Oral History Program Karla Paul Tripp Interviewed by Marci Farr 23 September 2008 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Karla Paul Tripp Interviewed by Marci Farr 23 September 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: Karla Paul Tripp, an oral history by Marci Farr, 23 September 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Karla Paul Tripp Left: Application Photo 1940 Right: Graduation Photo Class of 1943 Karla Paul Tripp September 23, 2008 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Karla Paul Tripp. It was conducted September 23, 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 Karla Paul Tripp. She graduated from the Dee School of Nursing from 1943. We are interviewing her at her home in Richmond, Utah. Could you just tell us a little bit about your early life, Karla? Where you grew up and where you went to school. KT: I grew up in Salt Lake City until I was seven. Then we moved to Hyrum and I lived there until I went into the nurses training. Then I lived in Ogden. Then I went in the navy and I was stationed at Mare Island Naval base and hospital. I returned back to Logan where I worked previously, was married and moved to Richmond where I am living at the present time. MF: Why did you decide to become a nurse? KT: When I was five years old, my mother had a real bad thyroid. That was a new surgery at that time, thyroidectomies. That was in 1927. The doctor who had been doing the surgeries had lost nine patients in a row. Her doctor said, “You are not doing the surgery.” to the specialist. “You tell me how to do it because she is going to live.” I could hear the adults talking about it you know, five year olds…they don’t think they know anything or are paying attention. I listened and I cried and I prayed and then my mother had the surgery and she lived. Two nurses from the LDS Hospital came down to see her quite often. One was a Blaylock and the other one’s first name was…I can’t remember. It was Ann 1 Blaylock and the other girl was tall with red hair. But I wanted to be a nurse from that time forth. Because I wanted to help people and see that they could stay with their families. Now you will make me cry. MF: I don’t mean to make you cry. KT: From that day on, that is what I wanted to be was a nurse. MF: That is great. There is always a need for a great nurse. Why did you choose the Thomas D. Memorial Hospital? What was your decision on that? KT: Well I graduated from high school when I barely turned seventeen. I applied to the Budge Hospital in Logan. They told me I was too young. I cried and I cried and Dr. Burgess was our family doctor, he was there in Hyrum and he was friends with my family. He came up one day and put his arm around me and said, “Karla, you were blessed that you weren’t accepted at the Budge.” He said, “They are not fully accredited. Just wait a year and then apply at the Thomas D. Dee Hospital in Ogden. They are one of the best.” That is what I did. MF: So that worked out good. Had you been away from home other than moving around? Was that a change going from Hyrum to Ogden? KT: I had never been away from home before… MF: So was that an adjustment? KT: …until I went to nurses training. Yes. And we didn’t have a telephone and my parents didn’t have a car. So we had letters. MF: What were your impressions when you entered the hospital for training? What did you think? 2 KT: In June I had to go down to Ogden for three days and take a test. They tested you on your dexterity and there were twenty-five girls that took that test and three of us were accepted. MF: Wow. KT: Then they had one a little bit later for some of the girls. That is how we were accepted into the— MF: That is how you got into the program. KT: Yes, besides our grades. MF: That made you feel good that you were able to be accepted. KT: That was the first thing. Then Marie my roommate…graduated from South Cache high school. We were on the bottom floor in the nursing home. MF: Because you were the first years? KT: Right. We were called probees. And what we started out doing was cleaning. We would wear those gowns with just the plain round neck and the gowns that they wore when they scrubbed for surgery. We would go be assigned. They taught us how to clean a room. We had to take a little scrubber brush and we scrubbed the mattresses. Turned them over and scrubbed them on both sides. We did the springs and everything on the bed. Took the enema basin and wash basin and that out of the chest to the side of the bed and put them in Lysol water. We even washed the window sill, around, and everything. We didn’t scrub the floor but everything had to be washed and cleaned. That is how we started out because cleanliness is next to godliness. MF: Yes. 3 KT: And you clean. MF: When you made the bed, the sheets couldn’t touch you. Is that right? You didn’t want to contaminate the new sheets. Somebody told us that, they are like, “We had to make sure we folded them just right.” KT: Yes and they were folded differently for surgical patients when you were waiting for them to