Oral History Program Judith Smith James Interviewed by Marci Farr 16 August 2010 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Judith Smith James Interviewed by Marci Farr 16 August 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: Judith Smith James, an oral history by Marci Farr, 16 August 2010, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Judith Smith James Graduation Photo Class of 1958 Judith Smith James August 16, 2010 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Judith Smith James, conducted by Marci Farr and Sarah Langsdon, on August 16, 2010. In this interview, Judith discusses her recollections and experiences with the St. Benedict’s School of Nursing. MF: This is Marci Farr. I am interviewing Judith Smith James at her home in Farr West, Utah. It is August 16, 2010. She graduated from St. Benedict’s class of 1958. Will you just tell us a little bit about your early life, your family, where you grew up, where you went to school? JJ: I am a local girl. I was born at the old Dee Hospital in ’37. I was delivered by an intern named Doctor Benson, who ended up being a surgeon here years later, because my doctor Doctor Bartlett was doing a house call out in the country. I wouldn’t wait so Doctor Benson got the honors. I have a mom and dad and an older sister who is seven years older than I. My sister, my mother and I are Lutheran. My dad was fallen away Mormon. He insisted that we be raised in my mother’s religion, so we were. The question about whether I had any classes in high school that made me decide to study nursing—I was fascinated by anatomy and physiology and the biology and chemistry was interesting. I enjoyed it but it was kind of hard. But then one of the youth leaders at my youth group from church strongly recommended I go into nursing. She thought I would be a good nurse. She herself was a nurse. That was the push I needed, I think. 2 MF: So what about St. Benedict’s? What made you decide that? JJ: For one thing it was local. I was the youngest in the family and kind of a mama’s girl but I had close family ties. The thought of going away to school was not appealing to me at all. This was just up the hill from where I lived. Whenever we got breaks I would always run home. The kids from out of town teased me because they said, “What’ll we do this weekend? We are going to be here. Should we go to a movie?” I would say, “I don’t have to worry about that.” They’d say, “I know, you are going home. Wish we lived close enough.” MF: That was probably a great thing to have your mom close. JJ: It was. It was good. My parents were older too. My dad was fifty and my mom was forty two when I was born. I was kind of a late coming child. We were very close. MF: It probably wasn’t as hard to go away as far as when you went into nurses training. That adjustment probably wasn’t too bad was it? JJ: No it wasn’t. In fact, I saw the other girls struggle. Some of them had a real problem with home sickness that first five or six weeks. I didn’t because I was home more or less. MF: Tell me about your impressions when you first came to nurse’s training. JJ: It was a fairly new hospital and a fairly new nursing home. It was all clean. The rooms were not real big but they had room for two twin beds, two dressers, two desks. You walked in the door and there was a closet on either side. You had to close the door before you could get into the closets. It was kind of tight. It was nice, well maintained, and clean. The Sisters quarters were on the second floor 3 to the east and everything got really quiet at ten o’clock. That wasn’t necessarily a curfew. You could be up and studying or even listening to radios. We didn’t have television in the rooms but we had to keep quiet. If we were having a hen party and everybody was cackling, the Sisters would come down, Shhhh, it is after ten o’clock.” MF: Did you have a housemother that was in charge? JJ: We had a housemother that was in charge pretty much during the days. She did have an apartment there. Her name was Lena Borino. She was very quiet. You could go to her with any problems you had. I think the Sisters, more or less, ran the hospital or if there was any disciplining to be done it was usually one of the Sisters that came after us. MF: Who was your roommate? JJ: My roommate was Dorothy Payton Manning. She was from a little town, Shoshone, Idaho and her parents owned a dairy farm. She used to kid that she was the farm girl. If she ever went home she had to milk cows. She didn’t go home a lot. MF: Did you stay with her for all three years or did you rotate? JJ: Yes. MF: How were the Sisters as far as strictness? JJ: They were fairly strict. It was done in a light hearted manner. Sometimes the door would open and lint would roll out the door from under the beds. We weren’t all the best housekeepers. Sister Berno used to say, “I see dust bunnies.” She would give you the big blue eye and you knew you better get the 4 dust off. We respected them a lot. We had a lounge area on the second floor with a television. That is where the girls would congregate if there was a show they wanted to see. They were allowed to smoke in that room. There was a little kitchenette off of that—if you were going to pop corn or make some food to eat off duty that is where you would go. I didn’t ever think that we were in a prison. It wasn’t that strict. MF: Their ability of showing love and compassion and teaching you… JJ: To be young ladies. You’d be running down the hall in the hospital late at night on your way off duty and bump into one. They’d say, “Lady like. Lady like. Walk as though