Oral History Program Patricia Payton Erickson Interviewed by Marci Farr 21 October 2010 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Patricia Payton Erickson Interviewed by Marci Farr 21 October 2010 Copyright © 2010 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 St. Benedict’s School of Nursing was founded in 1947 by the Sisters of Mount Benedict. The school operated from April 1947 to 1968. Over the forty-one year period, the school had 605 students and 357 graduates. In 1966, the program became the basis for Weber State College’s Practical Nursing Program. This oral history project was created to capture the memories of the graduates and to add to the history of nursing education in Ogden. The interviews focus on their training, religion, and experiences working with doctors, nurses, nuns, and patients at St. Benedict’s Hospital. This project received funding from the Utah Humanities Council and the Utah Division of State History. ____________________________________ 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: Patricia Payton Erickson, an oral history by Marci Farr, 21 October 2010, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Patricia Payton Erickson Graduation Photo Class of 1960 Patricia Payton Erickson October 21, 2010 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Patricia Payton Erickson, conducted by Marci Farr and Melissa Johnson, on October 21, 2010. In this interview, Patricia discusses her recollections and experiences with the St. Benedict’s School of Nursing. MF: This is Marci Farr, and we are interviewing Pat Erickson. She graduated from St. Benedict’s School of Nursing in 1960. It’s October 21, 2010, and we’re interviewing her at her home in Uintah. Pat, will you just start off by telling us a little bit about where you grew up, a little bit about your family, and also where you attended school when you were growing up, and any high school classes you took that involved nursing? PE: It was kind of a roaming family. I went to five different high schools in four years. My grandmother lived here, so I moved here to go to nurses’ training. I didn’t take hardly anything that related to nursing, because I wanted to be a telephone operator. I thought that sounded great fun. My mother said, “But you could go away to school.” I went – oh, away – okay, away is good. So I came here to Ogden and was accepted at St. Benedict’s. MF: Why did you decide to become a nurse? Was there any certain reason? PE: Education, away from home, Mom would pay. There you go. MF: The deal was sealed. That’s good to know. So was this your first time away from home? PE: Yes. MF: How was that, when you first got to nurses’ training? 2 PE: Well, I hadn’t lived in a dorm ever, and I was pretty satisfied at home with the routine there, but my grandmother lived here, and I have aunts and uncles and cousins that live here, from my mother’s side of the family, so if I got too homesick, I had them to reach out to. MF: That’s good. Who was your roommate when you first started? PE: Mary Dellamar was my first roommate, and she and I weren’t roommates very long; then I had Shanna Swaner for a roommate. MF: Were you together for the rest of the time in training? PE: Usually, but we had those classes away – some in Nebraska and some in Denver, so oftentimes there would be more than that in the room. MF: That’s good. Do you have any stories about your roommate or any of your classmates that happened when you first entered training? PE: I come from Catholic schools, so I was very familiar with the strict procedures and “you will obey” sort of thing. That was fine for me. So I don’t think there was anything really unusual about it. I’ll leave it at that. MF: Who were some of your other classmates that you were in training with? PE: Connie Minnoch, Roberta Mohlin, Sister Rita – I’m not sure she’s even a nun any more. MF: I don’t think she is. I think she’s married and living in Oregon. PE: Penny Chrisman; have you spoken with her? MF: We’re going to interview her next week. PE: Oh good, because she’s up in Brigham. Those are most of the roommates I had when we were traveling. 3 MF: What about trying to sneak out? Did you ever try to sneak out or break curfew, get in or out through the tunnel? PE: Yes. We didn’t really have a tunnel at St. Benedict’s that we could sneak out of; you had to come in through the front door, and people would just bend down and creep in because the operator was usually either busy or resting her eyes. But our curfews weren’t terribly late; ten o’clock I think, weeknights, which is pretty stern. I do have a story about that. I had my mom come and visit from Spokane, and she was down at her mother’s here in town, so my grandmother’s. My boyfriend, Boyce was there, and I could see that I wasn’t going to get home on time. So I called and told them that I wouldn’t be home on time; that I’d have to be home a little late, and my mother was here visiting, etc. We had a sign-out book where you had to sign in and sign out. So I didn’t do any more than that; I just called and left a message with whomever answered the phone at the front desk. Anyway, the next week I was called to a disciplinary council for having been late coming in. MF: You’re like, ‘I did what I was supposed to!’ PE: Not only that, but I said, “You know, I was with my mother and my grandmother. I wasn’t in harm’s way; I did phone.” So I was campused for one month for that infraction. MF: Really? PE: Yes. And when it was over, they just wanted to know what I had learned, and I told them I had learned never to tell the truth again, that I would just sneak out 4 and in like everybody else did. Seemed easier. The next year they didn’t have that rule any more. MF: That’s a good story. What about your relationship with the sisters? Did you get along with them? PE: I think I did. I was a convert to Mormonism between the time I enrolled and the time nursing started, so that was an interesting twist for them to handle, but I think I got along with them alright. As I say, I went to Catholic schools, so I respected the order of the day. This order wasn’t as strict as the order where I had gone to high school, so that was helpful. These nuns actually played and had a good time, where the ones that I was used to didn’t do that. MF: So you had some social interactions with them as well. PE: Yes. MF: What sort of things did they do with you on a social basis? PE: I don’t know that they did them with me particularly, but I saw them playing some game in the snow – the nuns – I don’t know if there were any students there, but they were outside playing, which I thought was unusual. I wasn’t involved in that at all, actually. I don’t like to play in the snow. But they were having a good time. I felt that was real unusual, how down-to-earth they were. That gave you a whole new feeling about them; the relationship changes when you see how regular they are. MF: That’s true; it’s more humanistic, instead of just in the habit, and their sternness. That probably did make it different. Did some of them teach your classes? PE: Yes. 5 MF: Which classes did you have from them? PE: Almost all of them were taught by nuns, except for our orthopedic class; that was taught by Dr. Swindler, an orthopedic man. We had a guy that was a pathologist, who taught that class. But most of the classes were taught by the nuns. MF: That was probably interesting, to see that. I’m sure their strictness still went through the class, too, as far as making sure you studied. PE: Oh, yes. We had one nun who used to say, take out your pencils, we’re going to have an exam. She said that every time – Sister Estelle was her name – she taught anatomy and physiology. Sweetest little thing in the world, but she was very strict also. Our pharmacology teacher was Sister Rebecca, I believe. She said, “Now, we’re going to be real fair in here. We’re going to give you a pretest to see what you already know about basic math and algebra, and if you pass it, you don’t have to take the class.” Not one soul passed, so we had a big class. We did learn a lot. MF: That would be interesting, to have that perspective. I’m sure you had to study every day to keep up with their demands. PE: Yes. Of course, we didn’t take any other courses but nursing courses. That was probably one thing that I really enjoyed, because I didn’t want to have to plan my schedule – oh, too bad - this one’s not available, that one’s full, you have to walk five miles to the class. It was very nice to have it all on campus and listed. You knew what you were going to take, and you did. MF: Did you have lecturers come in and give lectures? Did the doctors do that occasionally? 6 PE: Not that I recall. Dr. Swindler, as I said, taught orthopedics to us, or most of the skeletal things, but we didn’t really have a lot of visitor doctors. The nuns did a good job. Sister Mercy – she taught obstetrics, she was a sweet lady too. MF: Dr. Swindler; were there any other doctors that you worked with in surgery, or any that you can remember? PE: I’m 4’8”, so I didn’t do very well in surgery. I was always on a stool, and jumping off the stool to get to the back table. I did not enjoy that at all. I don’t have real fond memories of surgery, but I think most of them were pretty kind. The surgeons are very strict. Dr. Howe was one of them who was very strict and demanding, and expected top-of-the-line things. When I was just barely in my surgical rotation, we were called one night. I was on call. Like I would know anything, I was just this little student. It was a ruptured aortic aneurysm, and we were there all night long. Dr. Lowe - the old Dr. Lowe, not the young one – was the doctor. He was so kind to everyone that my big, tough experience was nice. MF: I’m sure it would be interesting to have all these experiences. PE: We did like the anesthesiologists; they were always fun. Operating room is really weird. It has blood smells, ether smells, coffee smells, and I have a nose that’s really active. So I didn’t enjoy being in there much. MF: That would not be good. What would you and your classmates do if you had some time off, if you had a night off after you were done working? PE: Well, we went to movies