Oral History Program Sister Iris Beckwith Interviewed by Marci Farr 4 October 2010 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Sister Iris Beckwith Interviewed by Marci Farr 4 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: Sister Iris Beckwith, an oral history by Marci Farr, 4 October 2010, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Sister Iris Beckwith Graduation Photo Class of 1968 Sister Iris Beckwith October 4, 2010 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Sister Iris Beckwith, conducted by Marci Farr and Sarah Langsdon, on October 4, 2010. In this interview, Sister Beckwith discusses her recollections and experiences with the St. Benedict’s School of Nursing. MF: This is Marci Farr. We are interviewing Sister Iris Beckwith. It is October 4, 2010. She graduated from the St. Benedict’s School of Nursing in 1968, and we are interviewing her at the Mt. Benedict Monastery, South Ogden, Utah. We’re just going to start out – tell us a little bit about where you grew up and about your family, and about where you attended school. IB: Well, I’m an army brat by nature. My dad met my mother during World War II in the Panama Canal Zone. My mother was a native – my oldest brother and I were born there. Then we moved to the States, to upstate New York. Then Dad became a civilian for the Air Force, and then we were transferred to Dayton, and from Dayton, Ohio, out here. So this is home. I’ve been here since I was five and a half or so. My youngest brother is the only Ute Indian in the bunch. He was born at the old St. Benedict’s up on the hill. MF: That’s exciting. I was trying to remember – you’ve had quite the experience. That’s a great thing. You attended local schools here? IB: Well, pretty much. I went to St. Joseph’s grade school for eight years, before your time – it used to be located in a rather seedy part of town, on Lincoln Avenue. Then one year up at the high school. We were a one car family, so we lived in Clearfield, right outside the base, because that’s where Dad worked. We 2 were a one car family, so after the bus transportation, city bus took us, every day for those nine years, from our front door practically to St. Joseph’s; then, when the bus stopped, there was no choice for my parents. So then we went to Clearfield High, and I can still sing the school song! MF: I went to Clearfield High. IB: All right! MF: Good times. IB: A lot of my friends were going to be teachers, and I always wanted to be a teacher. I thought, you know, that’s an okay thing for a woman in those days, the sixties. Then a couple of the sisters – Sister Cassian and Sister Keith, from the school of nursing – came for one of those career day kind of things. So then a couple of my friends decided they were going to be nurses. And I thought, well, that’s okay too. My dad was a retired Master Sergeant in the Army, told me I would never make it as a nurse, so I showed him. MF: So that’s how you decided to become a nurse? IB: There wasn’t any big – you know, you’re going to do this wonderful, creative, man-saving service – none of that. Just to prove a point. I did it! MF: What were your first impressions, when you first entered training? Had you decided that you were going to take your vows at that time? IB: Oh, no – I was never going to – not for me, girl. MF: Tell us that story. IB: I was going to join the Air Force, and at that time the Vietnam War was going on. So there was a very big need. So I thought that would be a good thing, to go and 3 help. But as it turned out, I fell in love with the sisters and what they were all about, and I decided that my life would be best suited to service. I always wanted to be a missionary, but this particular group of sisters never did much missionary kind of work. But they were involved in nursing, and I enjoyed the community. We did a lot of things with the sisters. We became friends – not only were they our mentors, teachers, disciplinarians – I know one of the questions was, “Were they strict,” and I thought, strict? You guys don’t know what strict is! So anyway, no. Then, after – well, my senior year I joined the Sisters’ Community. Over the years I’ve lived with a couple of the sisters who taught me in nurses’ training. Sister Danile, she’s our prioress, she taught pharmacology. Sister Luke was administrator, that you both know. Sister Virgene, who is in Minnesota right now, she’s of an age and is having some bone problems. So she’s there at our sisters’ retirement home. She was the OR supervisor, and then she was OB/GYN director. So I knew her. Who else – Sister Stephanie, of course, everybody knows Sister Stephanie – taught us dietetics. MF: So that was probably just a great thing. Probably felt like you were just a part of that group. IB: Like I say, we did a lot of things together in the school of nursing – the nuns were always over there, we were always having get-togethers and sing-alongs and badminton, hiking. One of the questions – what did you do in your relaxation time. Well, we hiked, we played – we did the usual kind of things. MF: Did that make them seem more human? IB: Oh, of course. There was never a doubt in my mind that they weren’t human. 