you are going someplace but you don’t run.” MF: Great memories. When you were in school were your classes held at the hospital? You didn’t have any classes with Weber, right? JJ: Not in my group. As they progressed through into the sixties they started doing that but our classes back in ’55 through ’58 were all at the nursing school primarily. They had classrooms in the basement. We had a nursing arts room with beds. You learned to make the beds and you learned to make a bed with a patient in it and you learned how to do a bed bath—all that kind of physical things—how to get a patient up without straining your back or hurting them. Nursing arts was a fun class because we practiced on each other—how to give a good backrub. Then there were labs across the hall. Sister Estelle taught the sciences. She taught us anatomy and physiology, she taught chemistry. Sister Rebecca taught pharmacy and pharmacology. Sister Boniface from the kitchen taught nutrition and diets. They were almost all done right there in the class. 5 Then we had just a plain classroom with desks that the doctors would come and lecture. We always had Doctor Swindler lecture on orthopedics right after lunch. Everybody had been up early and had already worked on the floors and were tired and we could hear him clumping down the hall. You could smell his pipe smoke coming ahead of him. He used to just terrify us because he would say, “You! Stand up here and draw this on the board.” I will never forget the day he was trying to drive a point home about “just because you can move it doesn’t mean it isn’t broken” and he took the ruler and slammed it on the desk. We all jumped—he was a good teacher. MF: Tell me about some of your classmates. You mentioned a few that you spent time with. JJ: Pat Brown—Pat Hopkins was her name then and Naomi Brown is (her married name). They roomed together. Naomi was from Carlin, Nevada and I went through high school with Pat. We knew them. Talk about a pair of twins. They were just so well suited to each other. They were really good. The two girls from Wyoming—(Superior, Wyoming) Annette Dalpiaz and Beverly Morrow, they didn’t ever get to go home because it was too far away, way up in Superior. They were miners kids. They stayed close together. Janice Grace, and everybody—they were in the group that we went on affiliations together. They divided our class into three groups. One group went to Nebraska, one group went to Denver, and the other group stayed home. This is all done in our second year and then they’d rotate. If you’d been to Denver then you got to go to Nebraska the next time or you got to stay home. You just need to know Janice. She is just kind of 6 scatterbrained. She is brilliant but she was scatterbrained. It took all hands on deck to get her ready to go on a date. Somebody ran the bath, somebody got her clothes pressed, “You’ve got to hurry Janice! You’ve got to hurry! He is downstairs already!” Then one of her boyfriends left her a car with expired license plates. We drove all over Denver but she said, “All these one way streets are just too confusing. You’ll have to tell me when the lights are red and green.” And so she drove and if you didn’t tell her the light was red, we sailed right through it. We did have a lot of fun. MF: What were some rules you had to follow? Did you have curfew? JJ: Yes. Supposedly lights out at ten o’clock but like I say, if we kept it quiet you could study and play the radio softly. To go out you had to be in at ten. I think it was eleven o’clock on the weekends. You came through the hospital at the main entrance, checked in there and then went downstairs through the tunnel over to the nursing home which was kind of spooky. You usually liked to have somebody with you when you walked home. You had to sign in and out. If you were going out on a date you signed out with Lena in the nursing school and then the sign in book went back over to the hospital entrance. Then you signed in there when you came in. They kept pretty close eye on us. We weren’t allowed to be married. The year the class of ’57 graduated, three of them turned up at graduation with their rings, they had married secretly. Boy, talk about gossip. Rumors were flying everywhere. We had some girls drop out of training because love was stronger than the pull to be a nurse and they would rather marry than hang in there and finish their training. 7 MF: You could be engaged though? JJ: Yes. MF: What was something you would do for fun if you had a night off? JJ: I’d usually just go home. A lot of the girls would go to the movies. If they were lucky enough to have transportation they’d “drag the vard” back and forth down Washington Boulevard. Sometimes in the summer they would go up to the dam and swim. Some of the local girls if they had access to swimming pools would all get together and go out. You could go out to Lorin Farr park and swim. Sometimes we would throw parties up at the nursing school. In the backyard, they had a nice area that was grassed in the back behind the nursing school so it wasn’t seen from the hospital. Some would play croquet or toss a ball around. It wasn’t big enough, I don’t think, to do softball. Some liked hiking. A lot of the girls hiked up to Waterfall Canyon and the Mt. Ogden park that was the golf course now but was just open fields then they would walk through the field and up to the waterfalls. Sometimes the younger Sisters, Sister Mercy and Sister Mary, would come with the girls. MF: You had a probationary period? JJ: Yes. I think it was six weeks. It culminated with capping. If you were not going to