occasionally, and I think that’s all. I went to Penny Chrisman’s home, because she had a relative here in town, real close, within walking distance of the hospital. So we’d go see her occasionally. The rest of the 7 time, if you took your weekend – I spent mine with family. I didn’t usually spend it with – until my husband entered my life, and then I spent time with him and his family, and my family. MF: That’s good. How long were you on rotations, when you were at the different departments of the hospital? How long did you stay on each floor? PE: I think roughly three months. We had different positions while we were there. There were some nights, some days, years ago, when they didn’t have anybody but student nurses running the hospital, and then they had one night supervisor who was there, who did the whole place. It taught us things that we really needed to know, but it was a real scary position to be in. MF: It would be, to be nineteen, twenty years old and you’re faced with all this. PE: Seventeen, I was – but at any rate, it was scary. It was scary, but I learned a lot, because you have to learn to organize your work, and do all the deskwork. We didn’t have order clerks at the time, of course, we just had to be our own order taker. So we learned a lot, we did. MF: It was probably nice when you got out into the work force, you could do pretty much anything, because you had that experience. PE: The one rotation that I didn’t feel was valuable – and I don’t know if I dare say that – but I didn’t think it was, and that was the nutrition and kitchen. MF: Oh, Sister Boniface. PE: Sister Boniface was such a doll. She was very strict with everyone, which is fine, she wasn’t any different with me than with anyone else; I just don’t think that I learned a lot putting tea on a tray. 8 MF: How to fold the napkin right, and presentation. PE: No sugar, no sugar sort of thing. I think that’s probably a real important thing, but at the time there weren’t dietitians running things like there are now. She was a dietitian, I think, but she was the only one, and she had to supervise all of we students. So that was the thing that wasn’t very worthwhile to me. MF: But you liked everything else you were able to do? PE: Yes. MF: Tell us about Hastings and about Children’s Hospital. PE: I had not had any experience at all to speak of in psych nursing or with psychiatric people. Didn’t have any relatives or friends – I was really fascinated by that trek. I remember the first night we arrived, it was a foggy night, and it was Nebraska and it’s all flat, and there was this huge fog rolling in. The cab driver asked if he could take us for a ride around the hospital grounds before we went in to our room. We said, “Sure.” You could actually hear people screaming from the buildings, which was our worst fear. Of course, they were safe, and you know, you do have patients that get out of hand, but it was terrifying for us who were young. MF: To just walk in and go, ‘great, what have we gotten ourselves into?’ PE: Yes. They did have a tunnel under the school and the hospital, and that was frightening to me too, because you didn’t know who was down there. They were usually patients who were tried and true workers and did a lot of things that were helpful to the hospital, but I didn’t know that when I first arrived there. We had some really fun experiences on our chronic women’s treatment ward. We had a 9 woman there who was just so wonderful to the nurses; she would sew things, make things for the patients; she was very wonderful to all of us, just as pleasant as you want to be. We commented about that, several of us did. They said, “Well, she’s in here because she murdered her whole family.” MF: Oh, my word. That’s good to find out. PE: I know. So the one person we bonded with is now making us nervous. So that was kind of funny. Then, another day, it was such bizarre behavior because it was the chronically ill, “never go home” kind of patients. So they had a lot of real sick, chronically ill behaviors. There was one woman there who was always sewing or doing something with some thread and material. So no one bothered her; she was good about that. One day we came to work, and they said that we were going to have a morning raid of this lady. I was puzzled by that; I’d never raided a person before. I didn’t know you did such things. She was kind of a plump woman, kind of hefty, so she was always just sitting there doing all these things. She apparently was a hoarder and stealer of things on the unit, and she would stuff them in her clothing everywhere, and things she was sewing together were pieces of garments she had managed to steal from other people. When they were through getting her all dressed down, she was a little teeny skinny thing. MF: Holy cow. PE: That was also my first connection to jigsaw puzzles. There was always one up, and someone was always doing one. I don’t know whether they did them – because that’s a fine place to hallucinate if you want to, you know? No one’s 10 paying attention, and you can just do whatever you want to do. I didn’t know anything about