4 MF: As far as approachability and being able to confide in them? IB: It was very easy to do. MF: So when did you decide to do nursing and also to take your vows? IB: Probably around Christmas time my senior year. MF: That’s when you decided? IB: Yes. Then I wrote a letter. I went out at Christmastime my senior year to Minnesota. My folks informed me that was my Christmas gift, a round-trip ticket to Minnesota. I saw the sisters at St. Benedict’s, and at that time there were like a thousand sisters there. Not all right at the mother house; on mission, like this is a mission house of St. Benedict’s. So I got to meet some of the people – the nuns, the sisters, the people in formation, those that were entering, not finalized. It was a good feeling, a welcoming feeling and a feeling of being at home. MF: When you started, were you with the sisters, or did you have a roommate? When you were in nurses’ training. IB: Well, do you know what the buildings are like up there? MF: We’ve only driven past, we haven’t been inside. IB: I haven’t been back inside since I graduated. Well, no, I worked in the hospital for a little bit. But the nursing home was behind the hospital. It’s like a big L-shaped building. The sisters were down on the shorter wing, and the students had two floors, and then there was a lounge down at the end. Then downstairs was more receptionist, community kind of stuff. So we had a couple of the sisters living there, but the others lived - behind the nursing home, behind the hospital, that round building was built. That was their chapel. When I first went there, that was 5 not there. The chapel was in the hospital on the second floor. This was then built, and the appendages to that chapel were the private rooms for the sisters. That was the restricted area – you did not enter. That was “the inner sanctum”. And I’ll tell you, we tried to sneak in… how far do you think we can get before we get caught? That kind of stuff, you know how kids are. But no, I had a roommate from Henefer. Her name was Gloria Dunn. She married John Lopez, who was a respiratory therapist at the hospital. They had three kids. One’s an ambassador, one’s a lawyer, and one is a doctor. Then their marriage ended, and she married a neurosurgeon. She was like a flight attendant on some helicopter thing out of Vegas or Reno or someplace. They did these sheep clinics – I’d never heard of such a thing, but they’d do testing on these animals. But then her second husband died. Now she’s in – I think Phoenix, I’d have to go look at my address book. We keep contact. Every year we write. We started with thirty-one; we graduated eleven. MF: Wow, that’s kind of a drop. IB: I believe I am the only full-time nurse in the bunch. Because one has died that I know of; several never practiced nursing; one went into the restaurant business; I don’t know. I haven’t kept up with a lot, but some – Bonnie Nozaki married Hiroshi Ozaki. She said, “I just dropped the N”. She went to Hawaii to meet him; she lives in North Ogden. I don’t believe she’s ever done nursing; her kids, one’s a doctor, one’s a lawyer – whatever. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker. MF: Tell us about any curfew-breaking, or rules. 6 IB: Oh my gosh, no, this is not confession, girls. We knew how to get around that. We had a ten o’clock or 10:30 curfew. We were not allowed to wear slacks, but we could carry them with us and put them on outside. I was a very good girl. I only broke it once, and that was the week before I graduated. MF: It was like senior sluffing, right? IB: That’s right. I had to do it just one time. But I was a good kid. I was always in on time, and trying not to ruffle the feathers. I was there to learn, you know. One of your questions was working on the floors or something. You know, it was a three year program, and we had clinical either in the morning or the afternoon. The rest of the time we worked the floors, and we ran the floors. We worked very closely with another RN, usually a grad from the school, and we learned bedside nursing. There is a difference between bedside nursing and today’s nursing. Today’s nursing is computer work, and I’m learning that, but we learned hands-on nursing, and we ran the floors. At night, we were the night charge nurse. I mean, there was somebody that you could call if you needed help, but basically you had the staff and you put out the assignments, and you dealt with it and you learned. MF: Absolutely, because it’s right there. I can’t imagine. IB: Today it would never fly. There’s just too much technical stuff – and the drugs. I mean, they’ve multiplied by ten million fold. MF: That’s true, lots of changes. Tell us – you talked a little bit about the sisters – was there someone who kind of inspired you? 7 IB: Sister Danile. She was the pharmacist, and she’s our prioress now, and I remind her of