make capping you dropped out before then. Some of the girls just got so homesick they just couldn’t take it anymore. MF: So after your capping ceremony what were some of your first duties on the floor? JJ: Our very first duties were the vital signs. We would divide the rooms and everybody would run around doing TPR’s and blood pressures, get it on the 8 charts so when the doctors started coming—this is like six A.M., very early, before you would get all that information down on the graph chart—the one board the doctors would check. Then we would all go to report and sit in and listen to the report of the night nurses on the whole floor. Then our instructor would confer with the head nurse and they would decide on our assignments. You would get your assignments and right after that you started off with bed baths or showers. As your training went on if you hadn’t done a catheterization or a hot pack application, something you still needed to be checked off on, they traded assignments around just so you could get the experience. We had an awful lot of experience. The students pretty much ran the hospital. They did most of the nursing care with the RN’s and the supervisors watching that we did it right. It was when I was already through training and working at the hospital when they changed the hours that the students could work. It came from the American Nurses Association. They determined that only so many hours of clinical should be expected of the students. The students worked the hospital so they had to hire more RNs all over the country. This wasn’t just St. Benedict’s. Our credit hours for on duty were cut back. By the time you were second year, you were a head nurse. By the time you were up into senior years you were doing specialties and doing night supervision because you had really good training. You had an RN or the night supervisor over you in case you questioned decisions or “Should I call the doctors? Is that important enough?” that kind of thing. We got excellent training, just excellent training. 9 MF: That is where I think it makes the difference. You learn in class but then you go practice. It reinforces it. JJ: The first time one of the students had a patient die during her care that morning she came in tears and the whole class was just so sympathetic. “Oh tell us what happened. What did you do? What did so and so else do?” That helped too because you know sooner or later you were going to run into death. It was really a teaching tool. MF: It probably was—to help each other out. JJ: Yes and give moral support to the ones that went through it. That is one of the other things that made us all so close. MF: How long were you on the different floors? JJ: We rotated—I think it was three months. I know when we got into specialties like surgery and obstetrics and pediatrics—I know those were three months. The other floors were I think three months too. Those were primarily medical and surgical. MF: Which one was your favorite? JJ: OB. In fact, the year our class of ’58 were seniors they would allow you to choose (in your senior year) the area you preferred and they would try to put you there and schedule you there. As a senior student you were pretty well running the floor. For me, they trained me for the labor and delivery. That last month and a half that I spent in OB that is what they did with me. They trained me into being a labor and delivery nurse. I really enjoyed it. I love the babies. MF: Did you have any patients that you cared for that you can remember? 10 JJ: We had little old man on the end of the private room on the surgical floor. I think he must have been independently wealthy but he didn’t have anybody. He was all alone. It was kind of like a glorified nursing home as far as he was concerned. If he wanted a milkshake at two A.M. then you went and got a milkshake at two A.M. for him. We just catered to him and everybody got to take a turn taking care. I can’t even remember his name. He was a little elderly man. He lived there. It was like his home. Instead of the nursing home he just lived at the hospital and we took care of him. Then there were some sad cases that were challenging to care for. One was a lady that I took care of that had bone cancer in the jaw. It just kind of ate her face away. It was so hard for her and it was so hard for the students to take care of her because we felt so bad and yet it was really horrific to try to deal with that kind of wound. Then there is always—in OB—the mother that had one baby and doctor says, “Oh this is a lot smaller than I thought. Do we have another baby in there?” Then they would deliver a surprise twin. That was fun. Not for the mother maybe but it was exciting for the staff. MF: Do you remember any traditions at St. Benedict’s had? JJ: They had traditions up the ying yang. The capping ceremony was one but then the Sisters hosted a capping banquet. I don’t know if all the students got to go to that or just the girls that were recently capped. We had other banquets that they would put on for us near Christmas time and we wore our very best. You wore your formals like you were going to the prom and really dressed up. The first time I went to one of these banquets the Sisters sat with us to eat. We had 11 roasted chicken and had to eat with a knife and fork. You don’t pick it up and gnaw on it like you do at home. I think there was an awful lot of chicken that went to waste after that meal because none of us were used to eating roast chicken with a knife and fork. I can remember being totally aware of not having the best table manners. Which fork do you