sociopaths. I must have been a very guarded little child. They were so interesting, because they were so friendly and so charismatic, but they have no conscience. We learned a lot; we did learn a lot. It was good to be on site. I don’t think we could have done it anywhere else. So that we could see that many diseases and that variety of patients that were active in their illness; we learned a lot. There weren’t a lot of meds then, you know; there was Thorazine. MF: Was that the only drug at that time? PE: We didn’t have many. We had Thorazine, and some other hefty ones, but that was really the biggest used one. Then you’re either conscious or you’re not, seemed like. Thorazine was a really heavy medication. MF: Were they still doing shock therapy at that time. PE: Yes, we did shock therapy. I had forgotten about that. They did do shock therapy, which was appalling to watch; probably still is. I don’t think they’ve changed their tactics too much. But it was a miracle worker in lots of cases. You know, people did come out of their deep depressions, and they were able to function a little better. So I guess you do what you have to do. When you’re family and only given so many options, you know – the patient didn’t usually have a lot of options, because they weren’t able to make those kinds of decisions. The family had to make those kinds of decisions. MF: That’s true. That would be hard. PE: It was hard to watch. 11 MF: What about Children’s? What type of experiences did you have there? Was that also a good rotation, did you enjoy that, or was that one harder? PE: I don’t know what the other girls have been telling you, but pediatrics at Denver Children’s Hospital was a hard rotation. It really was. We were forewarned, by the class ahead of us, who to watch out for, of course - you know how you do it; don’t take that teacher, get that one. But I did get the bad one, and she was a strict thing. I had a terrible nursing experience there. Some little boy that had been in there for having his teeth pulled, and he had to be in the hospital because he was a hemophiliac. They didn’t do anything about that in those days, so they had to put him in the hospital, and then put some sort of a pressure brace on his upper lip with headgear to it, to keep it from bleeding. I thought that was – I mean, how sad is that, that you have to have that just to have your teeth pulled? But at any rate, one day I came out of there and I had taken his temperature, and you know, you use rectal temperatures on children all the time, and when I took out the thermometer, it was broken. MF: Oh, my goodness. PE: Yes. It was not a good day. So then the instructor and I had to stay there, and we did everything we could to get stools – I searched stools for days, and we never did find any, and it never did bleed. So I don’t know what happened to that, but it was a frightening experience. I was sure that was reason enough to get me expelled. The other things – where I learned to love new babies, I think, because I loved working with new babies, were the little ones that had the Rh problems. There wasn’t anything to do with them; they didn’t do blood transfusions. They 12 just laid around and were yellow, and were lethargic and very difficult to hold. We had an instructor who said, “I don’t want to walk by this room ever, and look in here, and see you not talking to these babies. When you’re holding them, you’re talking to them. Period.” So I thought that was really good interaction, and I loved them, and they were such cuddlers because they were so lethargic, you know – it was really fun. MF: That is interesting about that. I had that issue with my kids, but I had the shots, so I never had to worry about it. Isn’t that funny, to think just ten years before I was even born, that they still had problems with that. That is so interesting. PE: They did. Years later, as I worked in the nursery in the local hospital here, they had learned about blood transfusions and did some of that, but at that time everybody was in a lot of light, and that’s all. It was really interesting. MF: You take things for granted that you don’t have to worry about. You don’t even think about it. PE: I know – now it’s so well treated it’s not even an issue these days. But boy, there was a nursery full of them. MF: That is interesting. So you were in these rotations three months as well, right? PE: Yes. MF: And there were just those two that you had? PE: Right. MF: You didn’t have polio patients? PE: No, that was before me. We didn’t do polio. The year I entered in to nurses’ training was the year of a bad flu epidemic; 1957. They gave us all flu shots, and 13 I have never been so sick in my life as with that flu shot. But many of them were just as sick and didn’t get the flu shot, so it was just a bad year. I hadn’t had a history of illness, and I just thought I was going to die there in that dorm. I just knew it. They were very good about it, and somebody had to take care of the people, so they needed to get all their staff vaccinated. MF: That’s crazy. Tell us about your capping ceremony. PE: Well, you know, that