that. Especially if I’m in trouble. No, she was kind of like my mentor, and she was the one I would go visit at night, and we’d talk. She’s the one that really encouraged me. I said, “I don’t know if this is what I want or not, to be a nun.” I didn’t have any halo, honey. But I was a good kid. She said, “You’ll never know unless you try.” So that’s when I made the decision I would go to Minnesota, I would meet the community, break the news to my parents, who wanted a million grandkids. MF: That’s fun that you’ve been able to stay with her, and these wonderful ladies. IB: Well, I did go to Minnesota when I graduated, after my state boards. I entered at Minnesota St. Joseph. MF: That’s where you did your – training? IB: Yes. We call it formation. So I was a postulant for a year, and I was a novice for two years. Then I was a junior for four years before I made my final vows. MF: That’s quite a process. IB: I made my first vows after three years, and then I had a four-year junior. It’s kind of like a long – not necessarily probationary, but it’s an engagement time. You get to know more in-depth the community, and they know you, and then you ask the question. So everybody knows everybody pretty well. This is what we’re getting, and this is what I’m getting. Commitment is non-existent in today’s society. “If I don’t like it, I’ll just go flip burgers.” You’d think with this economy, people would latch on to what they have and be more committed – you’ve got to have some financial security in life. 8 MF: You do – that’s what I tell my girls. You have to have a plan. You have to have a backup plan. Because what do you do if you get married and your husband dies? IB: That’s exactly right. MF: You know Sarah’s situation; if you have children you have to take care of and you’re the sole provider, you have to be sure you can do that. Don’t you think, as far as your education? SL: Yes. MF: Which sisters that are still here were teaching? IB: Sister Stephanie is here, and she taught nutrition. SL: So Sister Boniface had left by then? IB: I lived with Sister Boniface in St. Cloud. She was a dietitian too. She died – Bonny died maybe eight years ago. But Sister Stephanie, Sister Danile who taught the pharmacology, and Sister Luke was the administrator. So Sister Mary – I didn’t know Sister Mary until I really came back here. I came back in ’83. My dad died, and I was not able to come home for the funeral. It was always that kind of situation. Minnesota had the worst storm of its life, we would be piled deep in ice, there would be fifty feet of snow, and then you’d get the call – “You’ve got to come now, so-and-so’s sick.” I’m going, “I have to go, but how do I get out of this place?” So after Dad died and I wasn’t able to come home for that funeral, I asked if I could please go back home. My mother was of an age, and I just had one brother left. So I thought maybe for a while I could be there near her. Well, the “while” turned into – how many years has it been? I’ve been back since ’83, before you guys were born. 9 MF: No, no. IB: But I’ve been here since ’83. SL: So was Sister Berno still around? IB: I lived with Sister Berno, also, in St. Cloud. SL: I’m trying to think of the other names – Sister Estelle, Sister Mary Gerald. IB: Sister Estelle – I came out and got Sister Estelle from here when she lost her second leg, and took her back on the plane. That was a trip, literally. Took care of her at St. Scholastica; I was Director of Nursing at our nursing home, where Sister Virgene now is. I started that program out there, was there for two years. I went out East – I brought all my diplomas – I went out East and got my degree, because this was just a three-year diploma. Then I got my degree from St. Anselm’s, and Bob Hope was our guest speaker at that – got to shake his little hand. These were the pins – this is the nursing one when we graduated from St. Benedict’s, and then when we were capped we also got a class pin, and then St. Anselm’s; this is an extra pin from St. Anselm’s, because I wasn’t going to buy one, because that really wasn’t “my school”, I just got a bunch of BS from it. So there you go. MF: Very nice. IB: Some people used to pin them on their caps, and we were told by the nuns, that’s unprofessional, you can only pin them on your shoulder. MF: We met one lady who has made this into a necklace, and that’s what she wears. What do you think was probably your greatest challenge while you were in nurses’ training? 