Oral history interview with Maribeth Snyder Peters, 2012

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WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Maribeth Snyder Peters
INTERVIEWER: Therese Strohmer
DATE: March 14, 2012
[Begin Interview]
TS: Today is March 14, 2012. This is Therese Strohmer. I’m at the home of Becky Peters in Advance, North Carolina, to conduct an oral history interview for the Women Veterans Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Becky, could you state your name the way that you’d like it to read on your collection?
MP: I’d like it to read as Maribeth Snyder Peters.
TS: Okay. Well, Becky, why don’t you start out and tell me a little bit about when and where you were born.
MP: I was born in Troy, New York. It’s a small city a little bit north of Albany, about 150 miles straight north of New York City, and had a wonderful growing up time.
TS: When were you born?
MP: I was born June 7, 1947, and spent all my growing up time in Troy; we never moved. When I left home to get married my father was still living in the same house that I had grown up in. I have two sisters; one older, one younger.
TS: What are their names?
MP: Louise is about six years older than I am, and she lives in Chicago now, and Joann, or Joannie, is one year younger and we’re very, very close. She actually lives in Chapel Hill now and works for the university.
TS: Oh, she’s not too far from you.
MP: Not far at all.
TS: That’s good. Now what did your folks do growing up?2
MP: My mom was a stay-at-home mom, and she was just like June on Leave it to Beaver. I mean, she wore the dress and the heels and the pearls and the whole deal.
TS: Really?
MP: People look at that and say, “That wasn’t real.” And I think, “Oh, yes it was. My mom did that.” My father was the editor of our town newspaper—city newspaper. Life changed for us when I was thirteen; my mom died, but my dad was amazing. We certainly noticed the difference, and missed my mom something fierce, but he was amazing. He made up for it. He also made, especially in my younger sister and I because my older sister was already in college when Mom died, but he instilled in us a can-do—I mean, he would always say, “Of course you can do it,” and that’s what I grew up thinking; of course I can do it. Whatever you decide to do, you have to sit down, you have to figure it out, but you can make it happen. That’s how I have lived life.
TS: Did you—What was it like growing up in Troy? What kind of—Was it a very large city at the time?
MP: Oh, no, no. Troy is a small city. I think it’s got about maybe 40,000 people. It’s in the foothills of the Adirondacks, it’s cold in winter, lots of snow. Not this year, but lots of snow most years.
TS: Right. It’s a mild year.
MP: It was a very safe place to grow up. You could go about anywhere and not worry about things. You made friends, and many people stay in Troy forever. I still have friends back there that I grew up with and they’re still there. Troy is a good place to grow up.
TS: What kind of things did you do for fun as a little girl?
MP: Well, we spent all our summers in Cape Cod, so I loved swimming and sailing, that sort of thing. In the wintertime my dad, when we were smaller, would make a huge ice rink in our backyard. When we got older we could skate in the creek and pond across the street, but when we were younger Mom wanted us to stay closer to home. We had a large hill in our backyard and so we always made trails for saucers. And we made them—we thought we were making them, like, as though they were Olympic trails, you know, you could come down and we had banked edges and all like that.
TS: Like a bobsled, kind of?
MP: That’s exactly what we thought. So, we did a lot of outside time, a huge amount of outside time. Dad was not into sports but he was into exercise, so every Sunday we went out walking and walked several miles. You know, we just did a lot of things at home. It was fun.3
TS: That’s neat. Did you have a lot of friends that would come over and do it, or did you mostly stay with your sisters?
MP: No, we had friends in the neighborhood, and then friends from school who—we went to their house, they came to our house, so people were in and out regularly.
TS: When you talk about school, what school did you go to as a young girl?
MP: I went to Sacred Heart School, a Catholic elementary school, and then I went to Catholic Central High School in Troy, and graduated from there for high school.
TS: In elementary school, when you were growing up, did you have like a favorite subject or favorite teacher, anything like that?
MP: No, it was different from what you see. We didn’t change classes at all like that, and it was nuns. Nuns are a bit different, and so, I can’t tell you I had a favorite one. Remember, if you’ve read anything about Catholic schools and that sort of thing, corporal punishment was very real. You got whacked on your knuckles if you talked out of turn or anything like that. I learned really well, you know, I think I got a really good education. But I can’t say that there was one person that I stayed close to because with the nuns they’d get transferred. So, it wasn’t like a teacher who lived in your neighborhood and you got to know them and knew them even when you were grown up.
TS: Did you get your knuckles rapped?
MP: Not very often.
TS: Not very often.
MP: My older sister did. [both chuckle]
TS: Is that right?
MP: Oh, yes! I had to carry the notes home. She was in eighth grade when I was in second, maybe, first, first, maybe. I regularly carried the notes home because she—they got lost if she [unclear] home.
TS: They didn’t think they’d make it home if they gave them to her.
MP: They knew that they wouldn’t make it home.
TS: So, growing up did you have a sense of, like, you had stated earlier how your father said you could do anything.
MP: Yes.4
TS: Did you have an idea of what possibilities there were for you for your future?
MP: Well, my mom was a nurse, and I just—from the time I was little I wanted to be a nurse. I knew—and my plan was to go where she had gone to school, to Saint Mary’s Hospital, and get a diploma. By the time I got into high school my mom had already died, and that was the one thing my dad said was, and he read voraciously, and said, “No, I think you need to get a baccalaureate. I don’t think you need to get a diploma.” And so, you know, I graduated from college in ’69 and diploma nurses made up the absolute minority of nursing graduates. And so for Dad to have said that, he really was a fore-thinker, a future thinker, you know. But he said, “No, you have to get a baccalaureate.”
TS: Why was that? Why was that change happening with wanting—nurses more wanting to get the baccalaureate?
MP: I don’t think nurses were more wanting to get the baccalaureate. I mean, educators felt like it was the way to go for a true profession, to move beyond a service-oriented education to a truly education-oriented education. Nurses in a diploma program are very service-oriented. You might have to work all night long and then go to class during the day.
Thirty-five years ago when we lived in Charlotte, [North Carolina], I was charge nurse of the ICU down there at Presbyterian Hospital, and they had their diploma program still at that time. It wasn’t unusual at all to have the surgical unit that was right beside my intensive care unit have, during the evening shift which is what I worked, having a senior student being the charge nurse there and I was her backup. If she ran into problems she came to me. So a diploma education is very service-oriented, and the change was already in the wind, you know.
There was a 1965 resolution that came out from the ANA [American Nurses Association], I think, that by a date that has long since passed, that there would be no further diploma education; it would all be baccalaureate. Well that didn’t happen, but my father had read about that by that time, and I started college in ’65. He had read about it in ’64, ’65, and that’s when he was saying, “The future says baccalaureate, you really need to get a baccalaureate.”
TS: I see. So, when you say the diploma one is more service-oriented, what do you mean? What’s the difference between?
MP: When I say service-oriented, they worked. They put in many hours of working that was not associated with their education. Now, it made them quicker and faster. You take a diploma graduate and a baccalaureate graduate, and for the first couple of months it will look like the diploma graduate could work circles around the baccalaureate graduate because baccalaureate graduate has a certain number of hours in the clinical area. You may not be the most proficient bath-giver, bed, you know, all that kind of thing when you graduate from a baccalaureate program. Whereas, when you looked at a diploma nurse, they were going to school during the day, they were working evenings or nights in a unit. They knew what they were doing as far as the hands-on work was concerned. They may not have had the background as to why they were doing some of these things, but they 5
had a huge amount of clinical service hours. They actually—that’s why the cost was so low in most diploma programs, because they got a huge amount of work out of those girls. And it was mostly girls back then.