was a really big deal. At the college, they kind of put them in your slot at the mailbox, and that was the end of that. No, sir. This was a very big ceremony. But then, Catholics are big on ceremonial things. So we all looked forward to that with great expectations. We had a teacher come from Weber High School, a music teacher, and he taught us to sing the song, “I’ll walk through the wind and the rain, walk on, walk on.” Then of course we were there, we were right in that song. Then they gave us each a capping ceremony – a cap that they put on our heads, and it was really quite a deal, because you had to have been there x number of months and completed x number of tasks before you could even have a cap. MF: So it was probably a great day to celebrate, you knew you’d made it. PE: It was. They invited your families, and they had a little eating something, I believe, but I don’t recall what it was. But we were very excited about that, we were. We thought it was wonderful. MF: Was Jeane Barker, Jeane Morton – was she there at that time, or had she left? PE: She was not one of our teachers at that time, but she probably was involved in that heavily, because she was so helpful to the sisters. 14 MF: Tell us about graduation. What was probably the highlight of graduation? PE: I’m kind of a cynical, sarcastic person. Not that you didn’t know that before. Anyway, it was a ceremony that we just were excited about. Walking down that huge aisle in St. Joseph’s Church – I don’t know if you’ve been there, but I was the shortest one in the class, so I got to lead the pack. I have some pictures of that that I got out, even, to show you if you wanted to see them. That was a wonderful experience, but I wasn’t Catholic, and there was a Bishop there, and we had to go up and kiss his ring and do all these ceremonial Catholic things. But at that point, we would have done anything to get out of there. MF: Just to be done? PE: Just to be done. Amen to this, you know? We were ready. They gave awards at some of those – I didn’t win any awards, but there were a lot of awards given, for the very smartest, and for the best – whatever. They had several of them. MF: So at that time, could you be married, would they let you be married? PE: No – my husband and I got married the year before and kept it a secret. Can you believe that? MF: Oh, you guys were the secret married ones. PE: Yes. Have you heard this before? MF: Now we know who it is – yes! PE: Here it is. We didn’t tell anyone, and his parents agreed, and my mother said, “That’s fine.” Because we went with my grandmother and aunt and uncle up to visit my mother, and while we were there, we got married. My mother said, “I don’t care, but if you get pregnant, you have to pay me back every dime.” Which 15 was a good incentive. So we were married for almost a whole year. Then, just about – it might have been June, and we were to graduate in August – one of the nuns wanted to meet me in the library, which is a quiet, solitary place, so we weren’t going to have any fun in there, I knew. But she did confront me then about, was I married, and I told her yes, I had been. She asked if I was pregnant, and I said no, I wasn’t. I said, but I want you to tell me today if you’re going to kick me out, because I’m not going to work free for you all summer, and then in August you say I can’t graduate. So they said, no, that would be fine, I could continue to attend, and I was glad. MF: Oh, good. PE: That was such a silly thing. I still don’t understand why you can’t be married and do nursing, because I did it all my life; married and did nursing. MF: Exactly, afterwards. PE: I don’t know what the story was. But then we had another girl in our class who got pregnant, and she was married and very pregnant, and they wouldn’t let her graduate with us. That was sad. MF: Was she the one that she still got her diploma, but she couldn’t walk with you guys? PE: Right. She couldn’t go down the aisle with us at all, and that was a very sad situation for her. She’s a nurse instructor now, at some university, and she tells them all about birth control. She says, I’m a big advocate of birth control. She only had the two children, so you know – she was glad. She was one of our best nurses, too. Loved nursing, and that was what was sad. She was pretty angry. 16 MF: It doesn’t take away from your abilities. PE: To do anything. Most of us worked up until the last minute that we had our babies, even, so I don’t know what that rule was about. I just know it was a rule, and I broke it. MF: Well, now we know. PE: Had you heard that before? MF: Yes, somebody told us that somebody got married – and that’s so funny, because I didn’t put your name with it – good to know. That was a good story. PE: It is a good story. They were nice about it, you know – even when we were away on rotation, I was married, so probably some of those people knew, and I think one of them probably told the nuns; probably the other nun, I’m guessing. I don’t know. It didn’t affect my life much; I was able to finish my nursing and I did all right; I wasn’t a super A student, but I