use and which glass do you use? There was a Christmas party for those of the girls that stayed and didn’t get to go home for the holidays. They would decorate for Halloween and have a Halloween party. There was the student government. The girls from the different classes would get together and do that kind of stuff. MF: Did you guys go sleigh riding behind the hospital? JJ: They did. I didn’t get to but my aunt lived right across the street from the sledding hill and we would see groups of them coming over and sliding down the hill. I didn’t. I was just not into being cold and wet. As I got older someone said, “Oh don’t you want to learn how to ski?” I thought, “No.” That doesn’t appeal to me in the least. There were a lot of outdoor activities that they encouraged us to get into. MF: What do you think was probably your greatest challenge while you were in nurse’s training? JJ: It might have been in surgery. They had us scrub in with the different doctors and you had to know your instruments. You had to know how to set up your table. Back in the olden days sutures came in glass vials filled with spirit. You had to put it in a pocket cloth and break if over a bowl and dump the glass into the bowl and pull out your cat gut and wash it off to be sure there were no glass 12 shards. Then you could cut it in lengths and thread your needles and have them ready. I will never forget—think, “What if I cut myself,” getting those glass tubes with the suture in it. When they came out with the preloaded hook on needles, you didn’t have to thread them—that was just wonderful. I know the first two C-sections I ever scrubbed on I never did see the baby born. I was so busy threading needles and breaking suture I never did see the main event. It was excellent. I was in surgery for two and a half months because it was over Christmas break. They didn’t have me do two of the weeks. She called me and said, “They are going to be doing a trephining on the skull if you want to come scrub in and just watch it.” I did and that was really interesting. It wasn’t pressured at all. You didn’t have to pass instruments you could just stand there and watch. To see that pale pink brain pulsate after they had made the hole and opened up the skull was really interesting. MF: Do you think with all of your training it helped you later on? JJ: I think so. Especially with family although my husband said I tended to call the doctor too soon. “You should have waited another day and the fever would have broken and we could have saved all that expense.” It helped to prioritize. Nowadays they call it triaging—who needs the care first, what is the most important thing to do first. That was taught pretty much. You get all your ducks in a row and decide… MF: Decide what to do. JJ: Yes. MF: Where was your graduation ceremonies held? 13 JJ: Our graduation was at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. It was really impressive. In St. Joseph’s there is a long central aisle that leads from the back door to the altar and we processed in with our capes flipped back over the one shoulder and we carried long stem roses. We walked almost like a bride going down the aisle, then we sat in the side pews and waiting for our name to be called. The Bishop was there from the Diocese in Salt Lake and we were taught how to kneel and kiss the ring. She said, “If you don’t feel good doing that just bend your head. You don’t have to kiss it really if you don’t want to.” Then you stood up and received your diploma and you turned around and came back. It was really impressive. SL: Was your family able to come? JJ: Oh yes. The family was there and then afterwards there was a reception held in the church hall downstairs. There were refreshments and everybody mingled and the year that the class ahead of us—I was telling you about—the girl showed up with their wedding rings on and that is where that unveiling took place was down in the reception room afterwards. “Now I am free to show you that I really am Mrs. so and so.” MF: So after graduation did you stay at St. Benedict’s? JJ: I did. They asked me if I was going to stay because they were training me for delivery and I said, “Yes.” I planned to. I was living at home with my folks so I just kind of went from being a student to being a graduate but we didn’t take our boards for another couple of months it seems like. I think it was early September that we took our boards. That was an overnight affair in Salt Lake. We got hotel 14 rooms and supposedly studied for them but we took part of the exam on one day and the other part the next day. Then we waited. We were still working—we were graduate nurses but we were still at the nurse’s home. I got my results at home though so I had left the dorm by then. Oh, that was a happy day. I worked all three areas in OB. I had trained for labor and delivery but if they needed somebody they would pull me into the nursery or post partum. I was told later by another supervisor later in my career, “You don’t know how valuable an employee you are because you can work those three areas interchangeably. We don’t have to stop and hunt to find somebody that specifically could go into that area.” I thought, “That was pretty good.” If you ever work float staff which I never did—I floated really in my own area up in OB but I admired those girls. They had to go to pediatrics one day and to surgical the next day and maybe down to medical the next day. Wherever the need was greatest that is where they floated to. Boy, I admired them. That would be hard for me. MF: When did you retire? JJ: I retired—in fact I got the