TS: Right, okay. So, you had—did you have a—after your mother died did you still feel like that was something really strong that you wanted to do, still be a nurse?
MP: Yes. Yes.
TS: You never wavered from that?
MP: No, I wanted to do that.
TS: Just wanted to be a nurse?
MP: And, you know, she had never worked as a nurse while I was alive. She had already retired from nursing by that time, but she talked a lot about it and I was really interested in it. I knew that’s what I wanted to do.
TS: Did she do any nursing during the war, at all?
MP: No. My older sister was born in 1941, and so she was already a homemaker by that time.
TS: I see. Okay. Had your father been in the service at all?
MP: No, he was not and that was always something that was upsetting to him. My father had very, very, poor eyesight, and he was rejected 4F [refers to military draftees rejected for being physically unfit].
TS: I see. He had wanted to join, but—
MP: Well, he said—for those of us who weren’t alive in 1941 though ‘45, I don’t think we have never experienced like the country experienced at that time. He said you just knew it was your duty to go. He said, you know, “Somebody going to Canada? No way!” Because at that point they really believed if we lost the war, our country as we knew it was going to cease to exist. Whereas, when you think about the Korean War, or Korean conflict, Vietnam, even Afghanistan, Iraq, if we lose in those areas,—we certainly didn’t win in Vietnam—how did our life change back here? It didn’t. But in World War II, I believe, from listening to my parents and their friends, that people truly believed, and probably rightly so, that if the U.S. had lost the war, the United States as we knew it was not going to maintain itself. And so, yes, everybody believed you have to be out there. My father became a spotter after that. He said he spent more time during the war on our back hill watching the sky, but he was 4F to go in.
TS: So he felt like with that spotting that he was participating in the—6
MP: Oh, yes. It was funny because they talk about they still wanted to go on vacation to Cape Cod, but remember, all the gas and everything was rationed. During the whole year my father walked to and from work. My mother walked to and from the grocery store, and they saved their gas ration ticket so they could get to Cape Cod in the summertime.
TS: That’s a good plan, I think. That’s a real good plan.
MP: Yes.
TS: Tell me a little bit, so, you’re—you went to a Catholic high school?
MP: I did.
TS: So, actually, JFK [President John Fitzgerald Kennedy] would have been assassinated while you were in high school.
MP: That’s correct. I was a sophomore in high school.
TS: How did that affect you?
MP: Huge. I mean, huge. I can remember when—I was in eighth grade when [President Richard Milhous] Nixon and Kennedy were running against each other, and it was really funny because my father was for Nixon and my mother was for Kennedy. The reason she gave that she was for Kennedy was because he was so cute, and my father kept saying, “Betty, you don’t vote for somebody because he’s cute.” But we got interested in politics and listening to them talk during that time. Also, in eighth grade we had mock elections. In a Catholic grade school who do you think won? I mean, come on. [chuckles]
TS: Did anybody vote for Nixon?
MP: I don’t think so. But anyway, we really got into the politics of things and I had an aunt who was living just outside of [Washington,] D.C. My father had a number of siblings, but she was by far the closest to him, and we would go down and visit her regularly. So, we had been to D.C. multiple times, and would go and see what was happening and that sort of thing. And then I remember being in such a state of this can’t be when he died. Then the weekend after he was buried we went down there to see the eternal flame and all like that. It was—yes, it was a huge effect. I remember him starting the Peace Corps and everybody talking about “Well, maybe I’ll go there” and “Maybe I’ll do that.” You know, it was a very special time, I think. People talk about Camelot. It really was.
TS: So, when you did hear, you said you were a sophomore—did they announce it?
MP: Yes.
TS: Did they?7
MP: Yes. I was in class, and it came over the loud speaker at about one-something in the afternoon that Kennedy had been shot, and then just—our school principle, and a few minutes later it came over, “The president has been pronounced dead,” and then school was let out. We, just, all went home.
TS: How was your mother?
MP: My mother had already died.
TS: Oh, that’s right.
MP: She died the spring after Kennedy was elected.
TS: I see. Now, did you have any kind of duck-and-cover things for the Cold War?
MP: Yes.
TS: Did you do that?
MP: We did. We’d go out into the hallway, and my younger sister and I had this really bad habit of not wearing slips under our—you know, in Catholic school we wore a uniform. And I’ll tell you what, you learned really quick to wear your slip because you were to take your uniform skirt and hold it up to cover your face. You’d go into the hallway, out of the classrooms were there were windows, into the hallway, get down and then cover your head with your uniform. That was really embarrassing when you forgot your slip. [both chuckle] You didn’t forget it very often after that.
TS: Yes. Well, what did you think about it at the time? Do you remember, as a young girl, thinking—being afraid or what kind of—
MP: No. No. It’s really—It sounds silly we did all these things, but no, it never entered my mind that anything could happen to our country. I think that’s partly why Kennedy being killed was such a total shock, because that didn’t happen in our country, you know? Bad things happened other places, not here.
TS: Well then what did you think about [President Lyndon Baines] Johnson, President Johnson?
MP: Not too much.
TS: No?
MP: I mean, he—when you compared him to the vivaciousness and everything of Kennedy, he was there. Since that time, probably twenty years ago now, we’ve been down to Austin, [Texas], and gone to the Johnson [Presidential] Library and all like that. But at the time I remember him picking up the dog by its ears. Do I remember a whole lot about 8
what he—I remember him saying he wasn’t going to run, and I remember him saying we were getting out of Vietnam. That’s about it. As far as the things he did, like, I remember really reading a lot about what Bobby Kennedy [Robert Francis Kennedy] was doing with organized crime and the McCarthy people [Joseph McCarthy] and all like that. I remember a lot about that. With Johnson, no, I remember the dog. I remember him not running. Lady Bird planting, you know, doing the flowers.
TS: Right. What do you remember about the McCarthy hearings? Anything?
MP: It just seemed like not—I don’t remember anything specific except that it seemed like people who weren’t that bad were really being attacked. That’s what it seemed like.
TS: At the time?
MP: And I’m sure my dad would have had his two cents in there, and so anything that I can tell you I saw was probably very much influenced by Dad saying, “Well, I can’t believe they’re—”
TS: Right. Sure. Well, so did you—as a child growing up and losing your mother, how would you characterize your childhood growing up in Troy, New York?
MP: I would characterize it as safe, fun, having—you know, after—everybody would laugh because my parents were older when they married, and older when they had kids. My dad was almost forty before I was born and, you know, sixty-five years ago that didn’t happen that much. So my dad was the age of a lot of my friends’ grandparents, and Dad came to everything. Everybody would say, “Is your dad coming tonight? Where’s your—dad?” Everybody loved my dad, absolutely loved him. And so I remember being really proud of my father and happy and having a life that was good. You know, people say, “Oh, it must have been so hard losing your mother,” and of course it was, but Dad made up for it. Dad was everything to us.
Do you know when I got to college I had never ironed anything in my life before? It was, like, “Say what? How do you do this?” I brought an iron with me and all and the others said, “Well, don’t you iron at home?” “No. Daddy did that.”
TS: Your dad ironed?
MP: Dad did everything. Dad did all the cooking; I couldn’t cook anything.
TS: Really?
MP: Dad did everything.
TS: He had three girls!
MP: That’s right, and Dad did everything. We were totally spoiled girls.9
TS: How about that.