was just above average, did fine. MF: Absolutely. What do you think was probably your greatest challenge while you were in nurses’ training? Besides keeping it secret that you were married? PE: Well, that was the last year, so that wasn’t a big challenge, by then. My biggest challenge – I think the nurse sergeant in pediatrics was the hardest thing. MF: In Denver? PE: In Denver. She was the very hardest one, I think. It wasn’t that we were learning things extra-difficult, the classes were fine; but there were so many things that were foreign to us. They had isolation, and you had to wash your hands five minutes going in and five minutes coming out, and then check the IVs every fifteen minutes. Well, what’s with that? We didn’t have IV machines – we counted 17 our own drops. So that was hard, with isolation patients. I thought they did good with that, but it was a very difficult task. That was where we learned – I don’t know about the rest of the class – that’s where I learned that you had to have a nursing care plan before you could begin. I worked all those years and had done fine without one, but this lady wanted us to have a care plan. I was busy doing something or other, and she asked me if I had done my care plan. I said, “No.” She said, “Well, then, how are you out here working?” I had already done a bed bath and gotten some of my assignments done, but I had to go and make a care plan. So everything was just hard for me there. MF: Regimented that way. PE: Well, and you know, she said to me, “You’re fairly neat in appearance.” I said, “Well, I don’t know what that means. I have on a clean uniform and clean shoes and socks, and my hat; I bathed.” She said, “Well, you just look fair.” I was loving that. But we did learn a lot there. MF: It was probably nice for it just to be about pediatrics instead of like you said about Hastings, where you have the different areas. PE: We saw a lot of different kinds of patients on pediatrics as well; but there were so many new procedures, I think, was the thing that was so difficult. We did all kinds of things to not go to her class, to miss her rotation. I don’t know how many of us there were, but I was certainly one of them, that went to the cafeteria to drink hot chocolate, and then we’d have to sit down and have our temperatures taken before we went to pediatrics. So that helped a lot. MF: You’re too hot, you can’t go. I love it. 18 PE: We had to do whatever we had to do. MF: That’s a great thing. So after you graduated, did you stay at St. Benedict’s? Tell us a little bit about your nursing career. PE: When I graduated, my husband was a student at Weber State, at the time, and I did stay here. Our family was here, so we decided we would hang around here. I did go to St. Benedict’s, and I worked in their newborn nursery, and I loved that. I was very fond of pediatricians; they’re so kind and nice. They don’t know how to be mean; most of them, at least. They were very kind, and they’re very eager in your learning, and were good teachers. I learned a lot there, as well. I stayed there for a while. Then my husband decided that he wanted to go away to school – well, actually it was kind of a joint decision – we had two very different sets of parents. There was no way it was going to mesh; with our taking advice from one or the other, we’d be in trouble. So we decided maybe we needed to go away. So we went to Nebraska, and he went to school there. I got a job there, working nights in a nursing home. Everybody’s dream. Anyway, I finally got oriented, and I kept getting this call – a little note from our landlord – that said, “Please call this lady, she wants to talk to you, she’s from the college.” I didn’t ever answer her call. One day I came home from work, and she was there, in the morning. I didn’t know her at all, but she introduced herself and said, “I don’t think you understand what I want from you.” I said, “Well, apparently not. I just learned this new job, and I’m not really interested in changing; I don’t 19 know anybody here, and I’ve just barely gotten started.” She said, “No, I think you’d better listen.” She offered me a job as the college health nurse. You know what you learn about outpatient nursing, is zero, in nurses’ training. You know, you’re all so hospital-oriented and doctor-oriented. So that was a real scary thing. But they paid all of his tuition and all of his books, and my salary, and room and board. MF: That is awesome. Wow. PE: So I was really glad that she insisted that we speak. So we were there three years, and I learned a lot there too. Some things were more fun than others. We did a lot of interesting things. The football players were annoying, because they were always so well during football season, but they couldn’t hardly tolerate anything else. Because it was a religious affiliated school, it was a Presbyterian college, they had rules about going to their weekly devotional; same as they do at BYU or anywhere else, I’m assuming. But if they weren’t there, they had to have a written excuse from the nurse. So I was very busy during those chapel episodes, because we