10 IB: Studying. We studied day and night, it seemed. Like I say, we had the clinical stuff either in the morning or the afternoon, and we worked the opposite. So four hours on the floor, four hours in class, or vice versa. It was very comprehensive. Then in the summertimes, most of us – at least I did, and several others worked as aides in the hospital. MF: And you would get paid? IB: Minimum $1.11 an hour was my first paycheck. $1.11. If you were a student. I think the minimum wage at that time was $1.26 or something, and because we were students we got paid less, because it was a privilege. My first paycheck, after eight hours, was seven dollars and something cents after Uncle Sam took his little bite. It was something else. I mean, it was acceptable – there was nothing wrong with that, that’s the way it was. MF: At least you had the chance, you know, it was probably a great thing. Did you have rotations at that time? Did you go out of state for rotations? IB: No. Everything was in the school of nursing except my senior year I spent a semester at Holy Cross doing OB/GYN nursing and getting taught. Also a semester at the University of Utah with the psych nursing. See, they used to go to Denver for the pediatrics, but we then had a pediatric instructor. MF: So that’s why. Okay. IB: We had a couple of lay-women, Joann and Mary Lou. Mary Lou Stephan was director of the school of nursing down there at Westminster. I think Sister Cassian taught there – she was our director – she taught there after the school closed. 11 MF: Oh, she went down there? IB: Yes – my class, when we became juniors, the next year they accepted a freshman class, but then halfway through that class they said they were going to dissolve the school of nursing, and these students transferred to Holy Cross where they could finish off. Some of the Weber students – Jo Burt, who was our director of nursing here – reminds me that she was one of the students from Weber that came and lived with us. They got the impression that they were tramping on holy ground. I don’t know how we treated them, but we were told by some of the kids from Weber that we would be nothing more than glorified aides when we graduated, because they would have their degrees, and we didn’t, we just had a diploma. MF: I don’t even remember who we were talking to said, this nurse had her four-year degree, and she had her three-year diploma, but this nurse had to show the four-year degree girl what to do, because she had no clinical training. IB: That’s the way it’s been. MF: As far as anything in the field of nursing, she was the one that had to say, this is how you do it. She had no training, no idea. She was very smart, but as far as being able to practice it. IB: See, I believe that people who go into nursing today ought to first get their CNA and work for a year, or their LPN. Work for a while before you invest all that money into a degree program that doesn’t – I’m not saying none have them – but most of what you learn is hands-on stuff, and working with others, and learning about situations. It just scares me – what frightens me the most about nursing 12 today is the new grad that comes in, and they are fearless. I’m thinking, how can you even think of going into that room and taking care of these lines, and you don’t know what you’re doing? It scares me. MF: The commitment to know you’re doing a job, and performing it. IB: To know what questions to ask, instead of just, I’ve done that before. It’s not my job! MF: So after graduation, you went to Minnesota, and you came back – so since ’83 you’ve been here. IB: I worked on the surgical floor here at the hospital. They had moved from the top of 30th Street down here to South Ogden in I think 1977. I worked on the surgical unit, and I had come from an intensive care situation in St. Cloud – big intensive care. It just wasn’t cuttin’ it. I knew more than my head nurse, and it was very frustrating. So then a job opened up in single-day surgery, and I was hired for one of the positions. I don’t know if you know the hospital, but out on the end is the heart center. That used to be our single-day surgery unit. We had three operating rooms, our own recovery room, six patient rooms. I got a job there. That closed after ten years, and then I moved over to the day surgery area in the hospital, because what was happening – don’t put all this on the record anywhere – but what was happening was, most of the surgeries were coming to single day because things improved, technology improved, and things were much faster. People were going home right away. It was very rare that somebody would stay in the hospital. So we had a main OR staff sitting there, three shifts, doing minimal, and we were in single-day doing most of the business. So they 13 decided to combine the two, and put the day surgery patients and the bigger cases together again, back in the OR. So then I moved to the other side – I was manager of that for about a year until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Then the pre-op clinic opened up and I said, that’s what I want. So I’ve been in pre-op – I’ve been doing pre-op nursing and teaching for about fourteen years, since I started that job. And that’s where I am now. MF: And that’s what you do, because you still work? IB: Best job ever. No nights, no holidays, no weekends, no call-back. Girl, it’s great. I love it. MF: Nine to five, love this. IB: Not quite nine to five, more like seven to 5:30. But it’s great. And I work a ten-hour shift, so I get Mondays off. MF: I get Mondays off too, but I’m actually working