MP: He was just amazing.
TS: What newspaper did he—
MP: The Troy Times Record.
TS: Okay. I wanted to get that on record for sure. So when you were thinking about going to a college and—how did you pick the college that you went to?
MP: Well, I knew I wanted to go away from home. My older sister had gone to Union University; she’s a pharmacist. She had gone there and commuted, and I didn’t see that she really got into the college life at all, because she came home every day. She didn’t want to go away though, and I knew I wanted to go someplace. I was looking at schools in Buffalo; there were several. Again, at that point in time I was still very Catholic. Our family was very Catholic. It about killed them when I decided not to be a Catholic a few years back, well, more than a few years ago, about thirty years ago. I was still very Catholic and when you grow up in a town that it is 85 percent Catholic, when everybody looked at colleges, most of us were all looking at the Catholic girls schools, you know, all that kind of stuff. And Dad was very concerned that my older sister had been exposed to things that he didn’t think were good in life. She—When I was a senior in high school—she was already finished college by that time and already out working, but somehow, he ascribed it to college—she got pregnant. And got married and had a good married life for a number of years. But, Dad was, like, “Whoa. This is not good.” And so, he decided that my younger sister and I—
TS: What college was she going to?
MP: Union University.
TS: And that was in?
MP: Schenectady, New York.
TS: I see.
MP: Do you remember The Way We Were? That movie with Barbra Streisand?
TS: I remember the movie, yes.
MP: Well, it took place at Union University.
TS: Is that right? Okay.10
MP: Anyway, well, the first part of it did. Dad said, “Now, I want you and your sister,” he said, “I agree, you should go away to school to get the real college experience, but I want you to go to a small, all-girls college.”
We were like, “Okay.” I mean, I was very pliable back then, you know, “Well, okay Daddy, if that’s what you think.” And he started checking around to colleges and I had gone out to see a couple of the colleges in Buffalo and liked them.
And then Dad was on the board of Saint Mary’s Hospital in Troy, New York, which was run by the Daughters of Charity. The sister, Sister Mary Agnes, who was in charge, she was the nursing director there at the hospital, she said to my father, “Joe, where she needs to go is Saint Joseph College. That’s our college in Maryland. It’s our home school. That’s where she needs to go.”
So Dad said, “Sounds pretty good to me.” So we all got in the car and drove down there, took a look at the place, and I loved it. It was a beautiful little school. Very little. I mean there were five hundred and sixty-some in my graduating class from high school and one hundred and some, 110, in my graduating class from college. Very small school. But I liked it a lot. Dad said, “What do you think? You want to go there?”
I said, “Yes, I want to go there.”
He said to my sister, “The year after you want to go there?”
And she went, “Yes, I’ll go there.” So, we both went there.
TS: Did you both? How about that. That’s in Maryland, you said?
MP: Yes.
TS: Just a stones throw over the—
MP: Just a tiny speck south of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
TS: That’s right. It’s just south of that. Just over the border from Gettysburg.
MP: Yes.
TS: Okay. Tell me a little bit about that. What was that like, being away from home for the first time, I would think?
MP: It was for the first time. I think the only thing that really bothered me was that on the day they dropped me off for college—and it was my younger sister. My older sister was already married, of course. And my younger sister and Dad came down for the weekend to bring me down there, and they had things that were going on for the parents and the freshman on that first day. But they had to leave early because it was a ten-hour, maybe, I think a ten-hour drive back home, and my sister had to get home in time to see the Beatles on Ed Sullivan [television variety show] that night.
TS: It wasn’t going to be playing anywhere where you were at?11
MP: Well, they had to get home on that day, but they had planned on staying into the afternoon and then driving into the night. She really needed to see the Beatles that night, so they had to leave.
Actually, college, I absolutely loved it. I also have to say that high school, for me, was good and not good. I still have some really, really close friends, dear friends, but in high school I could’ve won, hands down, queen of the nerds. I mean, I was. You know, I always got the highest out of all the tests and I just—I needed to change, and I knew I needed to change. I went to the proms, but otherwise I didn’t date. I really—By the time I was a senior, I really knew that I enjoyed being smart, but I didn’t want to be queen of the nerds anymore.
TS: Did you do any kind of extracurricular activities? Sports?
MP: Oh, yes. I was on the yearbook, I was in the German club, I was in the chorus, yes, lots of things, but I was still queen of the nerds. You know? I mean—
TS: How did you get that title?
MP: Because your shy, you don’t date, and I gave myself the title. My younger sister, the one who’s just a year younger, she was vice president, because of course girls weren’t president, vice president of her class, and dated all the time. She and I are so close, and she would say, “Oh, I wish I could get grades as good as you.” And I’d say, “Oh, wow, I wish I could do that, you know, what you do.”
TS: Sure.
MP: So anyway, we talked about it that summer before I started college. Up to that point I was always called Maribeth, except at home. In school, everywhere I went, everybody called me Maribeth. At home I was always Becky. Actually at home I was Beck because my mom wanted me to be called Beth, but my older sister didn’t talk real well and called me Beck, and so at home I was always just called Beck.
My sister and I talked about it before I went to college and she said, “Well, you just have to change. First of all, lose the Maribeth. You’ll be Becky.”
“I can do that.”
She said, “And you don’t have to study every night and you don’t have to get the top grades in everything. You can go to parties and have fun and go with the girls.” And then just, well, it worked. I changed.
TS: You followed this plan? This little blueprint?
MP: Yes!
TS: Did you?
MP: Oh, yes!12
TS: So, you didn’t get nervous about not getting the top score?
MP: No, no. Because I knew I wanted to change.
TS: What was it that made you, besides being—
MP: I was tired of hearing all these other people saying what a great time they’d had at this party, and what they were doing at that, and what they—when they went to movies and—
TS: So, you felt like you were missing out on things?
MP: Yes, it was time to change.
TS: Okay. It was the sixties.
MP: Yes. It was time to change. And so, one time I got really brave when I was a senior in high school and Paul’s was the little restaurant that all the high school kids went to, and Paul’s had raised their prices. So everybody was fussing about raising the prices and they were having a sit-in in front of Paul’s. And I thought, I mean, that is something I would never do, but I thought, “I’m going to go and do it.” And so I go, and I’m sitting there and this policeman walks up and he says, “Aren’t you one of Joe Snyder’s daughters?” I mean that’s what happens when you live in a small city and your dad’s well known. And I went, “No,” but I went home really quick. [both laugh]
TS: Ran home maybe?
MP: Yes, but then in college, I absolutely loved every minute of college and I love it that my sister was there. Now, she was not a nursing major, I was, so I was gone about half the time down to Providence Hospital in northeast.
TS: How far away was that?
MP: Seventy miles. We lived off campus; the nursing majors lived off campus. Part of their sophomore year, all their junior year, and half of their senior year. But I saw my sister regularly. She’d come down sometimes and spend the weekend down in D.C., and she was her regular popular self. Her first two years she—my father said she wanted to try and get every major she could under her belt, so she switched majors regularly. I mean, started out as a chemistry major, and then a math major. Chemistry and math are not her things. She ended up in social work and has been a social worker ever since. Actually teaches social work over at Chapel Hill now, but we were really close and college was wonderful. I had a great time in college.
TS: So you were growing up in college—was it, you said, ’65 to ’69?
MP: Yes, yes.13
TS: So there’s a little bit going on in the culture.
MP: Oh my god, yes.
TS: What do you remember about that?