had a lot of people who just couldn’t make it. Football players had to be very careful that they weren’t sluffing, you know, or they’d get boosted out, and many of them were on scholarships, so that was good. We were in charge of a ten-bed infirmary, and fortunately for us we didn’t have a major flu outbreak or anything; there were ten beds on one floor, and then down in the basement there were ten beds, and we lived in the middle of that. We walked over to the cafeteria and had breakfast, lunch, and dinner, a couple of blocks away, so I did get to know some of the kids there. But I had very little 20 experience. The lady who hired me, Mrs. Lamb, was a wonderful teacher, and she was one you could easily go to. I’d say, “You know, I’ve never really examined peoples’ ears before.” We didn’t do those kinds of things then, and I learned a lot. She was good to us. MF: That’s good. PE: Then we went to Oregon and played around for a year; I did – I took the year off. I had a new baby at Hastings; when she was a year old, we moved. Then I took a year off and we moved to Eugene, Oregon. My husband went to graduate school there, and I didn’t work at all, and it was heaven. Because, you know, I’d been constantly doing, and I was ready for a break of some kind. Then we moved back to Utah after a year, and went back to work at St. Benedict’s and worked in the nursery for a long time – ten or fifteen years. MF: That’s good. When did you finally retire? PE: I retired in 2000. I’d been a nurse forty years; that seemed adequate for me. MF: You were done. PE: That seemed adequate. But I had a lot of other experiences in between. I worked here in town for an obstetrician, which I really liked that. He was a nice doctor to work for. I worked at McKay-Dee nursery for a while; then I went to work at outpatient mental health and finally got to use my psych nursing. I scored the highest in psych on my boards, and that was a real surprise to me. I knew so little about it when I went there, but I must have absorbed some things while I was there, so that was nice. I really did enjoy that job too; you learn a lot about what goes on out in the community. It’s always good to have a homeless friend. They 21 know how to navigate in the world, I’ll tell you. They know how to navigate. I had a lot of good friends there; I liked that. MF: That’s good. Thanks for letting us visit with you; we appreciate you letting us come. PE: Well, you’re just very welcome. MF: That wasn’t too painful, was it? PE: No, I was very at ease. I’ve told these stories many times. MF: Well, we’re glad. PE: When we were freshmen we had a big sister, you know, in nursing. Did anybody talk to you about the big sister stuff? MF: No. PE: We were freshmen, so we had to have someone supervise us, and see that we had everything we needed, but actually they used it as more of a way to initiate you. The nurse who initiated me still works over here at Ogden Regional. MF: Kind of a big sister thing? PE: Yes, and come down and set up my uniform. You know, they furnished all the uniforms for us. We had to put all those goofy little buttons with the clips in them. There are lots of them on every uniform, and I had to go down and do hers every night, before I did mine. We had a lot of really fun little – I wouldn’t say troublemakers, but people who just had to fun things. You know how it is, still, if you’re in nursing working. You still only get half an hour for lunch. How you’re supposed to do that, I still haven’t figured out. Ride down on the elevator, stand in line, get your lunch, eat normally, and then run back upstairs in thirty minutes. 22 That’s why I think all nurses learn to eat so fast; such bad habits, and we munch all the time instead of eating regular, healthy meals. MF: Because you just get your few minutes. PE: Because that’s all you’ve got. We had a wonderful cookie baker there at the hospital, and she always had a big huge plate of cookies at the end. There was a sign in the middle of it that said, “Just one cookie, please.” One of the girls in our class who was not a multiple cookie eater, even, couldn’t stand that sign. It just made her nuts. So one day we went through several times and took several cookies, and then we put them all on a big plate down on one of the tables and put the sign back in it. Just little mischievous things like that. We were pretty good, though; we weren’t juvenile delinquents. MF: Just cookie thieves; that’s okay. PE: We didn’t want Sister Boniface to know, but she was willing to try anything. She joined our class late, and had been in class somewhere else. She was older than all of us by a few years, maybe ten. So we looked to her for great leadership. MF: How to snatch the cookies. That’s good. PE: It was good. It was nice to have all your uniforms furnished for you; you didn’t have to worry about all of that. I really can’t tell a nurse anymore from a cleaning lady, with the uniform situation. They have the tags, supposedly, but they’re always flipped over so you can’t read the name. I don’t know who designed them, but they should figure out a different way to do