come back from surgery. MF: Yes. KT: The opening of the pillow, the end of the pillow, had to be away from the door. It couldn’t face the door. You had a rubber sheet and you had the draw sheet. You had to make a little pleat in the bottom of the bed so it wouldn’t be tight against their toes. MF: So everything you had to make sure was perfect. While you were in nurse’s training you had different classes you had to take. You took them from Weber College. Is that correct? KT: Some of them. Some of them we took from the doctors in the nursing home. They had a room there that we would take our classes in and where we had chorus practice and where, when we had time, we would go in there and dance, put the chairs back and— MF: Were some of the nurses your instructors also. KT: Well some of them like Ruth Morrison at one time. We were studying the reproductive system. She has this cat. Did Ruth tell you this one? MF: No. She didn’t tell us this one. 4 KT: Anyway, there was a room on the east side of the nursing home where Mrs. Chase was. You know who Mrs. Chase is. MF: We have heard. KT: She is the dummy that you practiced on for some of the things. Anyway, she was there and there were a couple beds where we learned to make the beds and where they taught us how to give shots, we shot an orange first and some of us had to practice on each other. Where we learned to give enemas, thank goodness I didn’t get practiced on. Catheterizations, and things like that. The supervisors would teach us that. Mary Stringham or Miss Morrison. Mary taught us how to give shots and then they would take you over to the hospital and there would be a patient on medical where you could give your first shot. I had a poor little skinny China man that you would pinch the skin, pull it kind of apart, I only had that much room between my fingers to give my first shot. Mrs. Mary was watching me. I thought, “Oh please, please, let me hit between my fingers.” I did. So it worked out. MF: I am sure that was a little nerve wracking, your first time, to learn all this on people. KT: Yes and then they would check you on people. Well I was going to tell you about Ruth Morrison. MF: Oh yes. KT: She had this cat and she put it to sleep and it was pregnant. Well bless their heart the poor cat, she didn’t have it down far enough and after she had it all spread out, they were showing us what it was, it jumped and was running 5 around. We were all just sick. There was its poor insides hanging out and the cat was running around. She called for a man, he came to help and they had to put the cat down. I have never forgotten that one. MF: That was kind of a crazy story, one of those “wake from the dead” stories. KT: That was one of those that cruelty to animals. It wasn’t intended to be. MF: It wasn’t, but it ended up. SL: You talked about dancing in the classroom. Was this just the girls dancing or did you have boys? KT: Yes, just the girls. We had dances but they were held in different places. There was a doctor’s dance and that was formal. And there was a junior prom. SL: Were those held mostly in downtown Ogden in the Orpheum or the— KT: Well the only junior prom that I remember was when we were juniors. It was out to the country club. We blew up balloons until I was blue in the face. I couldn’t blow up a balloon to start with and finally we blew and we had so many balloons, that is what our decorations were, I never forgot that one. Then we invite partners. If you didn’t have one somebody found one for you. I will never forget. You aren’t recording this one I hope. SL: Yes but we will take it out for you. KT: Good because it was a doctor’s dance and somehow, I don’t know who got the date for me but his last name was Webber. He was tall and good looking and he was a good dancer. I liked to dance. 6 MF: You had the chorus. Was that throughout all three years? Did you go sing and perform at different places or was it just something you would do at the nurse’s home? KT: We would sing at capping or graduation. Miss Miller was the nursing supervisor when I started and then she left and Miss Glasscock came. MF: Okay. KT: We had a program for Miss Miller. She was a sweetheart. Her fiancé died in World War One and her favorite song was Danny Boy. MF: Yes. KT: We as a chorus sang Danny Boy for her. MF: Oh good. That is alright. Who was your roommate? KT: Marie Stauffer. MF: Marie was yours. KT: All three years. MF: Tell us about a typical day. When you got done being a probee, tell us about a typical day? When you started your shift work, what were some things you had to do? KT: Well even when you were a probee you had to be up at six. Your buzzer would ring or you had an alarm clock. You got prepared, had breakfast, and you had to be ready to work at seven. The showers and the lavatories were on the east side of the building. Our washing room where we did our clothes was in the basement. We never had washing machines. MF: Yes. 7 KT: We had the old plungers in the sinks. Of course, we didn’t do our bedding or our uniforms, the hospital did that. MF: They