MP: Well, I remember, you know, first of all being a Catholic. I remember that’s when John the XXV [Pope John XXV] was big, and then he dies. And Pope Paul [VI], was it the first who came in to take his place. Anyway, wanted everything changed. Pope John was letting women do things and all of a sudden it was like, “Oh no, no, no, no, no. We’re not doing—” So, I took part in a lot of the rallies over at Catholic University because Providence was only, maybe half a mile from Catholic University. So we’d go over there a lot. Use their library, but do things, and so I took part in rallies over there against the Pope.
TS: Rallies against the Pope?
MP: Well, against what he was changing.
TS: Okay.
MP: The fact that he was pushing women back into the background again.
TS: I see.
MP: You know we were ready for women priests at that point. I had a wonderful time. I mean, I remember studying really hard, but having a great time. I know I didn’t get the top grades in everything, but I always did okay, you know, I did fine. I just—I loved college, every minute of it. I loved being in D.C. It was fun. We did everything. We went through the House Office Building, we went to the parades, we went to the inauguration. When poor old President Eisenhower died we went to his funeral. We skipped class to do that one. [chuckles]
College was fun, very much fun, and I do remember being aware of—Vietnam was starting and getting big, big, big. I remember watching the death count every night on TV at the news and, you know, things like that. But I still never thought about going into the service until Jean, again, the same—my roommate. Her father—
TS: Your roommate where?
MP: In college—
TS: In college.
MP: —and in the military.
TS: What’s her full name, Jean?14
MP: Jean, you’ve got it, Jean Gibbons Denny.
TS: Okay.
MP: Jean’s father—In our sophomore year, the end of our sophomore year, her father became very ill. He had Parkinson’s disease and he had had one surgery that was very successful to decrease the symptoms of his Parkinson’s. He had a second surgery that was very much unsuccessful and he was never able to work again. She knew at this point she had to figure out some way to pay for college or she was going to have to drop out. So she said, “Listen. These recruiters keep coming around. You say you don’t think you want to go back to Troy, you want to see some other places after graduation. What do you think we go in the army and see what we can see?” And I said, “Yes, that might be fun.”
TS: Did you say that right away?
MP: Yes.
TS: Right away, like, “Oh, let’s go in the army.”?
MP: No, she said, “Let’s go in the army,” and I said it might be fun.
TS: Okay.
MP: Of course, by this time I’m twenty years old and extremely intelligent. So I called home and said to my dad, “Dad, what do you think about this?” And my dad said, “Absolutely not.” And so this extremely know-it-all, intelligent young woman says, “Oh yes?” And so, I signed up.
TS: Because your dad said no?
MP: Partly, partly. I was thinking about it but really it irritated me that dad should say absolutely not.
TS: Why did he say absolutely not?
MP: What he said was, “Do you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to send you to Vietnam.” And I said, “Daddy, they would never do that to me.” I should have listened to Daddy. [both chuckle]
TS: Was he opposed to it for any other reason besides the war?
MP: No, no. As a matter of fact, after I was in he was very proud of me. He was just really worried that I could get killed.
TS: In Vietnam?15
MP: Yes. He felt positive that a young women for whom they had paid for education, had no dependents, would be a prime person to be sent overseas. And he felt pretty strongly it was going to happen, and he was afraid something bad could happen there.
TS: I see. So, you—what year did you sign up during your college program?
MP: Sixty-eight.
TS: Sixty-eight. Was that your junior year, then?
MP: Yes. It was in my, early in my junior year and we were PFCs—well, it had to have been my—let me think now— [pause] for about a year, so maybe it was the end of my sophomore year that I was signed up, and then we were commissioned as second lieutenants a year before we—[pause] It was six months before we graduated, so I became a second lieutenant in December of ’68, so I’d been in for a while, so I must have gone in the end of my sophomore year.
TS: Somewhere around there.
MP: Yes.
TS: Well, now, ’68 was a pretty, um, transformative year for Vietnam.
MP: Yes it was, it was.
TS: Do you remember, you know, the Tet Offensive? I mean, you signed up right, right around that time.
MP: I do, and, you know, think about you’re—you’re young, and of course with most young people you believe nothing could ever happen to you, of course, you know nothing would ever happen to me. You’re altruistic, and the recruiters were nurses, so they could speak our language, and they came and they said, “You know, think about the guys that you go out with, think about your brothers, think about it. Don’t you want somebody who knows what they’re doing to be there and take care of them?” And you go, “Yeah.” “And think of all the places you’ll be able to visit, and the things that you’ll be able to do. Of course, if you want to go home and work in the small hospital back home, that’s certainly your choice, and we wish you the very best. But can you imagine all the places you can go and the fact that the things you do might be remembered by somebody forever.”
And, you know, part of that was true, when we went to the dedication of the Vietnam [Veterans] Memorial, and each hospital marched together, and so of course we marched with the 93rd Evac. [Evacuation Hospital], and were marching down the street, this guy runs out into the street and grabs my arm and he says, “I know you took care of me, I know you did. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” And you go, “Wow!” And then older people would be there, and they’d say, “My son died at the 93rd Evac. I wonder if 16
you might have been there with him?” You know, and you go, “Wow.” So the recruiters didn’t lie, but it was interesting.
TS: So it was an emotional tug to get you—
MP: Oh, yes.
TS: —to join. Sure.
MP: Yes.
TS: But they were all nurses, the recruiters were?
MP: The ones they sent to the colleges, yes. We didn’t have any recruiting sergeants or anything, and “call me any time if you’ve got a question,” and they would return your call immediately and, “Oh, I heard you had a question about such-and-such.”
TS: Did you go visit any place before you joined up?
MP: No.
TS: You just—
MP: No.
TS: Well, okay. So when you saw—the other things that happened in ’68 was we had two other assassinations—
MP: Yes, we did. I actually—they made a huge impression upon me. Remember, that was my junior year in school, and so I was down in Washington that whole entire year, and Easter weekend—the weekend before Easter, excuse me—is when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. And I wasn’t listening to the radio or anything that day, and a couple of us decided we would go over to Kentucky Fried Chicken and get some supper.
And the students were well known, I mean, there weren’t McDonald’s and all those things around, but there was Kentucky Fried Chicken and there were, you know, various other little places. We could certainly eat in the dorm, but a lot of times we would go out to a place like that. And the people—we stood out. You know, we were in Northeast, which was, back at that time, probably 100 percent black, and there you have all the girls from the college walk in, and, you know, and I say, “all the girls”; there were only thirty nursing majors in my class. So there weren’t that many of us, so they got to know us, and we’d talk to them and, you know, we just knew them.
And we walked in to Kentucky Fried Chicken that night and a guy who was always there and who always waited on us said, “You girls go home right now. Go home right now. Something bad has happened. You go home and you turn on the TV and don’t come out on the streets tonight. Do not. Go home right now.” We went, “Oh-kay.”17
TS: But he didn’t tell you what happened?
MP: No, he didn’t. And so—but he was strict, I mean, he came across strongly enough that we said, “Okay.”
TS: And you just left?
MP: We left. We went right back to the dorm, turned on the TV. Here in the country, people hunt around here
TS: [speaking simultaneously] Yeah, I’m sure they do [unclear] shotgun.
