Oral history interview with Georgia Motsinger Burton, 2002

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WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Georgia Burton
INTERVIEWER: Eric Elliott
DATE: January 31, 2002
[Begin Interview]
EE: Transcriber, my name is Eric Elliott, and I’m with the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This is an interview for the Women Veterans Historical Project at the university. Today is January 31st, in the year 2002, and I’m in Morehead City this morning, Morehead City, North Carolina, at the home of Georgia Burton.
Miss Burton, thank you for letting me come to your house today and talk with you a bit about your service with the Army Nurse Corps. I’m going to start with a very simple question that I ask almost everybody, and that is, where were you born and where did you grow up?
GB: Davidson County, North Carolina.
EE: Right at the edge of Forsyth, because it was a town called Walburg [phonetic].
GB: Right.
EE: You were actually on a farm out in the country near Walburg.
GB: Oh, yes. Yes, right.
EE: So had that been a family farm for a number of generations?
GB: Yes. Yes, my daughter was discussing that with me this morning, and it was my grandfather. The house that I was raised in was brick they had built theirself, but it was over 100 years old, built before the Civil War. It is still there, and it’s been—let’s see, what did I do with that picture? Let’s me see. It’s right in here. It’s made into a historical landmark.
[Tape recorder turned off.]2
GB: Well, I don’t know what I did with it. I had another picture, but I don’t know what I did with it.
EE: That’s beautiful.
GB: We had a marker out in the yard, and originally it was a wing out here. If you go around the house, you can see where it got jutted out. But it was old enough that the brick—see, they had made the brick themselves. The brick in this wing had deteriorated, and also there’s a wing behind that that goes out the other way behind.
EE: So, now, is this the house you were born in?
GB: Yes.
EE: That’s great. Is that you when you were a girl?
GB: Yes. It was my grandfather or either my great-grandfather, I think my grandfather, and slaves made the brick that’s in that house. It dates back before the Civil War, and it’s still there. I have some other pictures somewhere, and I don’t know where I’ve put them. But it has a marker out in the yard now with the date. It’s been marked as a historical landmark.
EE: What did you do on this farm? Was this a tobacco farm? A livestock farm?
GB: Oh, everything. Everything. My daddy was German, and he just—there was everything on that farm that you could name that was raised on the farm—tobacco, corn, wheat, just everything that you could raise was on there.
EE: Did you have brothers and sisters?
GB: Oh, yes, I’m from a big family. Mother was his second wife. I had five older half-brothers and sisters. My oldest half-sister was the same age as my mother. My father was forty-two, I think it was, and she was seventeen when they married.
EE: So that’s a big family spread there.
GB: Oh, yes. You see, then my mother then had a family. Well, his first wife died of TB. This is before they could do anything about it. My father’s first wife. My daughter’s husband, he’s been writing the history, and he called this morning. He’s investigated a lot about the family, and he was telling me some interesting facts that he’s found, I think on the Internet, that I didn’t even know myself about who my great-grandfather was and a lot of stuff I didn’t even know.
EE: Well, that big a farm for that long a time, you know it affected a lot of families that lived around that.3
GB: Oh, right.
EE: That’s great. It’s great to have that kind of research done, too.
GB: Right.
EE: So your mom worked there on the farm. She raised you all.
GB: Right.
EE: I was looking at your notes. You graduated from high school there in Walburg at the high school.
GB: Yes, right.
EE: Did you have a favorite subject at school?
GB: When I went in nurses’ training at Baptist, you had to have so many sciences. Well, I already had four sciences from Walburg, but I hadn’t had chemistry. I lived with my sister that was in Winston-Salem, and went to Reynolds High School in Winston in order to get chemistry. I took chemistry and geometry and a couple of other subjects that they didn’t have at Walburg. So I ended up having like six or so sciences when I went in, but you really needed it as a background, you see.
EE: So this would have been like ’41, when you graduated from high school?
GB: Yes.
EE: Did you know all along you wanted to be a nurse?