took care of that. KT: You would take them off on Monday and put them outside your door. When you came back the sheets were on your bed sitting there for you to make them. MF: You didn’t have to worry about that. That is good. KT: So we would get up and go to breakfast and then report for whatever it was we were supposed to do. MF: Whatever for. KT: If we weren’t assigned anything we were supposed to go back and get ready for class. MF: You had to do class work too. You still had to do that plus hospital responsibilities. You had to do both of them. KT: Oh yes. Oh yes. MF: That made for probably a long day. KT: Yes it did but we had to be in bed by ten. MF: That was your curfew right? KT: Right. Up at six and to bed by ten. That doesn’t mean everybody went to bed at ten but they would come around and go outside your room to see. Some of those nurses would stuff blankets against the door so it didn’t seep out after, the light. They would have…I remember one time Lampson and Wold, those girls that were a year ahead of us, they had a watermelon bust after time. And sometimes we would just do it to see if we would get caught. 8 MF: There you go, test it. KT: And they used to sneak out of the nurse’s home. The basement girls could climb out through windows. I never ever snuck out until everybody…I thought, “Well I am not going to crawl through a window or that.” So one time I just walked down the front door, walked down the street, walked back and walked in and nobody even saw me. MF: Nobody even saw. KT: I didn’t do it again. MF: You did your one time. Do you remember across the street of the nurse’s home to the north of it was a little confectionery? KT: There was a drug store. MF: The drug store, yes. KT: Hogge’s. MF: Hogge’s yes. Catherine lives out by me. She will be ninety-one I think in October. KT: Oh my goodness. MF: So she is still out where I am at. Josephine is in our same ward. But yes, they used to own that. KT: Oh really? MF: Yes Catherine and her husband Elmer used to own that. KT: Oh my word. MF: That was a few days ago? 9 KT: Yes. That is where we used to go and get RC’s. It sounds terrible, grown girls acting like that. Then we would go back to our room and see who could burp the loudest. MF: That sounds pretty wild. KT: When I think about it. We would laugh and laugh. Small things amuse small minds I guess. MF: That is alright. Sometimes you just need that little bit of laughter. Tell us about if you had a night off. If you weren’t working, what is something you would do with your friends? KT: Probably do the washing when you had any time off. MF: You were pretty busy though. And you were right in the middle of the war too when you came in, right? KT: Well it started in ’41 and I started in ’40. MF: ’40 so you were already in a year. KT: Yes. SL: How did things change because of the war? KT: Well just before the war we got Sulfa. We didn’t have that before. Then plasma came out when I was a senior. So we learned how to mix it and do that. Nurses couldn’t start IV’s when I was in nurses training but we were all taught how to do it. MF: Did you notice when you were in training, a lot of the doctors were gone? You pretty much ran the hospital. KT: Well we had interns. 10 MF: You had the interns there, okay. KT: Yes we still had interns. MF: There is a good story coming. KT: Oh dear. I have to part my gum. That was another thing. MF: You couldn’t chew gum, right? KT: No. I got a little shelf up there so I can put it up there. It was in class with Doctor Seidner, he was a Jewish doctor. He had the longest fingers. He was a surgeon and he taught us surgery. I can’t remember what the class was that he was teaching but anyway he had a watch fob that he would twirl like this as he walked back and forth in front of us. Then he would go and point his finger at you and ask you a question. He said to me, “Are you chewing gum?” And I said, “No, see.” And he looked and he looked at me but he couldn’t see any gum. Oh dear. So that is what I wanted to show you. MF: There you go. You would make sure that nobody would know. KT: Doctor Ward he taught us about some obstetrics and in the delivery room. In fact, he taught us how to deliver a baby. MF: Really? KT: He was just a short man and then he taught us where to hold the flashlight if the lights went out so the doctor could see what he was doing. Then they taught us how to give the anesthetic, either ether or chloroform, to an OB. MF: Wow. KT: And in those days when they came in we had to always give them an enema. MF: Oh, before they had their baby. 11 KT: Yes. There are some scary moments there. MF: I bet. KT: This one lady had come in and she was dilating and I still had to give her an enema. I said, “Don’t push! Don’t push!” I was afraid she was going to…then we had to shave them. MF: Really? When they had their baby. KT: And put merthiolate around them before they had a baby. MF: That is crazy. I didn’t know that. KT: So that has changed quite a bit. And then they stayed in the hospital ten days. MF: You didn’t get them up at all, right? They