MP: And turned on the TV and went “Whoa.” And that night the riots started. And we had tremendous—remember, oh, you don’t remember, you’re not old enough—but you may have read about tremendous rioting in Washington, D.C. And then Resurrection City was the tent city that was down on the Mall. Well, when the rioting started, and the whole city was put curfew, and you couldn’t drive anywhere, it was—it really made an impression on me, because the nursing students, we were there. And the nurses couldn’t get in to work. And so we worked eight hours on, eight hours off, eight hours on, eight hours off. You know I can truthfully say there was only one place in my nursing education that I said—well, probably two, because I really didn’t think I wanted to work in psch, but that wasn’t a strong one—but there was one place I said—
TS: You didn’t want to work where?
MP: Well there was one place I was sure after I finished my rotation there that I never, ever, ever wanted to work there: labor and delivery. That is not for me. But part of it was because of what I saw. They were very old fashioned, our doctors were, and we didn’t have any awake deliveries. I thought that normal color for a newborn was sort of a dusky, gray-blue, you know, because these women were so heavily sedated. And you walked in the door and you got Scopolamine and Demoral immediately, and Scopolomine is an amnesic and so these women all just, just, were, I mean like animals. They’d scream and yell and we padded the side rail so they wouldn’t break their teeth if they were hitting it. Oh, it was not pretty, you know, it was like, I would never work there.
Well, guess where they assigned me to work during the period of time that this was going on? I worked labor and delivery. And our interns and residents there—Providence Hospital is not directly affiliated with a college. It’s not like UNC Hospitals or anything like that. So our interns and residents were mostly from South America, mostly Spanish, Hispanic. And so there’s all the interns and residents who speak some English, heavily accented, and the student nurses. And I mean, we worked the hospital at that point in time. We all went up on the roof to watch the tanks going by, I mean, it was scary. And then somebody came running upstairs because the tanks had seen all the nurses out there looking like this, the student nurses out there, and saying, “Get them off the roof!” Cause that’s where you went to sunbathe and everything, was up on the roof of the dorm. And so we went up there to watch the tanks, and you could see fires; there were a lot of places burning and, I mean, Washington, D.C., and those riots, it was awful. It 18
was really awful. And the sad thing about it is the black people burned their own neighborhoods. But they, they happened. So, yes, I remember Martin Luther King Jr.’s death a lot.
TS: Were you personally afraid?
MP: I was afraid for my car, you know, people came and they were turning over cars. I didn’t have my pretty car yet then, I had a little, ancient, old English car that—everybody else’s car had windows broken and things taken. My car was sitting there just fine. [both laugh] It was like an old English taxi—
TS: Oh, okay.
MP: —a Hillman Minx, and I don’t know where my dad got it, but my car wasn’t touched. I was really worried about my car. Was I afraid? No, and I don’t know why. You know, I’d probably be afraid today, but it was like, “Wow, do you see what’s happening?” I mean, if we’d been afraid, we wouldn’t have like idiots stood up and looked over the edge of the roof, you know? And watched the fires and watched the tanks until they sent up word to get us off that roof.
TS: Right. Well then, what happened then when Robert F. Kennedy was—
MP: I was really calm by then. School had ended.
TS: [unclear]
MP: Yes. He was killed in June, and I had watched that evening, you know, I was watching TV because I—he was our senator by this time, remember, he became the senator from New York—
TS: That’s right.
MP: And so he was our senator, and I was very interested in seeing whether he was going to get the nomination and all like that, and watching TV that night. So I was watching TV when it happened. And I couldn’t believe. You know, it’s one of those where you just go, “How? It can’t happen.”
TS: Because they showed him speaking and then, did they cut?
MP: They just—they had shown him speaking, and then he, they said he’s leaving now and they showed just a big crowd of people and he was going through and shaking hands, and then you heard a noise and a scuffle; you didn’t actually see it happen. And this voice came on and said, “Senator Kennedy has been shot.” And I thought, “Oh my God.” That was sad, that made an impression, but I was not at school when that happened.
TS: So you had—so now you’re already signed up—well, you’re in the army—19
MP: Yes.
TS: Army Nurse Corps, and these things are happening that are associated somewhat—part of the anti-war movement—
MP: Oh, yes.
TS: —but also the counterculture. Are you thinking, “What am I getting myself into?”
MP: No, because I really believed in being there for the guys and taking care of them, and I still do. Whether or not you believe in the action that’s happening, whether or not you support it [pause]. Afghanistan today...I’m not really sure why we’re there. But if I were at the ago to go, I would go without hesitation because whether or not you support what’s happening, our soldiers deserve to be supported. I believe that’s why fewer nurses have had psychiatric problems, then infantrymen and things like that, because were were there doing what we were educated to do and helping people.
TS: And you volunteered.
MP: Yes.
TS: Where a lot of those men were drafted.
MP: That’s absolutely true, the majority.
TS: Yes.
MP: Or docs. We heard a lot about that from the docs.
TS: Well did you have a personal opinion about the war at the time? Did it evolve over—
MP: Yes, it changed. I supported it when we went. I can’t say today that—again, I sit there and I say, “What were we hoping to accomplish?” You know, this is a country that had been at war for hundreds of years. The French before us. I mean, they were always fighting about something. The country, the people and the country I don’t really believe supported us, because—I mean, the everyday people, because you would see, you know, you go through. I wasn’t supposed to be out there but sometimes I would go over to Bien Hoa to see Stewart, and you could tell if there were expecting Viet Cong though. They’d have Viet Cong flags flying from the houses one day and American flags the next day.
TS: Did you witness that?
MP: Oh yes! Absolutely.
[End CD1—Begin CD 2]20
MP: We were not allowed to leave our compound at all. And in order to go over and see—and he couldn’t leave his, because he had to stay with his helicopter.
TS: And Stewart, we may not have said on tape, is your husband.
MP: Yes, yes. And so he had to stay with his helicopter, and so I--I can’t believe this. I’ve always said this to Stewart, I wouldn’t do it today. But you may not remember but there used to be a song that was out that said, “When I’m in love you best believe I in love, l-u-v,” you know. Well, I must have been in love, l-u-v, because I made friends with the garbage truck drivers, because all of the vehicles were checked by the MPs when they would leave Long Binh, and if you didn’t have a pass to go out, of course you couldn’t leave. And nurses didn’t get passes to go out in the countryside. And so my friends the garbage truck drivers would let me ride in the garbage, climb up over the wheel and into the garbage truck, and I would ride in the garbage, and when we’d get to Bien Hoa, they’d go in the gate, they were heading of course for the dump, but they’d stop and they’d say, “Okay, lieutenant,” and I’d climb over the top and get back out.
TS: How often did you do that?
MP: Fairly frequently, you know, once every ten days.
TS: That’s fairly frequent.
MP: [speaking simultaneously] —the guys over where Stewart was were—they would tease me really bad and they’d go, “Your wife is here!”
TS: While holding their noses? [laughs] That’s funny. Oh very good. Well, now did—we talked some of the political side of the culture, but about like, the music, and those kinds of things that were going on? Did you have an interest in any of that?
MP: Oh, I loved all the folk music and all like that, and the different songs, you know, that came out. Yes, I liked all of the folk music. Of course, the Beatles were big while I was in college, and that sort of thing, but it changed in the early seventies, moving more towards songs that definitely were related the happenings of the day. And, yes, I loved—
TS: What folk musicians did you--do you remember enjoying?
MP: Ah, oh God, you know, when you get older, your memory of names—Judy Collins, certainly. Now they weren’t folk music per se, but when you’d hear the Kingston Trio, they had different things going on. They were earlier; they were still around a little bit by that time, but they were mostly earlier. But a lot of the ones, the Judy Collins types, you know, that sort of thing.
