you had regular duty. Is that how that worked after the six months was over? MC: Yes. MF: You started your regular duty where you were on from like seven to seven or three to eleven… MC: Yes and they always worked it around our classes. Our classes were usually afternoon over at the nursing home. MF: You had doctors that would come and they would teach part of your classes. MC: We also had classes down at Weber. Chemistry, Bacteriology… MF: Did you have professors from the U? MC: In the later years we did. I remember…boy, he taught Pharmacology. He was a professor and he was hard, oh Pharmacology… MF: I bet. MC: I almost quit. MF: That would be tough. MC: Yes, we had quite a few come. MF: Tell us a little bit about the medicines, how you had to measure your doses. Someone was telling us about morphine, how they had to measure the morphine, it was a pretty crazy deal with the glass syringes and everything. MC: Oh yes. Yes, that is something that now they have sterile things and they are disposable and in those days we had glass syringes and we had to pull the 4 morphine in to the correct amount. We would try to get the exact amount so you didn’t have to push any back up into the vial. And if you did get a little bit more you were supposed to put it out in the sink. You know, because they didn’t want it contaminated. And then we sterilized those syringes. The equipment was so old and ugly looking that I can’t imagine that it was too sterile. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying these things. MF: You had to reuse everything. MC: Yes. Nothing was disposable. I remember it was called a Wagonstein drain that they would put into the stomach and icky stuff would come out into a bottle. We would have to dump it down and wash the bottles and clean them and send them down to central supply where they were sterilized and sent back. MF: You had to reuse everything because nothing was disposable. MC: Yes. MF: When you had the day shift, what did you start out doing? MC: It depended whether you were…well it was our third year that we were in charge and they would assign you patients and you would just go check each patient and… MF: Make sure that they are okay. MC: …and then get your medications ready and your treatments ready. They didn’t have…now, quite often, one person does all the treatments. MF: So you did pretty much everything. MC: We did everything. 5 MF: And you worked on every floor, you worked in every unit so you were trained in every aspect of the hospital. MC: Yes. MF: What was your favorite floor? MC: The medical floor was hard because I remember thinking, you know, the surgical floor people get operated on and they are well and they go home but the medical floor people died. It was kind of hard. I remember the two nurses down there were really nuts. They made it fun. Even though it was a sad, depressing situation they were an awful lot of fun when you are on days with them. You mentioned Dorothy Bird. I remember how nice she was to the students. She was a few years ahead of me. And some of the nurses weren’t too nice. And some of the doctors were kind of rude to you. I don’t know why really. MF: Because they were better, you know, they seemed like they were, you know, better. MC: They thought they were above us or something. I just remember how Dorothy Bird helped us. She was just fun and she was always there. MF: Yes. I think she is the same way today. She is very kind. MC: Yes, she is a lovely, lovely lady. MF: Yes. Do you remember any traditions or any thing you used to do in the summer while you were at the nurse’s home? MC: What did the other girls tell you? 6 MF: They just talked about how they would have one week vacations and they took a trip up to the canyon and they would spend a week up there at somebodys cabin or they would go to Pineview. MC: We would go to Pineview occasionally but I never enjoyed that too much. It always just seemed so hot and dirty and I never liked to lay out because I didn’t like to be hot. But we would go up there and go swimming just occasionally. When we had our week off I would always get on the bus and go up to Tremonton and spend it with my family. MF: They said they also had trips to… MC: I don’t remember. MF: I think that was like in the 20s and 30s that some of them had said. MC: I do remember they had a summer party up the canyon…but I had to work and I didn’t get to go. MF: At that time were you required to attend church on Sunday or was it your choice to go? MC: There was nothing like that. We had devotionals every Tuesday night that we went to. I wasn’t L.D.S., there were two different groups, the ones who went to church and the ones that partied. And I didn’t party so I went to church with them and then finally I was baptized. MF: Oh good. MC: It was a good experience. MF: That is good. I know some of them said that if they didn’t go to church, it was in the late 20s and 30s, they would lose privileges for their weekend or night out. 7 MC: Yes. I have heard that. We had to be in by ten o’clock every night. MF: That was doors locked, lights off. Is that how it was? MC: Yes. And if you got home after that time you would have to go over to the hospital and the supervising nurse would have to bring you over. You would usually get called in to the nursing office the next morning. MF: That is usually how that goes? Did you know any of the Dee family? Were you associated with any of them? MC: Elizabeth… MF: Stewart? MC: …Stewart. I remember her a little but not much. I remember we had a Halloween party and we had graves and we had a grave with Thomas D. Dee’s gravestone and we were called into the office for that too. We had to take that down. That wasn’t too respectful they thought. MF: What were some procedures you had to do? Somebody was telling us you had to sharpen your needles. Did you have to do that at that time? MC: Oh yes. MF: Sharpen them… MC: And sterilize them. I remember so well one time this one