GB: Oh, yes. For some reason, I can’t remember who was ill or anything, but I went as a young girl, I think it was near—I was probably in high school, to visit there. No, I think I was even younger than high school. Anyway, I was young when I went there and saw the hospital and the nurses and all. Yes, I knew all along, even when I went into high school, that that’s what I was going to do.
EE: How was nursing school for you? Was it hard? Was it easy? What was it like?
GB: Well, I had been a good student. I was an A/B student. Now they are having trouble getting nurses, but at that time they had more than they could—they picked out of about 100 students, 42, I believe it was, or maybe it was more than 100.
Now, what was this again?
EE: What was nursing school like for you? Was it difficult?4
GB: Oh, yes, yes. It was good background. In fact, it was the first year the medical students, that they opened up the medical school there at Baptist, and a lot of our classes we had with the medical students. I remember microbiology, anatomy, and several subjects we had with the medical students, because, see, they were just getting organized. It was the first class of the medical—
EE: So they had nursing before they had the medical school there, okay.
GB: Right. The year I was there, was it ’44?
EE: ’41 to ’44 is what I’ve got down.
GB: Okay, that was the first class of the medical students, and they weren’t really well organized. They had a limited amount of students. So we were having some classes—I remember chemistry and microbiology—with the medical students.
EE: That’s interesting. But you all stayed there? Did you have a dormitory for the nurses?
GB: Oh, yes, at that time—now I don’t think all of them live on the campus, but they have the building there by Baptist where we lived in a nursing home and had a housemother. Now it seems like the nurses live scattered out in homes or something. They made what was our nurses’ home into an outpatients’ center connected with the hospital, which I was really thankful, because it was great living there just, you know, on the hospital grounds.
EE: Because I imagine you had a full day of going to classes and then going to work.
GB: Oh, yes, right.
EE: Your first semester there, Pearl Harbor happens. What do you remember about Pearl Harbor Day?
GB: I don’t remember too much. Seemed like I considered getting involved at that time. Would I have?
EE: Did anybody come to the school and start talking about Army Nurse Corps, or did you start seeing cadet nurses? I know they had the cadet nurse program.
GB: Oh, yes, yes. See, that’s when it started. My senior year, they came and started talking to us, and I did become a cadet nurse my senior year.
EE: Now, when you became a cadet nurse, that helped you with paying for tuition, but you had to say you were going to go in?
GB: Right. Yes, they paid you so much, with the understanding that you were going to go in the service, you see, when you got out. Right. I had forgotten about that.5
EE: But you just did that for your last year?
GB: Yes, right, when I was in my senior class.
EE: That just meant that you would be in for the duration, or was there a time commitment that you were obligating yourself to when you went in?
GB: No.
EE: Two years for every one year?
GB: I can’t remember if it was the same time or not. I know, you know, I was overseas in Frankfurt sixteen months. I think that we agreed, when they paid us that year, that we would go in service for at least as long as we had been—we weren’t called Army Nurse Corps, but what were we called? Cadet nurses, I guess. I’m not sure.
EE: So you’d be obligating yourself. For every year that you were a cadet nurse, you had to service a year in the—
GB: Right.
EE: Okay, so about one to one.
GB: Yes.
EE: Well, that was a good program for you then.
GB: That was good. See, they paid us so much. I don’t remember anything about it, but they paid us.
EE: The pay was better.
GB: And then with the agreement that we would go in the service, see.
EE: I guess during your training you kind of got a look at all different kinds of nursing, didn’t you?
GB: Oh, yes, it was required. You had to have at least three months in each service. You went from one service to the other. Oh, yes, we didn’t get like mixed stuff, but like three months on surgery, three months on obstetrics, three months operating room, so that you got a well-balanced training that way.
EE: Do you remember how the war changed what you were doing in your work? Did you all do extra things for the war effort like war bonds and things like that?6
GB: No, when we went in the service, it was strictly nursing. You were head of a ward. Let’s see. When I first went to Welch Convalescent Center, the patients I had were soldiers that was returnees from overseas, and Welch Convalescent Center was to treat returnee soldiers. There at Welch Convalescent Center, I think they said it was like 17,000 returnees from overseas. We only got them in the permanent building, which was called Welch Convalescent Hospital. The whole area was, I think, considered Welch Convalescent Center, but it was all returnees from overseas, and the only reason we got them in the permanent building is if their war wounds broke down and had to get treatment.