letter that said, “Your services are no longer required.” But I was one of the few that—they went to twelve hour shifts and I said, “That is just too long for this old woman. I just can’t do twelve hour shifts.” They had enough in my area at the time—and by then I wasn’t working labor and delivery I had gone just to post partum and normal newborns—there were about five or six of us that would work eight hour shifts. We always worked around the same three or four people. It was tricky scheduling. When they got ready to sell the 15 hospital they were getting ready to sell to Columbia there was a rift and we lost forty nurses. About half of them came out of OB. If you didn’t sign to go to twelve hours then you were one of the ones that left. So I was one of the ones that left because I used to come on at midnight and work midnight to eight in the morning. The girls that had been there since four in the afternoon by midnight they had already done their eight hours. They still had four hours to go until four AM. They would come in the nursery to feed a baby and nod. “I just can’t keep my eyes open. I have to stand here at the crib to feed this baby because if I sit down with him in my arms I’m going to fall asleep.” I still think it is too long. Twelve hour shifts are too hard. You lose your alertness. MF: What else do you think has changed in nursing? JJ: It changed in that when we were trained the doctor was God. You stood when he came onto the floor. You were very peferential. If you were doing something or charting and the doctor came in you handed him his chart. His word was law. If he said, “You get so and so up right now and walk them up and down the hall I want him up five times this shift,” you got him up and down. If he asked you a direct question like, “Do you notice any trembling or do you notice him flushing several times during your shift where he gets all red and sweaty,” you would answer him but you never would bring it up. There was no fraternization to speak of. He was the boss and you were the underling of the observed things and wrote it down and if you thought it was important you told your head nurse. She would relay the message. There was this chasm between what you could do and what you were forbidden to do. It was kind of like a class distinction. 16 As time went by and the nurses became better educated and the more monitoring and electronics and technology came on and you were trained into it then the doctors began to accept you more as an equal. You could pick up the phone and call and say, “I don’t like the look of these fetal heart tones I think you should come over.” They would be grateful, they wouldn’t jump all over you. Whereas before you could call and say, “I think I picked up irregular heart tones on this baby. I am concerned.” Sometimes they would come and sometimes they wouldn’t. But once we got monitoring and got graphs to follow and could substantiate what you were observing then it became easier. Now a lot of times it is like you’ve got another doctor there. In ICU those girls are exceptionally good. The doctors take them at face value. You can call them and alert them to things that we would never have dreamed of doing when I was in training. MF: With the Sisters as your trainers how do you think their vows to serve and all of that play into your role in nursing? JJ: The motto was taught to us, “Care must be taken of the sick as if they were Christ in person.” That was known but it wasn’t drummed into our heads all that much. It was more you are there to serve, not to make waves or flirt with the doctors or interns. You do your duty. You are there to serve. I think that was the main thing that we brought away. Some Sisters were more approachable than others. Sister Mercy became my supervisor in OB not long after I became an RN. She was such a sweet woman. She was quite young, almost a contemporary although she was probably ten years older than me but I felt like she was almost a sister. Sister Boniface from the kitchen was—her eyes did not 17 go the same direction and you never could tell what she was looking at. In class you thought she was looking at you and you looked real busy or you raised your arm if you knew something and could answer it. It was kind of hard to judge. She was like my maiden aunt, very persnickety. MF: Thank you for letting us come. Do you have anything else that you wanted to share with us—any thoughts that you have had while we have been talking? JJ: My retirement like I say was a reduction in force. My husband had retired a couple years ahead of me. I thought, “Oh, now we can travel and see the world.” He said, “No. The government was paying for my trips,” when he got to go overseas. He worked for Hill Field and had a lot of overseas travel. I used to think, “Oh, I’d love to go with him.” It is different when you have to pay for it yourself. You don’t get to go to Bali and stay in a five star hotel. It was a little squeaky for awhile. I was only fifty-seven at the time and I couldn’t draw Social Security yet and I checked into drawing my St. Benedict’s annuity that the Sisters had put aside for all of us longer term employees and I would have lost almost forty percent of my annuity to draw early. I thought, “That is not doable.” I am an old jabberwocky. MF: You are fine. We had today scheduled for you so you are fine. JJ: I told my husband I didn’t know if you were going to be here for fifteen minutes or if you are going to be an hour. I have no idea. When I saw the notice in the paper that you wanted to speak to St. Benedict’s graduates I thought, “Oh that is me!”