girl, she was a funny girl, we were up on the baby floor, the nursery was down at the end and we were down there and we could smell the nipples burning. This gal, her name was Madge, and she was up there kind of visiting and somebody yelled, “Madge! Your nipples are burning.” And she said, “Oh I don’t think so.” And ran down the hall. 8 MF: How funny. MC: We worked hard but we had a lot of fun and we had a better time than the earlier ones did. MF: It seems like as far as the restrictions, you still learned but it seemed like it was less controlling if you wanted to get married and still be a nurse you could do that at that time or did you still have to be single? MC: No. In fact, one of the girls in our class was the first one. Her parents fought for her to stay in. I think they might have even had a lawyer or something. MF: Really? MC: And she did stay in and finish nursing. But it was her last year that she got married. MF: Yesterday we were talking to Grace Locke Willard and she said that her friend…I always say it wrong, is it Ella or Eva Merrill...Ella Merrill? MC: Ella Merrill. MF: Yes. MC: She was a married lady. MF: She said she got kicked out…she had six more months but she got married and so they kicked her out. MC: Yes she was kicked out and then she came back and finished with our class. MF: And she was with your class. Okay. MC: Yes. MF: Okay so she was ’52 because she didn’t say when she graduated. MC: I believe so. 9 MF: Oh good. MC: They were just quite controlling. MF: Okay let us see. When you had graduation, it was in ’52 right? May or June, I can’t remember what they had on there. MC: I was thinking of the University of Utah. I can’t remember either. MF: Do you remember where it was held? MC: Oh yes. It was in what is now the, what ward is that? It was a church on 27th street kind of near the Dee Hospital. I have got it here. Oh my goodness. I don’t even have where it is. MF: So it was in September. MC: Class of ’52. It was the Mount Ogden Ward and it was September 12th. MF: How many did you have in your class? Your class was one of the bigger classes? MC: We started out with about thirty-five, we ended up with nineteen. MF: After graduation did you stay at the Dee Hospital? MC: After I graduated I was at the Dee Hospital for a short time. Then I went down to the University of Utah. We had credit with the University. MF: Yes. MC: For two years our credit was with Weber State and then the third year it was University. So I went down there and worked nights at the Shriner’s Hospital. And I went to my classes at the University. Part of that training was a public health affiliation. And they assigned me down to New Mexico and I was in Santa Fe for three months. And at the end of the three months, the girl I went with 10 married a doctor down there. She had known him for I don’t know how many weeks. She married this doctor and they said I could ride back with them but, you know, they were newlyweds. So I took the bus over to where my other friends were at Tohatchi. It was funny because the bus station closed after nine o’clock or so and it was a Saturday night. There were drunk Indians all over the place, laying in the gutter. I was nervous and I thought they had forgot to pick me up. Well they came finally and what they had done is they had gone out on the reservation to pick up a little Indian girl who had a scholarship to BYU and she was going to ride home with us in our car. My husband was with them. Well he wasn’t my husband at the time. Anyway that is where I met him. MF: Oh fun. MC: So it was good I took the bus over there. Anyway, we drove home, we had bags on top of the car, about six people in the car. The one girl, it was funny, she never got things quite finished. Mary Louise, she was an instructor at the U just recently. I don’t know if she is now, I haven’t talked to her. I think she is retired now but she was such a good student but she just didn’t get things finished. She had this big bag of laundry that she had brought down with her because she wanted to iron it. We brought it back with us three months later and she still hadn’t ironed it. MF: That is a good story. When you got back did you finish at the University of Utah? So you had your bachelors, right? MC: Yes. MF: What did you do after that with your nursing degree? 11 MC: I came up here to the Dee and I worked on the psychiatric ward for about three years. Then I got married and my husband had a little girl. He had a dental practice and I got pregnant right away so I quit work. Then I started helping my husband in his dental office. MF: That is good. MC: And it was funny, in 1970 I believe it was, Miss Fujiki…do you know anything about Miss Fujiki? MF: I have just heard her name. MC: She was a lovely little lady and she called me from the University of Utah and she said they had lots of, not scholarships, but…well they help you pay. Anyway, she wanted me to come and get my masters and I thought that would really be great, you know? MF: Yes. MC: And I said, “You know, I am pregnant with my eleventh child.” And she said, “Melva, you can do it.” And I talked to Lynn, my husband, and he said, “Well you have got to make up your own mind but I think it would be really hard for you.” Then I talked to a doctor friend of mine and he said, “You can do it. Orphans survive.” Then I thought, you know, I better not. I mean there really wasn’t anything that I wanted to do with it. It would be more… MF: Just to say you did it. MC: …just to say I did it. So I didn’t. Just helped my husband in his dental office. MF: That was probably good though. He probably liked that, to be able to work with him. 12 MC: Yes. In fact, then some years later after I realized I had let my license lapse I felt bad about it. I felt, “Shoot, I shouldn’t have done that.” So I went back to school, up to Weber here and had to take a lot of hours and I remember I had to work sixty hours on the floor, I don’t remember exactly but it was a good experience for me. So I renewed my license again and I went to work at the hospital. This was a little hard with all the kids at home. Lynn said, “Why don’t you just come and help me in the office?” So I quit again and went back to the dental office. MF: Well we appreciate you letting us come. If you want to, we will probably leave the camera on and then you can just show us your pictures and talk to us about your pictures. MC: Well they are not grand or anything. MF: We are excited to see your pictures. Are you coming to the luncheon in September? MC: I plan on it, yes. I just got a picture of the hospital and the nurses home. MF: Oh good. MC: That is my roommate. MF: Oh fun. What was her name? MC: Jackie Barnard Sweringen. MF: Okay. Oh fun. MC: Here is our class song. MF: Oh good. MC: And here is the just announcing the dealer night. MF: That you were having. 