EE: Well, let me get you to there, because you finished nurses’ training in ’44, but you don’t immediately go into service, which is interesting, since you were a cadet nurse. Your first job was actually there at Baptist as head of the pediatrics area.
GB: I think it was about eight months until they called me to go into service.
EE: So you were just waiting for them to do your assignment, is what it amount to?
GB: Right. Yes, I worked as a head nurse on Pediatrics.
EE: Good work?
GB: Yes.
EE: It was March of ’45 when they called you up.
GB: We did have excellent training, and they knew it when we went in service, you know. They could put you anywhere. I even relieved in the operating room. When I was on surgery, when I was night nurse for the surgical ward, I was on call for the operating room at the same time. If they had an emergency, they’d come up. I was on call to the emergency room. I mean operating room, emergency room or operating room. See, they realized that we had good training, and they would pull you for anywhere that you was needed.
EE: So when you got the call, you knew that it would be for wherever you were. It wasn’t for a specific kind of work. You went to Rucker. Was that the first time you’d been outside the state when you went to Camp Rucker?
GB: Yes. You mean in the Nurse Corps?
EE: Right, into the basic nurse training.
GB: Right.
EE: Was that your first trip out of the state?7
GB: No, we went someplace for orientation. Where was that? It wasn’t Rucker. It’s crazy, I can’t remember. Well, I know after I was in Rucker for orientation overseas, we were in-
EE: You went to Camp Kilmer.
GB: Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, and I can’t remember where I was before that.
EE: But you took a train out of Winston to go down to Camp Rucker, is that what happened? How did you get down there?
GB: Yes, I think we went and they just paid us transportation. No, I flew. No, I got a ride on an Army plane. Where was that place? It was an air base right out of Kilmer. Anyway, yes, I flew on a service plane. I can’t remember.
EE: What all did you learn when you were at Rucker? That was just two weeks that you were down there, if you remember it.
GB: Oh, it was just orientation classes, more or less Army behavior.
EE: So, basically protocol and things like that?
GB: Well, and the type of nursing. You see, the Army nursing was quite different from civilian nursing.
EE: How was it different? The shifts and what you had to do? How you had to report things? How was it different?
GB: You had medical corpsmen working under your direction. I remember the only time that I did actual personal contact was—was this overseas or was it Welch Convalescence? Anyway, they formed medical officers ward. It was only for officers, and they had me go there and organize it and open it. It was only like, I think like sixteen beds for officers. It was called officer medical—
EE: Is that what happened at Welch or was that at Frankfurt?
GB: Wait. I’m not sure.
EE: You were at Rucker for two weeks, and then you went to Daytona Beach to Welch Convalescence Center, which you already told us was where 17,000 returnees—
GB: Right. A lot of battalion [unclear], about 17,000 returnees. The hospital was a permanent building. It was been like a county hospital in Daytona Beach before they took over. The soldiers, we only got the ones where their injuries or the wounds broke down, like if they had injured their leg and it broke down and started draining or something, only if their wounds broke down. As I said, it was a large—I think they said like 1,700. It was a huge area.8
EE: How many nurses were taking care of these folks? How many people did you have on the staff?
GB: Well, see, we only got them if their injuries broke down. It seemed like it was eighty, you know, there was eighty beds.
EE: Eighty beds on that ward?
GB: On my unit. So that was one floor. So it would have been like three times that much, two or three times the eighty. Of course, I know I was in charge of third floor and it was eighty beds.
EE: You were there until the end of the war, which meant that you had V-E and V-J Day at Welch.
GB: Right.
EE: Tell me about what you remember about those days.
GB: Well, I just remember very happy and we were celebrating and they had parties, you know, in the evenings.
EE: You have a large family. Was anybody else in the service during the war?
GB: No.