were pretty much flat on their back. KT: They didn’t get up until the day they left. MF: Oh my. KT: We had to give an enema every other day. You would be six o’clock in the morning and you would keep track of which ones had it one day and then the next day the others would get it if they hadn’t had a BM. MF: Oh my word. KT: You would flip on the light and say, “Friend or enemy?” only enema. MF: That has changed a little bit. So what about the ones that had C-sections? They wouldn’t get them up at all. Did they do it this way? How was the C-section? Was it from their top to bottom instead of… KT: They were this way, they weren’t this way. They learned a lot of things. You can have more…if you don’t do it… MF: Do it like that. Oh wow. 12 KT: The first vaginal hysterectomy I ever witnessed was Doctor Seidner. MF: When they did hysterectomies, did they do it the same way as if you were having a C-section? KT: Mid-section. MF: The same thing. KT: Yes. Except if they did a vaginal. MF: If not, they would just scoop it out? KT: They go through the bottom, through the vagina and pull it out. MF: Go that way. KT: I don’t remember if they had the big cork screws as they had later. They had an instrument that was about this long, eighteen inches, like a big cork screw. MF: And go up there. That has changed a little bit. On Sundays, if you weren’t working, were you required to attend church or was it a choice? KT: It was a choice. Sometimes I went and sometimes I didn’t. If you had the afternoon shift and Sunday school would be in the morning… MF: Then sacrament was still at nighttime. KT: Yes. Or the afternoon so it depended on the shift you worked, too. If you were working, you could still go if you were back in time to go on duty. MF: That is true. That would make a difference. When you were a nurse, what were some things that you noticed because of the war? There were rations. What kind of things took place at the hospital because of the war? KT: Well a lot of the supplies and that were a little bit harder to get. Like I said, the day of Pearl Harbor, I can’t remember…I think I had worked nights and I woke up 13 and heard the radio on. I walked out to see what was going on and they were all gathered around the radio. May Haskell who was a senior with June Paul and them, her brother was over there, and Doctor Merrill’s son was lost at Pearl Harbor on I think it was the Arizona. The one that sunk. MF: Was it Arizona? KT: Arizona…I don’t know. Anyway, he was killed. MF: That is too bad. KT: And they never could recover his body. That was sad for all of us. Doctor Merrill was one of the nicest doctors. MF: That is what a lot of them has said, a very kind man. Tell us about your nylons. KT: We didn’t have nylons. We had silk stockings. Nylons came in and pantyhose after. We had garter belts. MF: That is right. KT: We had silk stockings. MF: So you had to make sure you kept those mended right? KT: Yes. MF: Make sure that there weren’t any runs. KT: Right. No runs. MF: No runs at all. Do you remember about your capping ceremony? Tell us about that. We are kind of back tracking a little bit. KT: Well like I said, my picture is in there. MF: When you went for your ceremony you received your one stripe right? 14 KT: Right and we got our caps with the one stripe that went up and down. They had a little program and our superintendent Amelia Miller would hand us the cap and they would put it on for us. It was really a neat experience. We looked forward to that, to not be a probee anymore. They had a program and I think if you will open that up it has a poem or it might even be the program. Not that, the little book. MF: The little white book? KT: Yes. MF: Some of the pictures where you are holding a little lamp. Was that the Florence nightingale lamp? KT: We had these little lamps on Christmas. We would wear our uniform, our cape was maybe blue on the outside and red on the in, we would wear our white uniform and throw one side back so you could see the red and the white and we would start up on the top floor and the chorus, all of them that were still there, and on the floors they would have the doors open for the patients that were still in the hospital and we would sing Christmas carols. All the way down and back and forth on all the floors. Then we would go down for our breakfast and it would be a cinnamon roll, a half a grapefruit, a glass of milk and that was our breakfast for Christmas. MF: Oh good, so that was a tradition. KT: I can’t remember if we had two sausages, two-link sausages but I don’t remember that for sure. I remember the cinnamon roll and the singing. MF: So that was probably a tradition that you remember. 