TS: What about Elvis and all? Was he ever—21
MP: He was earlier; he was more in the fifties, and the early sixties, and so I think his songs are really pretty, I think he had a great voice, but he was not super popular by the time I was—
TS: You were in college?
MP: Yes.
TS: Okay. Now when you--we talked about the recruiters coming around and your friend, Jean, recruited him too, in some sense. Was it just the army or were there other service branches that you—
MP: Oh, no, no. There was another roommate, Kathleen—who I don’t have any pictures of her out here—but I have stayed in touch with her too. She went into the navy, and so it was the army and the navy recruiters who were there.
TS: Okay. Not air force?
MP: No, no. I don’t remember ever seeing any air force.
TS: So how did you and Jean decide on the army over the navy?
MP: I don’t remember. But I remember at the time, Kathleen tried to convince us to go navy and we didn’t want to. I don’t remember why. I don’t remember.
TS: That’s okay.
MP: But we thought about it, because Kathleen really wanted us to go in the navy. But we didn’t. We decided army was the one we wanted to go into.
TS: Now did you and Jean—now you both signed up together. Did you do like a buddy system or anything like that?
MP: Well, no. They didn’t promise us to be together, but they inferred that we could probably be together.
TS: Okay. Well, let’s talk about that then. Let’s see. You graduated in 1969.
MP: Yes, in May of ’69.
TS: May of ’69, and then—and you had been commissioned as a lieutenant previously in the fall.
MP: Yes.
TS: A second lieutenant.22
MP: Yes.
TS: So tell me about—now had you done any military training up to that point?
MP: None—
TS: You were just getting stipends for—
MP: —none whatsoever. Yes, they paid tuition, and books, and we also got a stipend, which was really nice.
TS: You had talked about your father said “absolutely not,” but then you did it anyhow. What was his reaction to that?
MP: Dad’s really tolerant; he was like, “Well, okay.” And then he was very supportive. Once it was done, then he was totally supportive. And he had said to me, “I’m really worried that something bad could happen.”
TS: What about your sisters? How did they feel about it?
MP: They were fine. They were fine.
TS: And your friends?
MP: Yes.
TS: Because most of them were nursing and were aware of the programs?
MP: Exactly.
TS: Yes. So you didn’t have anybody who was like, “Oh, you’re going in the army?” And stuff like that?
MP: I was in a small, all-girls Catholic college. We weren’t out their demonstrating; we weren’t Kent State. We were small, all-girls—mostly the Catholic colleges had a lot of compliant young women, and we were pretty compliant. [laughs]
TS: Well tell me about then your first day that you went to Fort Sam Houston.
MP: Jean and I—Well, I worked at home for a couple of months in the hospital at home, and then Jean and I set off in my pretty new convertible—
TS: What kind of convertible is that?
MP: Mustang.23
TS: Okay.
MP: Went down to Texas. We left—actually, this is really interesting when you think about what was going on in life. We left—I drove down to her house; she was from New Jersey. And when I passed, when down the New York Thruway, there was a huge traffic jam, because what was going on—
TS: Woodstock?
MP: Yes!
TS: Is that right?
MP: That was exactly when I was leaving—and that was one time when I thought, “Whoa, they’re all out there doing this and I’m going to the army?”
TS: Did you think about that at the time?
MP: I did, I did!
TS: Did you want to take a turn toward—
MP: It was just one of those where you think, “Wow, this is really weird.” And at that point, I’m the one who’s thinking, “I’m the one who’s way out there. They’re doing the normal things and I’m the one who’s out here.”
TS: Oh, right.
MP: And then Jean—I picked up Jean in New Jersey, we drove on down to Texas. Well, August in Texas—the more we drove, and my car did not have air conditioning. I got this car in upstate New York. It was hot. And the more we drove, the hotter it got. Well we got to Fort Sam Houston probably a day or so before we were supposed to report in. And so the two of us thought about it for a minute—now remember, we had had no contact with the military up to this point—and we decided we were sure they wouldn’t mind, and we were so hot, we would just go to the beach for a few days.
So we went to the beach; we went down to Padre Island, which was just beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And we had a wonderful time at Padre Island. And then we said, “Well you know, we’re supposed to be in the army, we probably should go back.”
So we drove back to Fort Sam Houston, got there a couple days late, and I remember this sergeant who checked us in saying, “Lieutenant, do you understand what AWOL [Absent With Out Leave] is?” And we went, “No, no, no. AWOL’s for bad people; we just went to the beach, and now we’re here. So it’s, no, we were not AWOL, we just went to the beach.”
And the poor sergeant, I mean, he had to babysit these, these nurses. And he said, “Oh, lieutenant, you could look at this as AWOL.” And we said, “No, absolutely not.” 24
Well then the poor man, I think it about put him over the edge. He said, “Well, let me look and see where to put you in the BOQ.” And he came back a couple of minutes later, and you can see this look on his face, like, you know, he’s about to have the big one. And he said, “It would appear the BOQ is full.”
So I had to live with Jean in the Holiday Inn for basic training. And the Holiday Inn was right beside Fort Sam, so it was fine, you know we were able to get back and forth, but that’s where I lived, was the Holiday Inn. And that’s why—remember I said to look at my uniform in the picture, it didn’t fit very well? When we were supposed to be going to get fitted for uniforms, we would back go to the Holiday Inn and go swimming, because it was so hot. Well then comes the day and they say, “Tomorrow everybody is supposed to be in uniform. Your uniforms have arrived.” And we went, “Whoa. Uniforms have arrived? How did they arrive? Oh, that’s right, we were swimming.” So we weren’t quite sure what to do. We went to the thrift shop, and found some uniforms. But they were a little bit too big.
TS: You got your uniforms at the thrift shop?
MP: Well, because you could get it that day. So I mended the corners, and, yes, that’s where I got my summer uniform. Not dress blues. We did get dress blues.
TS: I just want to clarify this with you, Becky. So they day they’re like, “Okay, your uniforms are in, you’re supposed to go and get them,” you went to the pool?
MP: Well all the fittings, you now? That’s when we’d go to the pool. We figured we could get that done later, all that uniform stuff. And then they say, “Tomorrow everybody is to be here in uniform.”
TS: In uniform, right.
MP: “We’ve got a problem.”
TS: Did you have your uniform, or you just didn’t have it fitted, or—
MP: We didn’t have anything.
TS: You didn’t even have—
MP: Because they fitted for you and then fixed it to fit you and then you got it.
TS: I see.
MP: So we found some at the thrift shop [Strohmer laughs] and we knew we wouldn’t be wearing uniforms much once we finished basic training, so thank God people had put their uniforms in the thrift shop. So we got our uniforms. We did buy the regular hats, we did buy our hats. But, ah, yeah, we got our uniforms at the thrift shop.25
TS: So how long were you at basic training?
MP: I was there [pause] I guess it was about seven weeks.
TS: Okay.
MP: And, I mean, I think back to some of the things—now some of the things did make you realize, “Wow, this is not a game playing.” But some of them were pretty funny. We had decided God lived in a helicopter. Why do I say that? Well, you know, if you were here in the States, when it starts to dawn on you, “Maybe Daddy was right,” you know? You don’t need map reading here in the States, to shoot azimuths and things like that. I don’t mean map reading like, there’s the road, you know. But they said, “You might be some place, and it could happen that the people who can read maps would not be with you and you have to be able to find your way to a place.” So we had to learn how to shoot azimuths from the sun and different, you know, shoot the angles so—
TS: Oh, the azimuth, okay.