EE: So you were the one far away from home. When the war ended, did you think you would be going home soon?
GB: Oh, yes. I was eager to go home, yes.
EE: But as it turned out, rather than go home you were going overseas.
GB: But when I got done, when I got out of the service, I was kind of bored. I was used to something going on, you know. So I found out about that G.I. Bill, and so I took flying lessons. In order to get the special license that was accredited, I had to go to classes for—oh, I don’t know—seems like several months, two or three months, at night. I was working at the same time as assistant director of nurses at Baptist after I got out of service. Because of my experience in administration in service, I became assistant director of nurses at Baptist, and I was in charge of part of planning all the classes for the students.
EE: I want to talk about your experiences overseas, because you leave at the end of ’45 and you go to Kilmer for a couple of weeks of orientation before going overseas and go to Le Havre, France, which was a distribution center.9
GB: Right.
EE: You were telling me, before we started the tape, about a couple of buddies that you met along the way. Tell me that story again.
GB: Oh, yes. Kay Panco [phonetic], she was Pennsylvania Dutch, from Pennsylvania. Panco was her name, Kay Panco. She was a darling girl. She was tall and slender and she looked like Gene Tierney. Everybody had told her she should have been a model instead of a nurse, because she was tall and slender and had a beautiful walk, Kay did. But we became friends just right away and stayed friends. In fact, after she married, she came and visited me several times. She married Marvin Kushner [phonetic] that was head of Pathology when we were overseas, and they live in—what is her last now? From New York, I believe. I don’t know if they still live there.
EE: But she’s in New York State, then. Then you mentioned another woman, Cecilia. Who was she?
GB: I started to say I have pictures and all that, but my son took all my pictures. I don’t know if I have any here or not. I don’t think I have any.
EE: You were telling me that the three of you, Kay—and then what was Cecilia’s last name?
GB: Cecilia? Oh, my, I thought maybe I might have it in this. I can’t remember if I had it in this book or not. That’s strange that I can’t remember now.
EE: You and Kay and Cecilia decided you wanted to stay together while you were on assignment.
GB: Right.
EE: So what did you do to make that happen?
GB: We just went to the administration that was doing the assignments, and we just requested that we be sent to the same hospital.
EE: And you had never met these two before you were on the ship?
GB: No, right. No.
EE: How was your trip over?
GB: Kay and I, I don’t know why. We just—
EE: Just hit if off?10
GB: Well, yes. Some of the nurses I didn’t like. We had been told to watch our actions and what we did, because when we went over some nurses had returned. Let’s see, was this at Daytona Beach? They had said that two or three nurses that were returnees there had not been well behaved—we’ll put it that way, I think—with the soldiers when they were overseas, and they were very concerned about who they sent at that time, because they didn’t want to have any trouble with the nurses. I wouldn’t have had trouble anyway, because I was taught good professional ethics, you know, when I was in training, and also I was raised that way.
EE: You were telling me before we started, too, that you had met a fellow, Eddie, down in—
GB: Yes.
EE: Now, were you all serious at that time or just knew each other?
GB: No, he was my patient. He had a fractured vertebrae. He had been blown out of a two-story house in Germany, and he had a fractured vertebrae. So he was my patient. He was in traction. But the reason that I wouldn’t have actually kept in contact with his, his mother was from Germany, and she had a brother and some family not in Frankfurt, but a town I think I should remember, but anyway it’s about forty miles from Frankfurt. At that time, his mother wanted to get packages of food and clothes to them, her folks, but she couldn’t do it except through a channel. So she would send them to me, and I would get them to her folks. I can’t remember the name of the town, but it was about forty miles from Frankfurt.
EE: You and Cecelia and Kay got transferred to the 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt.
GB: Right.
EE: Tell me what it was like the first time you laid eyes on what the war had done to that place.
GB: Oh, it was really devastating, because it was like 90 percent bombed. There was very few buildings. It was a building called the IG Farbin Building on the outskirts, and they had made it into a—they had a restaurant in there that we could go to any time with good food, you know. I can’t remember the details of that. Let me see, what was it we did there?