15 KT: Yes because we were supposed to be able to have every other Christmas off so we could go home. I never did get to go home for Christmas. MF: You never went home for Christmas for three years? KT: Yes. Somehow it just didn’t work. MF: That would be hard. Has that got that in there? Is that right there? SL: Yes. MF: Okay perfect. So it has got your school song, the school song with that. And your capping right here, okay. So you had rose and your little lamp. KT: Yes. MF: Oh good. I don’t think I have seen this picture. Where was this at? Was this in the nurse’s home? KT: No it was at a church I think. Because there are… MF: Choir seats right there. KT: Yes and we had never had choir seats. It seems like. And doesn’t that look like a pulpit there by Miss Miller? MF: Yes right there behind the picture. Okay good. That is great. Did you have a little poem you had to say, or recite anything? KT: Those are the things that was said at capping and what was done but I don’t remember having to say anything other than I don’t know why I was the one they took the picture of kneeling. MF: Oh good. That is perfect. KT: But we knelt and got the cap on our head. MF: That is an accomplishment. You had survived your probee time. 16 KT: Right. MF: Tell us a little bit about graduation. Where was that held or was it at the church also or did you have it at the auditorium? KT: I don’t remember. MF: That is okay. KT: I remember capping and I remember we graduated and I remember that my mother and dad and my grandma came down. My grandma was so excited that I was going to be a nurse. MF: That is wonderful. KT: She died my senior year. She always wanted to be one. MF: She was living her dream through you. KT: Yes. MF: That is good. So while you were in training, did you receive any pay at all? KT: The first year I think it was five dollars and then seven dollars and then ten dollars. But I never did receive any money. You know what they used it for? Breakage. MF: Oh so if you broke something. KT: I don’t remember if I got any or not because I remember one time I dropped a tray of thermometers. MF: So there is your five dollars. KT: And then some. MF: Did you have to pay for your uniforms? KT: No. 17 MF: That was part of the hospital, they took care of that. KT: At least I don’t think we did. MF: Part of your tuition or whatever. KT: Yes. SL: Did you pay your tuition or did you have a scholarship? KT: Paid it. SL: So your family… KT: Yes. I worked hard for that money. I packed tomatoes, worked on the bean belt, cleaned houses… SL: Do you remember how much your tuition was? KT: No. I was just glad I could go. MF: That is great. Now after you graduated did you stay at the Dee? Tell us a little bit about after. KT: I was asked if I would stay. I could have worked in surgery, I could have worked on any of the floors or the labor room or wherever if I just stayed but I had promised Doctor Burgess that I would come up and work at the Cache Valley Hospital. MF: So you came back to Logan. KT: Came back and lived in the nursing home behind the hospital and worked at the Cache Valley Hospital until I quit and went in the navy. MF: Did you join the navy after? KT: Yes. MF: Tell us a little bit about your experience in the navy. How was that? 18 KT: See that book over there? It talks about the women in the service. MF: Okay. KT: The thing is…they put that I had graduated from L.D.S. Hospital and I said, “Why Pat did you do that?” And she said, “I don’t know because I put the Thomas D. Dee.” But whoever was doing the reading graduated from the L.D.S. MF: So they must have saw somebody above and made a mistake. KT: I don’t know so that is the mistake in there. But Marie Stauffer and Ardell Johnson, we wanted to join the service. Our hospital wouldn’t release us because we were all three working…well “Delli” and I were working in Logan and Marie was working in San Francisco. Her and Helen Johnson went to San Francisco to work because Marie had sisters down there that were working at the hospital. We quit. And we went up to Seattle and we were going to work up there. We went to three different hospitals and when we told them we were graduates of the Dee in Ogden, they hired us. They needed nurses but they said Dee always has excellent nurses. We could have worked in any one of the three but we couldn’t find a place to live. We finally found one that was in the attic. It was up three flights of stairs and we followed the man up the stairs and looked at it, drug our suitcases up there, sat on our suitcases for a few minutes, looked at one another and said, “Let’s go home.” And we beat him back down the stairs. So we came home and got off the train and said, “Let’s go up to Fort Douglas and sign up for the navy.” They kept teasing me and telling me they would be accepted and I wouldn’t. I was accepted and they weren’t. So I went all by myself. 