MP: —so you can figure out how to get from one place to another. And then they put us in groups of three for your final test, and you were out just about all day and you had to go from one place to put site A to site B and then end back up again at site C, and that would show that you could read maps. And so they put us out in the morning, it’s hot in Texas, we’re in our fatigues, and the whole deal, you know, and our boots and everything because we weren’t in the other uniforms and they didn’t the fit the fatigues to you, so we were good for those. But anyway, we’re out there and we think we’re doing really well and all of a sudden this helicopter comes zooming across and hovers over us. And the loudspeaker says [in a deep voice], “Lieutenants, you’re going the wrong way. Turn around.” And it was like, and that’s when we decided, I mean we were joking, that God was in the helicopter and he was getting us to the right place.
TS: He was paying attention to you.
MP: Some other things that we did during basic training that, like I said, made you realize that things could really be—that we had to learn to handle a .45, aim it too, you know, that kind of thing.
TS: And you shot it?
MP: They wouldn’t give us ammunition, so we pretended to shoot it. [laughs]
TS: Is that right?
MP: Yes, probably safer, probably safer. But we all had them and we were pointing and doing our thing. And then, and the animal activists would have a heart attack at this, but I did not. I love animals as much anybody could, but I would rather practice on an animal before I got to a human being. And what they said is, “You might be working in an 26
atmosphere where”—and that’s when you start to say, “Whoa, I think I’m going”—“where the docs are all busy with major wounds,” and so we needed to learn how to treat wounds, take shrapnel out of wounds, and we did that on goats. And the goats were shot, and then we had to clean their wounds and all. And then we also had to place a treach in a goat. And you passed your test when the goat could breathe through your treach. And like I said, I know the animal activists about had heart failure, because by the time we finished the goat had several treachs, you know, because different people were practicing, and he’d had wounds and all. And it was sad, but I’d rather practice on a goat then on a human being.
TS: Right.
MP: And I did use some of those skills later on, so I was glad I had learned.
TS: Yeah.
MP: And when you do things like that, that’s when you sort of go, “Wow.”
TS: So that was part of your basic training?
MP: Yes. At that time, Jean and I got orders to Fort Polk, Louisiana. And everybody told us that was the worst place in the whole world. So we went to talk to people to see if maybe we could get out of going to Fort Polk. And they said, “Well, okay, if we say you can go to Fort Bragg, [North Carolina], I’m going to tell you, you are going to go to Vietnam.” And then the next breath they said, “But there’s a 99 percent chance you’re going to go to Vietnam if you go to Fort Polk too.” So we decided we’d do it. So we knew for sure we were going to go to Vietnam, but we got to go to Fort Bragg first, rather than Fort Polk. A hard time. As a matter of fact, Jean met—there was a lot of partying going on during basic training. Ours was not the serious—we did learn a little bit marching and saluting and all like that, but we didn’t do all the things the guys do. And she met this dentist who was going to Korea, and four years later she married him.
TS: Oh is that right?
MP: They lost touch completely, and after she got out of the army, she went to the VA center to get her teeth worked on, and he was working there and said, “I know who you are. I met you when you were in basic training.” And they got married.
TS: They connected again, how interesting. That’s an interesting story. So you—so basic training, was it—did anything particularly difficult come out of it?
MP: No, no. I mean, it was hard to do the animals, you know, that sort of thing. Now back at that time, if you didn’t pass boards, you were out. And a few people—that was back when you took boards and you didn’t get your scores for a month, two months later. And so some people found they had not passed their boards and they left. And that was also 27
back at the time when, if you got pregnant, you were out. A couple of people found they were pregnant and they were gone. But overall, no, it wasn’t hard.
TS: No, not physically or emotionally?
MP: No, no.
TS: But you had this lingering feeling now that you’re going—
MP: No, it wasn’t a lingering feeling, I knew I was going.
TS: Going to Vietnam? Probably especially since you’re father had [laughs] planted that seed for you too. So you and Jean went to Fort Bragg. Did you drive there in your Mustang?
MP: We did. As a matter fact we drove in the Mustang. We left Fort Sam and we were going to go home, because we had a few days of leave first, and we got all the way to Asheville, North Carolina. I had never been to Asheville before. That car was packed up to the top. We had our uniforms, we had—I mean, we had all sorts of stuff with us by this time. And we got to Asheville and both of us were just tired of driving, and this was so typical, I mean, sometimes I think about, you know, how loopy I was. We got to—we saw a sign for an airport, we went in the airport, we left—now this is a convertible, anybody could have opened it up and gotten all of our stuff—left the car in the long-term parking and flew home.
TS: From Asheville?
MP: Yes.
TS: You just left the car there?
MP: Yes.
TS: With everything packed in it?
MP: Yes, because we were tired of driving by this time. And then I got down to Jean’s house—I don’t remember if I took the train or the bus—after leave was up, and then she and I drove back in her car and stopped in Asheville to pick up my car.
TS: And was everything there?
MP: Yes.
TS: And how long were you gone?
MP: Oh, about three weeks.28
TS: And everything was still there?
MP: Yes!
TS: Well that says something about Asheville, North Carolina.
MP: It sure does.
TS: I guess so. Okay.
MP: And then we went to Fort Bragg, and we had already decided we wanted to room—we had made friends with three other nurses. Well, we made friends with a bunch of people but especially with three other nurses in basic training, who—and the other three were also going to Fort Bragg. And so we decided that we would all like to room together, find a house or a big apartment or something like that to room together.
TS: Were you able to do that?
MP: We did, we did.
TS: You didn’t have to get special permission for that?
MP: No.
TS: No?
MP: No. Well, here’s some things. We were there at Fort Bragg in the wintertime and I’d heard everybody talk about how the South doesn’t tolerate the snow and all. Well we had snow one day. Well, of course, remember I learned how to drive in upstate New York, and so driving in snow did not bother me at all. And it snowed one day, and I thought, “Well, shoot, it would be fun to stay home and play.” So I just called in and said the snow was just too much, I couldn’t come to work that day, and so there we are, just outside having a good old time when the MP showed up to get me to work because they heard I couldn’t drive. [Strohmer laughs] I though, “Well, I guess I won’t be playing today.”
TS: So they needed somebody at the hospital then, I guess.
MP: Absolutely.
TS: Yes. Well how was—so did you have like real army yet? Were you--
MP: Oh, it was—real army to me went when we got to Fort Bragg. Remember I said my dad had been chairman of the board at St. Mary’s Hospital in Troy? And that’s how we picked colleges where I went and like that. Well, when I worked those two months after graduation from college before I went to basic training, they put me on one unit—I don’t remember—I have to tell you I was very spoiled. And they put me on one unit that I think 29
I didn’t like, I think it was a medicine unit and I decided I didn’t like it. [clock chiming in background] And so I marched myself down to personnel and said I really didn’t like that unit, I would like them to put me on a surgical unit, and I didn’t want to work nights, I would like to work days. And they said, “Sure.” Now at the time, if anybody had said, “You know, your father’s chairman of the board, what did you think they’d say?” I would have said, “Oh, no, they did it just because that’s what I wanted.” And I really believed that.
So I get put on a medicine unit at Fort Bragg, and they tell us that were rotating shifts. In one week you could work all three shifts, you know, and so I marched myself downstairs and said I really didn’t want that. And he said, “Well, that’s where you’re assigned, so get over it.” And it was like—
TS: Kind of a shock?