EE: This 97th General, it was in a German hospital that was already there to begin with, wasn’t it?
GB: Right.
EE: You all just took it over.11
GB: I remember on the outskirts of Frankfurt, there was a golf course that hadn’t been bombed. Well, Kay and I had taken golf lessons by a professional at Daytona Beach. So you had to ride the trolley through Frankfurt, but they did have the trolley running out to a golf course that hadn’t been bombed, and that was our greatest salvation. We went out there on our day off almost every week to play golf.
EE: Something that looked normal rather than all that mess.
GB: Right. Right. Oh, that was our, Kay and I, greatest salvation, because we’d try to get our days off together. You had to take a German trolley to get out there, but we didn’t have any problem with that.
EE: You didn’t have any problem with the people and how they treated you?
GB: No. In fact, they treated us very nice. Well, we didn’t actually come in contact with them. Our only personal contact was we had maids around the clock for our apartment. We really got spoiled. They polished our shoes, did everything for us, washed out any wash, personal laundry we had to do. But they was glad to get it, because they had nothing.
EE: It was some work for them to make money.
GB: Oh, yes. I mean, it could have bothered you if you let it, but, I mean, you looked on it the fact that this is a war, you know, and this is the way it was.
EE: Did you have any idea—I mean, the war had been going on for some time, but did you have any idea that it would be that bad?
GB: Well, they did warn us that it would be 90 percent bombed and that the people were living in these bombed buildings. It had to be true, because there was people out walking. You would see them. In fact, the adults that had children, we got a candy ration, you know, every week, and when we would go out for a walk, we had certain areas we would walk. Well, mothers with their children would come up and they’d say—how did they say that? “Louis? Candy, Louis? Louis?” They said it an odd way. Anyway, they wanted you to give them candy. So we got a ration. I cared nothing about the candy, and so when we would go for a walk I’d always take it. You couldn’t give everyone candy that you met, but when you’d come to one and there wasn’t a lot of people around, you would give them a candy bar. I gave all my candy away that way to the German children.
EE: The patients that you were treating at your hospital, they were all American G.I.’s?
GB: Yes. We did have British and—yes, what did they call them? They had a special name. Anyway, they were—
EE: So other Allied troops you were taking care of?12
GB: Allied troops, yes, French and English, from Britain.
EE: It says on your discharge that you were actually on the surgical and medical wards while you were there.
GB: Yes, right.
EE: What was your workweek like? Were you working five-day weeks? Seven-day weeks?
What was it?
GB: At certain times we worked twelve-hour shifts. Seems like it was a night duty, only the night duty that we did twelve-hour shifts, and we worked split shifts quite a bit. Like during the busy time, I could work four hours in the morning and then go maybe in the evening four hours. I do remember that, that we really didn’t like it, but they did it to even up the workload, you know, with the patients. Also, when we worked nights, we worked twelve hours. Did I say that?
EE: Yes. You were restricted in where you could travel to and which routes you could use.
GB: Oh, yes. Right.
EE: I guess were they cautioning against fraternization with—
GB: Oh, yes. Yes, you know, they had orientation on that. We had orientation and then we had some orientation again, I think, when we got to Frankfurt, and they told us all about our professional work and not to become involved, you see, with the people and all.
EE: The war had ended. Did they give you any idea about how long you’d be over there doing this assignment?
GB: Yes, we were assigned. Like I was assigned sixteen months. You had to agree, if you were going to go, because, see, it was very expensive to ship you over there. But, yes. How did that work out? Anyway, I knew that when I went I would be there sixteen months. I was trying to think how that worked out that we were assigned that. I can’t remember
.
EE: Did you get to travel much to other areas in Europe while you were over there?
GB: Oh, yes.
EE: Where all did you go?
EE: Been in Italy and Paris, France, in France. Let’s see, I’m trying to remember where I did go. Belgium. Countries north of there, the ones that’s not in the inland. Is it Denmark and Sweden?13
EE: Right.
GB: Yes, right. I can hardly remember.
EE: So you did get to travel a fair amount around then?