19 MF: Wow. KT: My dad took me to Ogden, put me on the train for Mare Island, which is across from Vallejo, California. The funny thing is, he served there when he was in the navy. He was on board a ship as a cook and stationed at Mare Island in World War One, right towards the end of it. He was in fourteen months and I was in fourteen months. MF: You were finished when the war was over. KT: Yes. MF: That is exciting. How fun. KT: It was quite an experience. It was while I was there that penicillin came in during the end of the war. Where I worked was with amputees and plastic surgery came in too. They did so much there. There was a Doctor Parker that was a patient. He had lost part of his arm and he wanted to be a surgeon. He would take the histories when he would come for the doctors that were there. Years later I saw him on television, a world renowned eye surgeon. And it showed him and he used his prosthesis to hold and worked with his other hand. Of all the things…I thought “Oh I am so proud of you Doctor Parker.” MF: That is great. He didn’t let his disability affect anything. That is wonderful. KT: Back to nurses training, we had some neat doctors too. My first day in surgery, Betty Macey and I were the only two in our class that worked seven to seven at night in surgery. She went in the day before I did. She is gone. She married Harry Booth, one of the lab technicians, and he went on to become a Dentist there in Ogden. But they are both dead now. But anyway, she was small and 20 petite and I was tall and skinny and they showed her all around the surgery where everything was. The next day that I came in we watched TNA’s to start with. The nurse that was there asked me to go to the supply room and ask for something that they needed. I went in there and I ask and Erma Atkinson, Anna Funk was in there too but I don’t remember Anna very well, but I remember Erma because she was on my case all the time. She said, “Well I will give it to you this time but then you come back in here when you are done there and clean all these cupboards so you will know where everything is.” So that was my first day in surgery. MF: So that was fun. KT: But while we were in nurse’s training, Doctor Rumel did the first labectomy for lung that had been done. They worked for weeks to set up for that. The sutchers and the needles, they were all in the muslin books and autoclaved. So we got to observe that. MF: That is exciting. KT: He stayed at the Dee for awhile and then he went to Salt Lake. I told you old minds get stuck. MF: It is alright. What was your favorite floor you worked on and enjoyed the most while you were at the Dee? KT: Well to tell you the truth, when I was working at what I was working I was happy to be doing that. I was happy to be working in the delivery room or in the nursery or in surgery to help people to get better. And pediatrics, I loved pediatrics. That was the hardest place to work. When Leonard…I don’t remember his last 21 name…had burned his legs and that. That was quite different and they had to debreed that proud flesh and he had the cradle. The thing to keep them off the legs so no covers would touch. He was the nicest young man. Then there was Bobby. Bobby had rheumatic heart. He died while he was there but his parents were divorced and he cried. He said, “Miss Paul, do you think my mom and dad would come together?” So I talked to them and they did come together. But he had these great big dark brown eyes and he used to sing you are my funshine instead of sunshine. The interns would come in and get him to sing to them and he had the cutest voice. I just prayed that he wouldn’t die on my shift. MF: That would be hard. KT: Then on the medical floor. Cancer, they had that. One time they brought an Indian in around Christmas time with pneumonia. The Indians don’t bathe in the winter so we had to take his underwear off, oh he was going to die and I had to give him his bath. Of course, we never had showers or that so you had your bath basin. It took me three bath basins to get him clean and he knew he was going to die because I cleaned him up. I never forgot that one. There also was the DT ward. Those poor men, to get themselves in such a mess. One said he wanted a drink so I held the water glass over for him, you know how you hold the glass with the straw between your fingers so they can drink it? He took a great big drink and spit it right back at me and said, “No! Whisky!” There was another one in a private room and I heard him laughing. I walked into his room to see what was going on. He was looking up at the ceiling and pointing and just laughing. He said, “Do you see those Irish faces up there?” 22 MF: Oh my goodness. KT: Then we had Eloise. She had to have a shot for her heart because they used to give that to them. I guess we must have made the poor woman an alcoholic because you would hear her down the hall hollering, “Where is my whisky?” One night doing rounds on the medical floor, we always used to use our flashlight. We would hold it down on the floor so we could see where we were going and I walked into this room because we checked our patients every hour or hour and a half to see how they were. We would walk up and down, in and out of those rooms and check the things that needed to be checked. This was a colored man in there and as I walked towards his bed he hollered, “Oh Lottie, there is a ghost!” I jumped and he jumped and I said, “No, it is just Miss Paul. I am checking to see how you are.” “Aww,” he said. He couldn’t help but laugh about that. Then there was a lady that came in for a cancer treatment and she had had quite a few. Her husband told her