that. MF: At least on the back say RN or something, so you know. 23 PE: I really feel bad to see all that be gone. They say, “I’m a nurse,” and you don’t know if they’re really a nurse, or if they’re a CNA or an MA or a nurse nurse. It’s really hard when someone is ill in the hospital, because you don’t know who you’re dealing with, whether they have any authority; you don’t know where their knowledge level is or any of those things. But at least those of us who had nursing know to ask. A lot of families don’t know that. I really did – the nursing ceremony was a great thing for me. I really loved it, and I didn’t know I could sing until we had to do that. It was real fun. MJ: I think it’s interesting how the ceremony aspect kind of faded away. I know at Weber, it was Ruth – Swenson? Who absolutely hated the ceremony from her own training. She hated that aspect of it. But what she really liked was the nurses having social activities. So she turned the capping ceremony into – they would go and have a nice dinner somewhere, and they would just chat and visit, and then at the end of it, they’d hand them their cap. They would just hand it over, but there was no ceremony or ritual involved in it, because she absolutely hated it. PE: Everyone had their cap, and then we had a big cape. Talk about a useful item. But you felt like you had really earned all of that. I suppose you’ve seen pictures of this cap and cape. MF: Yes, and the capes are beautiful. PE: Yes, they are. That was nice. We have pictures of all of that. I was glad; my mother even came down from wherever she lived at the time. She moved a lot; as I said, we moved a lot. I think she was in Oregon at the time. But it was a very nice thing. 24 MF: To celebrate an accomplishment. PE: Yes. And it did feel like you had really put in all this hard work. We worked lots of hours. MF: Did you have two weeks off in the summer, or did you have any? PE: I don’t recall – I don’t recall that I ever had vacation, but I might have. They rotated you through with two weeks, and you just had to do what there was to do. A lot of that caused great growth in all of us. MF: Which, today I don’t think they have the personal care that you were trained to give. Assess the patient, make sure they’re okay, and spend time with them. PE: Well, now there’s so much equipment that takes that place. You have to know what the equipment’s doing, and I’m grateful for that, because I had open-heart surgery, and I want them to know what the machines were doing, but it’s true; I couldn’t get a back rub. We just had a brother-in-law die, and he had been in intensive care, mind you, five months. Had a decubitus this big (about five inches in diameter). Now, I don’t understand how that happens in intensive care. You know, they’re one on one, and that’s what killed him, of course, was the infection, eventually. That was a hard thing for me. They don’t have CNAs there; maybe they need to have a troop of CNAs. MJ: I thought they did regularly move them; at least when they were changing bed linens or something. PE: They should be turning them every hour or so, you know, and rubbing that spot. But that didn’t happen. So I was a little appalled at that. I couldn’t – I didn’t know 25 who was doing it, whether it was a cleaning lady in one of those scrub uniforms or just who it was. That was hard; that’s hard for the public, I think. MF: Absolutely, that’s true. PE: But I don’t know who decided it and what’s going to change. Scrubs are easy to work in, because later in my career when I was working, we wore scrubs, and I don’t think they flatter anyone. MF: Just like a little square tent. PE: Just not flattering to anyone, and no one wore hats; I probably did look ‘just fairly neat in appearance’, as the lady said. So whatever. MJ: I haven’t heard, and maybe you have; with the McKay-Dee, with their caps, they got stripes added each year. Did you guys have anything like that? PE: We didn’t have a stripe, no. No, and we had a unique cap; it was a different, rounded more than the other ones. When we were in nurses’ training back East, either one of our rotations, what a delight it was to see all the different little caps. Some of them are little lace frilly things, and some of them are great big; some of them had stripes just on the corner, and some had stripes along the top. Ours were just plain, but we really did like them. MJ: On one interview, I can’t remember who it was, but she had her cap. It was a fun shape, with those rounded edges. MF: Hope. PE: Hope Shipley? MF: Yes. 26 PE: We knew Hope Shipley when we lived in Nebraska, because we went to the Mormon church there, and a campus of Presbyterians, there aren’t many Mormons. There were two of us, I think. My husband and I. Then, when the nurses came, there were always a few from Utah, so they always built up the branch. That song, “There is hope smiling brightly before you”? We always think of her. She is a happy, smiley girl. She is fun. MF: She is fun. We had a good visit with her. PE: She’s a great girl. I liked her. So, that’s all. MF: Thank you for letting us come visit with you.