GB: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. They were very good about that, because, you know, they wanted us to be happy. I think every three months we got to go, if I remember right.
EE: How were you treated over there by the other professional staff? Did you ever have any trouble, or was it always good treatment?
GB: No, I didn’t have any trouble with the staff.
EE: You were the head nurse on these wards.
GB: Yes.
EE: You were supervisor before you went in, and they put your talents to work throughout that.
GB: Oh, yes
.
EE: Did you have a chief nurse that you reported to?
GB: The only problem I had and, I mean, I controlled it and it didn’t get out of hand, but I was actually, I guess, about the youngest nurse, and so I had quite a lot of older nurses that had to work under me. There was a little resentment there, because they were older than me, but I guess it was because of my training and my experience.
EE: Were most of the nurses about your age or were most of them older?
GB: No, I was one of the younger nurses, because, see, I went right in from nurses’ training. Yes, a lot of them are older, older than me.
EE: Do you have any funny stories about anything that happened to you on the job?
GB: Probably if I could remember them. I’d probably have to think about that.
EE: You told me about Cecilia and Kay, two folks that meant a lot to you that you met over there.
GB: Well, I remember I had officers’ medical work, and this guy was a lieutenant about my age. The other soldier said that he was just dying to ask me out, but he was afraid of me. [Laughter] They said he was afraid of me. I thought that was the one funny thing, 14
because, I mean, I was very professional, you know. You had to be. I mean, here you was a young nurse working with all these G.I.’s. I mean, you had to stay right on the line professionally, you know. I was taught that at nurses’ training anyway, professionalism. I already had that ingrained in me already. Well, you had to be. When you work with patients, I mean, there’s no crossing the line. You are a professional.
EE: You cannot be overly friendly and you cannot be too familiar.
GB: Right. Right. But that’s why I say I was so professional and strict. I mean, I was telling them what to do. They were patients and like I’d say, “Clean up this floor,” you see, and they said he was crazy about me but he’s afraid of you. Oh, I really got a thing out of that.
EE: Keeping a little fear in people wasn’t a bad idea.
GB: I just died laughing, but it was because I had to be professional, and I was professional, see. I mean, you had to. You just didn’t cross the line from being professional. You couldn’t, you know, because after all here was like eighty G.I.’s, you know.
EE: On the social scene, did you hang out mostly with Kay and Cecilia?
[Telephone rings.]
GB: Will you excuse me?
EE: Yes, we’ll stop for a second.
[Tape recorder turned off.]
EE: Did you hang out mostly with the other nurse friends, or what was social life like that over there?
GB: Oh, yes. We had an officers’ and an enlisted man’s club, and we also had all kind of recreation. Like we had bowling alleys, and I don’t know if we had a pool every place or not, but I do remember having a pool someplace or other for swimming. We always had some type of recreation wherever I was.
EE: Do you have any songs or movies that you remember from back at that time that takes you back to when you were overseas?
GB: Sure. I’m sure we had some songs, if I could remember what they were, but I don’t. Oh, I remember. Let’s see, where was it? Was it Frankfurt? We had one night a week, I 15
think it was on Friday or Saturday night, we would have entertainment. People would come in for entertainment, and we had dances. I can’t remember if it was everywhere we went or not, but—
EE: Did you see any famous people while you were over there?
GB: Well, let’s see, I’m trying to think of the general I had for a patient. I just recalled not too long ago. Now, why can’t I remember which one it was? Anyway, I had one of the generals for a patient who was nice.
EE: I guess [General Dwight D.] Eisenhower was stationed there for a while. Wasn’t that where Supreme Allied Headquarters was?
GB: I’m trying to think where I met him. I think it was in the States or if it was over there. This was a different general, but he was very famous.
EE: Was it [General George C.] Marshall?
GB: No.
EE: When you think back to those times and seeing what you saw, what the war did to people over there, who are your heroes from that time?
GB: Well, I think Eisenhower was always one of my heroes. I mean, he was so good and he was a good leader. I mean, he was respected by all the men, and he was fair. He was just all over a good person, where a lot of the officers you couldn’t say that about them. They really felt like they were better than anybody else, you know.