goodbye and she was doing just fine. He had no sooner got out the door of the hospital and then her light went on and I went down there and she was dying. I hurried and called the office but he didn’t get back up there until she was gone. Things like that make you sad. MF: Yes that is hard. KT: In those days when there was infection in the spine, this one lady had a cast on and they put maggots in there so it would eat up the dead flesh so that it could heal. We had to check to see that none of it got out onto the bed, that they were still within the cast. It worked. I thought “Oh, how would it feel to have those things crawling around in there.” I am sure you could feel it. 23 MF: You probably could. That would be kind of creepy. KT: Then we had a really nice looking young man that was about twenty years of age and you would see the nurses always going in and out of his room. He had petit mal seizures. And he had fallen off his bicycle when he was five and hit his head. Do you know what they do with petit mal seizures? MF: No I don’t. KT: They will be talking to you and all of a sudden it is just like a light goes off from behind their eyes and they don’t say anything for a few minutes. Pretty soon it is back and they pick up right where they left. MF: Do you remember any of the Dee family? Did you associate with any of them at all? KT: No. MF: When did you retire? Did you continue after you were in the navy? You mentioned you got married. KT: Well I didn’t get married until I was twenty-five. My husband had been in the Air Force. He had been all over the United State to all training and all the different airplanes. On the day the armistice was signed he was up in a B-29. They were getting ready to go to help with the war. They wouldn’t let him come down because they said there was enough confusion on the ground. So they had to stay up there until they had to land. I met him in Logan. MF: So did you work after you got married? KT: Until I had children. MF: Until you had your kids. 24 KT: And then he and I decided that I would stay home. And I was scolded many times, especially after we moved back up here from California because he was an airline pilot and flew for Western Airlines and then Delta Airlines. MF: Oh good. KT: Why don’t you come to work? We need you to come to work. We decided years ago with him being away so much that I would stay home. I kept my license up. When we were in California I was about to go to work at the Good Samaritan Hospital there because of reciprocity we could do that. Then the strike was over and he said, “No you are not going to.” MF: So that was that. KT: I did neighborhood nursing. MF: You took care of everybody in your neighborhood. KT: Do you know what that is? MF: Tell us a little bit about that. KT: I lived in Granger for about seventeen years. When Penicillin first came out you would have to have a shot every three hours. It was a blessing when they had the one that would last longer. I still have the box, it is about this big and it is striped, and in it I have my little black case with my syringe and needles in it. I have cotton in it and a little bottle of alcohol and tweezers. I would go to people in the neighborhood where the doctor would call and tell me that they would need the shot and how often to give it. They would buy the medicine and bring it to me or they would keep it in their refrigerator. I told them to do that. That was better than me having theirs. 25 MF: That was probably easier. KT: Yes. I would go to their home and I would boil my syringe and then I would give them the shot. In my home I would give shots for allergies. MF: It was with your glass syringe, right? KT: Yes. MF: Okay. KT: Yes, we didn’t have disposables then. And we didn’t have disposables in the hospital. We had to clean the units every time. MF: Reuse everything. KT: They were the stainless steal. The hardest thing for me to do and the poor geriatric patients…it didn’t bother me much to have to change them but if they dropped their emesis basin upside down on the floor and you go to pick it up and it was just sticky. I used to just gag. That was the hardest thing. MF: That would be hard. KT: I felt so bad for them. I knew how I would feel if I had to have all that done. MF: That would be hard. KT: In nurses training, we had a housemother… MF: Yes. KT: Mrs. Wood. MF: Yes. KT: And every Saturday I would fix her hair, wave her hair and curl it. Then when it was dry I would go up and comb it out. MF: Oh good. 26 KT: And when we were having dances or that I would cut hair for the student nurses where it needed to be cut, put their hair up, comb it all out, and I was always the last one ready. They said, “Why do we always have to wait for you?” MF: You were taking care of everybody else. You had two jobs, a beautician and nurse. KT: And then since I was tall you would hear, “Paul come and get this for me.” They couldn’t reach it. Now I can’t reach. That is a shame. MF: That is how it goes? KT: Yes. MF: How do you think nursing has changed over the years? You have mentioned a few