13 MC: This is…she was our instructor and this is my roommate. I went in to the nursing program with a scholarship and after six months she got the same scholarship so we both went through that. These were our beds and our little light with the rose that we got. Here is the nursing home again. All these are just some of the girls that were in there. MF: That is fun. Faye Ball had newspaper articles that she let me borrow and it was so fun to just sit and look at all the fun, so exciting. Oh and your capping ceremony. MC: Our capping ceremony and a picture of the girls. Here is announcing our capping ceremony in the paper. MF: And then you received your one stripe. MC: Yes the second year we got our second stripe and then our third stripe and then it went around. These are some of the ladies. So you know her? MF: I don’t. Ruth Swenson. MC: She was up at the college and I have wondered what ever happened. Oh this isn’t very nice. This is a funny thing that they had an announcement on. The girl that did this got in trouble for that also. MF: Isn’t that how that goes? It is like if you are not toeing the line? MC: Oh the hospital again. All my kids were born there except the last three and just pictures about it. And then these are girls who went through. She was my big sister. MF: So she was like a third year? Is that what she was? 14 MC: She was just a year ahead of me. She was good. This was funny, down at the State hospital we had to spend three months down there for our psychiatric training and there was a little old lady named Becky Born and she would pull her blankets apart and make little circles and she called them “whirly bobbins.” And she gave me two of them. And these are people down at the state hospital. This is the nursing home. This was funny, there was a flood and there was a baby being born up in Morgan and so this guy was flying things up there and they wanted a picture in the paper. So there was a picture in the paper of that. MF: Oh how funny. MC: These are some of the teachers we had. This is our commencement exercise. MF: Oh good, that is your class. That is a great picture. MC: We are now in the same stake. We go there and I sit and look and remember how they gave us a dozen roses. MF: So you were a queen for a day? MC: Yes. MF: Oh fun. MC: Later pictures. These are all nurses. We would go to that lunch and then we would have our class meeting over here, sometimes the class before and the class after. MF: Oh good. MC: This is funny, these are all obituaries of people… MF: From Weber. 15 MC: …that I have known. You know, the doctors and nurses. Most of them are nurses. MF: I copied one that Faye had and it was this lady, she was the Director of Nursing, it was Annie J. Hall. MC: I didn’t know her. MF: It was fun to have these, obviously we are not going to have very many from that era because they are all gone. So it was kind of nice to have those obituaries so we know about them. MC: Now she was the head of our nursing group for awhile. MF: Okay. MC: She was a lovely, sweet person. Doctor Phoenix. And she was the head of nursing all the time that I was there. MF: That is good. MC: She worked in the operating room. She was strict. He was a male nurse and was so good to us younger nurses. You know, if we had a problem he would help us. I remember one day I was giving this guy a bath and he called me up and said, “Miss Castleton, you are wanted out here.” And I thought, uh oh, what have I done. I got out there and he said, “You young girls shouldn’t have to bathe those old men.” This guy had kind of dirty tattoos all over him. MF: Oh yes. MC: And so he took care of my patient. MF: Oh that is nice. MC: He was really nice. 16 MF: And this way you know at least we have a little history, at least we have a little background. MC: Yes. MF: It did help. MC: Doctor Lindsey Curtis was our OB. MF: Oh yes, I heard his name. That is great. MC: I just put this in because I thought it was so funny. We got a Christmas card. MF: “Will do oral surgery for food.” That is great. Oh I like that. MC: It is funny, I have got some pictures of me with a baby when they were born and I have two of them up in my bedroom and I said to my daughter, “I wish I had the other kids.” But I made them baby books and they got the picture and in those days you couldn’t copy them. MF: Exactly, you couldn’t. MC: So I have got to get each one of them and copy their picture. MF: That is good. MC: He was wonderful. Doctor Lowe. Well a lot of them were. MF: It is nice they are that way though because some of them could be mean. We have heard all stories, some good, some…you know how that goes. MC: Do you know…it is funny some of them that seemed really mean when you were a graduate and got to know them they treated you better and sometimes you just understood them a little more. But I think it was a little bit of arrogance. MF: We appreciate you letting us come visit with you. MC: It was nice meeting you. 17 MF: We appreciate you calling. This has been a fun project. We are really excited about it. Have a great day, and thanks again. 18