EE: The power went to their heads more.
GB: Yes, right.
EE: Eisenhower it didn’t?
GB: Right, he was always a down-to-earth, fair person.
EE: You left that area.
GB: I was trying to remember whether there was another general I had when I was there. I can’t remember now who it was.
EE: You were probably only in a month or so when Roosevelt passed away. What did you think of President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt?
GB: Wasn’t he the president when I went in the service?
EE: Yes.16
EE: Or [Harry S.] Truman, for that matter, who was in charge when you were over there. Did you all talk about politics much, given that the war was going on?
GB: Not that much, no. We really weren’t involved in the politics.
EE: You left in June of ’47 from Germany.
GB: Right.
EE: Were discharged back through Kilmer. What did you do after the war?
GB: Well, I was very bored, as I said. I became assistant director of nurses at Baptist when I got out of the service.
EE: This was right after. Did Baptist tell you that they would hold a job for you when you went in?
GB: No, they just when I came home, as soon as I walked into the nursing office before I went, and I was head nurse on Pediatrics.
EE: You were head nurse on Pediatrics before you went in.
GB: Yes.
EE: Did you go back and do that for a while?
GB: No, I guess it’s when I came out of the service. I had had good experience in administrative work, so I went to work as assistant director of nurses and taught student nurses and trained nurses’ aides classes also.
EE: Now, did you keep up your correspondence with Eddie in Florida?
GB: Oh, yes. Well, the way Eddie and I got back together was, as I told you, his mother was German. I wasn’t writing to him all the time.
EE: You were writing to his mom.
GB: Yes, we kept in touch, his mother, because I was getting food and packages to her people that lived in Germany, but that’s how he knew when I came home, was by his mother. I wasn’t writing him. But then he started writing me and wanted us to get together. They lived in Jacksonville, Florida, and he would come up for a weekend. I went to Florida a couple of times to visit his family, to meet his family. They had a real nice lovely home on the river in Jacksonville.17
[Begin Tape 1, Side B]
EE: You were working as assistant director of nursing. As you all were dating, did you then get married and stay up in Winston, or did you move someplace else?
GB: Yes, he came to Winston. He went to work as assistant manager of one of the chain furniture stores. That was in Winston-Salem. I forgot the name of it.
EE: So your professional life afterwards largely was there in Winston-Salem?
GB: Yes, right.
EE: How long were you working for Baptist altogether? How many years?
GB: Let’s see. Eddie’s mother kept [unclear] us that she wanted us to move to Florida. I gave up that job, which I would have become the director of nurses, because the director of nurses was a elderly lady, and a year or two after I left, she retired. In fact, she came to Florida to visit me. She was a lovely woman I worked with. Miss Hanseling [phonetic] was her name. She was getting older. I mean, everybody wondered, you know, how she went on without retiring. But, anyway, she did retire a year or two after I left, and she came to Florida to visit me several times. Hanseling was her name. Her name was Hanseling. Now what did I—I got off track there.
EE: You left that job after, what, three or four years? How long had you worked at Baptist as assistant director of nurses before you moved?
GB: I don’t know, it was two or three years, because I know I was planning all the student nurses rotation.
EE: So this would have been about 1950 when you went down there? Early fifties?
GB: I guess, yes.
EE: So you moved down to Jacksonville?
GB: You know, it’s terrible; I can’t remember the year.
EE: But you moved down to Jacksonville.
GB: Yes, right.
EE: And working at the hospital down there.
GB: No, I didn’t do the hospital. Well, I did just as a favor, because they didn’t have anyone to work as night supervisor, but I started doing private duty, because, see, I started my 18
own family. So I wanted work that if I wanted to take off I can. When you do private duty, if you come off the case, you can take time off.
EE: How many children did you have?
GB: Two.
EE: Both boys?
GB: No, my oldest is a daughter, Sharon, and she lives in Ellicott City, Maryland, and my son went in the service. He was Air Force, went in the Air Force, became a officer. He is now a engineer for NASA at the present time. They put him in scientific research.