today. IB: But here you are – child, what is that? MF: I like to work six days a week… SL: She does. IB: Six days, forty hours a day. MF: It’s all good, and get paid for thirty, it’s okay. No comp time. No, we’re fine. Well, that’s great. I appreciate you letting us visit with you. Did you have anything else? SL: What was your favorite rotation when you were in training? IB: My favorite rotation – what was my favorite rotation? I hated the OR, although that’s where I wound up being now. I didn’t like psych, but I loved it when I worked it. I kind of have had a jack-of-all trades. I don’t know if I had a real 14 favorite in nurses’ training, but my first job was working on a med surg unit that dealt basically with isolation. That was fun. I didn’t like it, but I got to like it. There’s never been a position that I’ve been in, that I didn’t learn to love. I worked psych for three years – I loved it! I hated it going into it, but I loved it coming out. I hated intensive care when I went into it. I love it coming out. I hated the float pool – loved it coming out. I mean, I’ve done just about everything. In a float situation, you do everything. I loved orthopedics during the summer when I was a student, because the staff was so much fun. They were crazy people, crazy – I loved them. They were just fun. We had a great time, and the patients were fun. MF: It was probably nice to be able to have that, you know, where you were on every single floor, so you learned everything, so when you had that situation. IB: My current boss says to me, how do you know what to tell these patients about surgery? And I said, Lori, see this grey hair? You know what, experience really does help. MF: Absolutely, it does. IB: Plus, you want to see my scars? No. MF: Do you have a favorite patient that kind of sticks in your mind while you were in training? IB: Honey, do you know how long ago training was? SL: I know, but sometimes you have those ones. IB: My favorite patient in nurses’ training. I remember – I grew up here and I’m Catholic, and of course this is an LDS area, but I remember one lady on the 15 medical unit, I was giving her a bed bath, and she was LDS. She was from Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. I said, Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, where is that? You know, because I was interested at that point. So we started talking. That was my first time I ever dressed an LDS person in their garments – it was not pretty. I don’t know how – how or if. And she was blind. I don’t know if I had an arm into a leg, I don’t know what I did. MF: It was the one-piece. IB: We laughed – she said, I don’t think this is right, doesn’t feel right. I said, I’m not sure what it’s supposed to look like, even. We laughed a lot about that, that was one lady. Then I remember one gentleman I had, he was young, kind of my age at that time. He had a colostomy bag on, and it had blown – I mean, it was huge. I looked at that, and I looked at him, and I said, I am not taking that off. He said, neither am I. He started to laugh – my head nurse came in – what is going on in here. We couldn’t talk. I was sitting down, just crying, laughing so hard. It was fun. MF: That’s funny. Graduation, I forgot to ask you about graduation. Tell us about graduation. IB: Here, there’s graduation. MF: Good pictures. IB: That’s capping, this is graduation, that’s my dad. Long sleeves, below the knee hemline. Regular Florence Nightingale look. SL: Was it at St. Joseph’s? 16 IB: St. Joseph’s, yes. The capping was at the hospital, the chapel – the round chapel. That’s where we were capped. There’s some pictures in there of the whole class and stuff. I don’t know if it’s that book or the other book. I don’t put things together. I find pictures later and I think, oh, rats, I should have put this. That’s the capping picture. MF: That’s great. Very nice. IB: But you know, I’ve traveled around a lot, and I had to get rid of a lot of stuff because I just couldn’t carry it with me any more. I dumped a lot of pictures I had of nurses’ training – just dumped them. I went through everything and picked a few; you can’t just keep hanging on to everything. MF: For your graduation, did your family come? IB: Oh, sure. They were all there. Then I entered that summer – I went to Jamaica for about three weeks to visit some relatives down there, and then I came back and I worked for a little while, about a month, and then I went to Minnesota. Then I worked in the infirmary for a while, and then went out and worked at St. Cloud hospital off and on for several years. Then I went out East to St. Anselm’s and got my degree – that’s in New Hampshire – and then came back and worked at the nursing home, and then worked intensive care. I mean, I went from extremes. Nursing home to intensive care? Arterial lines and Swanz-Ganz– oh my goodness. We didn’t have that at the nursing home. Then I came out here. MF: That’s good. Thanks for letting us visit with you, it’s been so much fun. IB: You’re more than welcome.