things about nursing. KT: Yes. I definitely do think it has changed. They started the cadet program when I was a senior. My little sister was Doris Jenkins and she married a Pike. Now she is one of the…up there at the university. In nursing she is quite prominent. Doris Pike, have you heard of her? MF: I haven’t. KT: She graduated from the Dee. MF: We will have to check that out. SL: She teaches up at Utah State? KT: No, University of Utah. SL: Oh she teaches at the U. KT: I don’t know if she teaches at the U but she has something to do with nursing still and I thought she is one of the supervisors, administrators, I am not sure what. 27 MF: We will have to make sure to check that out. KT: Her name is Doris Pike. She divorced her husband, I think he became an alcoholic but she graduated as high school the same time as my husband. My husband was a year younger than I. I graduated early and he graduated late. MF: Do you think, with your training, you were trained on every floor and were taught everything. KT: We were taught, right. We were taught to read our patients and I don’t think they are taught that anymore. They depend too much on… MF: The machines. KT: …the machines. Patients nowadays don’t feel like they are getting nursing care. MF: No. KT: They feel like they are a number. MF: Exactly, they tend the monitor not the patient. KT: Yes. We used to have to watch and record if there was any pallor or cyanosis or if the general attitude of the patient. MF: You had a good bedside manner. That was what you were taught…how to take care of them right there. KT: And you never asked your patient, “How are you?” You tell them how they are. That is what they taught us. MF: Really? That is interesting. KT: They said because if you ask them how they are then they think of all the pain and stuff. Think of something positive and tell them like you would walk into the 28 room and say, “Oh how pretty your hair looks today.” Or, “What a nice smile.” Or, “That is a pretty jacket.” MF: It was kind of reverse psychology? KT: Yes and pretty soon they are laughing and talking to you. MF: And it’s not so bad. KT: Yes. MF: That is interesting. KT: While I was in nurses training we had a man with gas gangrene. That was hard to watch. He stepped on a nail and it started and he lost his leg and it kept creeping up, creeping up. We had him in a sterile room where you had to wear gloves and a robe and anybody that came in there had to. Then you had to take them off and put them in the hamper and wash your hands. You could feel that gas under the skin. It was sad. MF: That would be hard to watch that. KT: There was one of the patients on ward B whose dad had died and he was the oldest. He helped his mother raise the rest of the children. He had had cancer and they had done surgery on him. Then later he came back and the cancer had eaten a hole and he was dying. His mother had died and he was all by himself. MF: That is sad. KT: I always talked to him. They had him in a room…were you ever in the old Dee Hospital? MF: No I wasn’t. 29 KT: Well you come off the elevator or up the stairs and the nurses station was to your left. Then there was two rooms to the north past that before you went through the door that the rooms went east and west. He was in the second room. Anyway, I was hoping he would be dead before I had to go on duty. MF: Yes. KT: So when we got on duty, Donna and I, Donna Larson, I don’t know if she is still alive or not. She was Donna Brown and lived in Salt Lake. MF: We will have to check that. I am not sure if she is or not. KT: She had rheumatism really bad. But anyway, I saw the light was on so they gave us the report and I said, “His light is on. Is he still alive?” They said, “Well if his light is on he is probably gone because he was so close to going we tied the cord around his hand so when he died it would jerk the light on.” MF: Oh. KT: I went into the room and as I walked through the door, he was looking at the door and he said, “I knew you would come.” And he reached out his hand and took a hold of mine, looked over the end of the bed and said, “Mom,” and he was gone. He had a hold of my hand so tight that Donna had to help me pry it off. MF: Oh wow. KT: They need to feel the empathy and the love that you have for your patients. MF: That is the reason that you went into nursing to begin with. KT: Right, so I could help people feel better. MF: That is good. We appreciate you taking time with us today. KT: I really haven’t said anything. 30 MF: Oh you have. You have told us some great information. KT: I rambled on. MF: We appreciate all you had to say. KT: I didn’t tell you that there was one doctor that the nurses wouldn’t stay in the chart room alone with. MF: Really? KT: He was tall and good looking but he had roven hands. You just had to be real careful. MF: You had to be careful. Well we appreciate everything you had to say and we are glad you let us come visit you. We appreciate to get to know you. KT: You really didn’t learn anything. MF: We did, it was great fun. We appreciate everything. 31