MP: —Whoa! And then, you know, people, it’s real life, you have to salute, you have to do all those things, it’s not a game any more. Yes, it felt like the army then.
TS: Did you have any kind of reaction to that at all?
MP: Yes, just about like that, “Wow! Guess I have to do this stuff,” you know?
TS: But you didn’t feel uncomfortable about it at all?
MP: No, because everybody we were with was military. I mean, Fort Bragg had all—the neighborhood where we lived in in Fayetteville had a lot of rental houses, and two-thirds of the houses were rental houses and they were all with military people. And so when everybody is the military you just go, “Oh, okay.”
TS: Describe to me how—you’re kind of playing army outside of the hospital but in the hospital you’re pretty much just doing your job and your profession and not so much, it’s not so much army until like you walk onto the—
MP: I would say I agree with that in part. I mean, it depends on who you’re commanding officer is, who’s in charge, and—the unit that I went to first was very much into saluting and you know, there were a lot of fun things—
TS: [simultaneously speaking] Even within the, in the hospital?
MP: Yes.
TS: Okay.
MP: So I experienced that more, I mean, not as much when you—
TS: [speaking simultaneously] There’s four of you, right, after all?30
MP: Yes.
TS: Yes.
MP: And you had to feel like you were in the military. Now it was fun. We had good times, you know, and we played games and we did all sorts of things.
TS: What kind of things did you do for fun?
MP: Well, by that time I’d met Stewart. I went out with him, we gave parties, we gave great old parties at our house, I mean, five nurses. We gave really good parties. We just had a really good time. One time he and his friend had been out hunting and they caught a coon and that—we had our communications system was one of those old tube systems, and they sent us a CLT through the tube. I was working when they got back with a coon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. We played games [laughs].
TS: So how long were you at Fort Bragg?
MP: I got there in the end of September and I left, ah, the third week in January. Not very long at all.
TS: Not very long.
MP: No, not very long.
TS: So how quickly did you get your orders to Vietnam?
MP: I got orders in the beginning of January, I think, maybe the second, first week in January.
TS: So you didn’t have long to get ready to go?
MP: No, no. As a matter of fact, I met Stewart at a Halloween party but then I didn’t see him again because he was going on a temporary duty and I didn’t see again until right, you know, in December. And then saw him again in December, and I got orders in January and we got married two weeks later. So I knew him six weeks when we got married. Now my father was worried about that one.
TS: He was?
MP: “Honey, have you thought about this?”
TS: Well did your friend Jean also get orders?
MP: Yes, all five us got orders.
TS: All five of you, all of you in the house?31
MP: Now the one got married, and I don’t remember where she went, because we didn’t, we weren’t—Carol, she got married and maybe she didn’t get orders. But she got married before we got our orders and so she left. So then there were only four of us in the hospital, four of us got orders at the same time.
TS: All to Vietnam?
MP: Yes.
TS: So what did you think now that--did you--now that you got your orders to Vietnam?
MP: I was scared.
TS: Were you?
MP: Yes, I was scared.
TS: What were you afraid of?
MP: Getting killed.
TS: Yeah?
MP: I mean, you know, we took care of a lot of guys who had come back, and—
TS: At Fort Bragg?
MP: Yes, and, you know, I mean bad things happened.
TS: Well what was that like, caring for the men in Fort Bragg that had come back from Vietnam? What kind of injuries would you see?
MP: Well, all sorts of injuries. I mean, I didn’t work with amputations or anything like that.
TS: What ward did you work on?
MP: I was on the medicine unit, but I would see the guys, and because in the army if you’re too sick to go back to regular work, but not really, really sick. In other words, during that rehabilitation time that you’d have at home, these guys still lived at the hospital, but they were out on all the floors, mopping floors, and helping clean, and—they had duties even though they were still patients. They’d be there in their, ah, pajamas and mopping way—[laughs]
TS: So they had assigned duties that they had to do even though they—32
MP: Yes, they did. So you’d see guys there who would have been hurt, various types of wounds.
TS: And so when you—tell me about then preparing to go to Vietnam, what kind of preparations did you—
MP: No preparation.
TS: Well besides getting married.
MP: Yes, I got married. We got married, that was the day I finished work on, probably Wednesday; we got married on Saturday, and then we left. That was the last I was at Fort Bragg.
TS: Yes. And then where did Stewart—did Stewart have orders to Vietnam too?
MP: No, he did not. He had actually already been over--at the time, you know, I couldn’t believe his mother was so upset, but, he had already been over and been shot down, and spent time in the hospital. He went over at Tet, in ’68, then crashed in July, and, ah, was still not back to work yet. Yeah, he still wasn’t back to work yet a year later. He had had fractures, you know, that sort of thing.
TS: I see.
MP: And he volunteered to go back after I got sent there, and I couldn’t understand at the time because I really did believe I wouldn’t get hurt, even though I was scared, couldn’t believe, couldn’t understand why his mother was so upset. And now I think about it, oh my God, your son has been injured, he made it home, not in one piece but he made it home, he got better, and he volunteers to go back? And so he didn’t go back when I did. I went in February, and he came over in April. But we weren’t stationed at the same place.
TS: No, because you had to take a garbage truck to go see him.
MP: That’s right. He could have been stationed at the hospital, but the only helicopter station at the hospital were medevacs, and Stewart said, and I agree with him 100 percent, people didn’t not fire at you simply because you had the cross on your helicopter. They got shot at a lot. And they were always going into hot places or they wouldn’t have had patients to pick up. And he said, “That’s like a target on the side of your helicopter,” and of course the medevacs carried no guns. He said, “I’m not flying a helicopter with no guns into hot LCs [?], I’m not going to do that.” So he went over to the 190th assault helicopter group.
TS: So he could protect himself better?
MP: Yes.
TS: Why did he volunteer to go back to Vietnam?33
MP: To be with me.
TS: Yeah?
MP: Because I was there.
TS: What did you think about that at the time?
MP: Remember, I was a spoiled little girl back then. I thought it was the right thing for him to do [both laugh]
TS: You couldn’t see his mother’s perspective?
MP: I couldn’t, but now I think about it and I think, “Oh my God.”
TS: Now did you go over to Vietnam on your own or did you go with any friends when you took the trip?
MP: Jean and Helen—
TS: All of you went together?
MP: Yes, the four of us. The four of us went together.
TS: So tell me about that trip.
MP: Well, it was a converted cargo plane, we had—we left San Francisco, we flew—we had to stop in the Philippines, which was not a planned but because we were having engine problems. It took forever to get there. That wasn’t a jet, remember, that’s back in the old propeller days. Oh, it took twenty-three hours, I think. And we were in the Philippines for about four hours while they worked on the plane, and then we stopped for gas at Guam, and I don’t know if we stopped anyplace else, and we landed in Saigon.
And we were put up in the BOQ in Saigon, and told to go to work, or come to the office for our assignments the next day. Now we had met Helen and Donna in basic training. Jean and I sort of came as a pair. But they were our really good friends. Well what they told us was they had two assignments at 3rd Evac., or 3rd Surg. [3rd Surgical Hospital] in Saigon. And two at the 93rd Evac in Long Binh. And how did we want to split up? And I was really glad Jean spoke up because she said, “We’ll take the 93rd Evac.,” and we did. And it turned out to be a good thing. You know, working in the 3rd Surg. had to be so weird because you wore white uniforms there, it was very military, you were always having people come to visit—
TS: So because it was in Saigon, in the city?End of Part One.
Interview continues in Part Two.