EE: That’s great.
GB: Now, I had helped him. He had, I don’t know, two or three years of college already. At first he had thought he wanted to be a doctor, but they gave him this screening test. In college they would give them these tests to see what they was more adapted to, and they said that he would be better to go into research, that he had an inquiring mind. Let’s see, I was trying to remember.
EE: So he’s currently working for NASA?
GB: Yes, right.
EE: So was in the service during Vietnam, or when was he in the service?
GB: No, I was trying to think how that worked out. He made an agreement. In fact, I had him to go to the government and to investigate, because at the time my first husband and I was divorced, and I was helping him to get through college. So I told him to go to the government and see if he could work out an agreement with them, and after that they created this program that he was one of the first ones in. They would pay your education, which they’ll do now, if you agree to go in the service that long.
EE: Not too different than your cadet nursing.
GB: Right, yes, but, see, they hadn’t even started that at that time, but I told him. I said, “Go to the government, to whoever enlists, you know, the people, and ask them if they would give you your education if you agree to stay in for that long to pay that.” And they did. They was glad to do it. After that is when they developed that program for the G.I.s that if they paid for education—
EE: Than you go back with a year’s service for every year.
GB: Right.19
EE: Did your daughter ever express an interest in joining the service?
GB: No, none whatsoever.
EE: Did you ever think about making it a career?
GB: Oh, yes, they wanted me to stay in. They was going to make me a major right away, and they would give me whatever post I wanted anywhere. I wanted out. I just didn’t want to stay in the service. I would have had a great opportunity, I mean, as far as assignment and rank and everything if I’d have stayed in, but I didn’t want to stay in.
EE: You told me that you switched to private duty nursing while your children were young.
GB: Yes.
EE: Did you ever get back into nursing full time?
GB: Well, I’m trying to remember, and I can’t. I remember being a head nurse. Let’s see, no, that’s not when I was assistant director of nurses, was it? No.
EE: You were doing some private duty work while your children were little. Did you ever go back to do more private duty or did you do—
GB: No, I kept on doing that, because it worked out with the family. If I came off a case and I wanted to take like a week or so off, I could do that. I’m just trying to think if I went back to—I’m getting tired.
EE: Well, we’re about to the end of things.
GB: Okay.
EE: Women today, probably at this hour there’s probably a woman flying a combat mission over in Afghanistan.
GB: Oh, yes.
EE: They’re allowed to do so much more in the service than they were.
GB: Oh, yes.
EE: What do you think about women in the military?
GB: On TV the other day they were showing this girl that had become a—seems like it was surely not a general, but really high up. There was debating, something about her dress code, because she was assigned in Saudi Arabia.20
EE: That’s right. She had to have a veil or something like that.
GB: Oh, yes. Well, see, when I was in Saudi Arabia, I didn’t have to wear the veil, but we had to wear a long dress. We either had to wear pants or either a long dress. Well, I hated pants, because I had big hips, and I sewed, so I made these caftans full length. You could buy material over there, so I made three or four just real pretty. Some of them was dressy, some for every day. Actually, I got so used to them, they was very comfortable. I almost hated to give them up when I came back to the States.
EE: This is when you were over there with your second husband?
GB: Yes, right.
EE: If a woman came to you today and said, “I’m thinking about joining the service,” what would you tell her?
GB: Well, I think I would encourage her, you know, but to focus it on what she liked and to get her education, you know, in whatever service she’d like, which they can do, you know. They will send anyone to school in whatever service they want. Yes, I would think I would encourage them to, as long as they knew what kind of work they wanted to do.
EE: What was the best thing you think that you got out of your time in the service? How did it best change you?
GB: It was broadening because of being in other countries and working with different types of people. It was educational and broadening for you, you know, as far as getting to know people and working with people and everything.
EE: You went from Walburg and Winston, which aren’t but about ten, fifteen miles apart.
GB: Right.
EE: And you traveled all around.
GB: Right.
EE: I guess that time in Europe, seeing all those places, kind of put the travel bug in you for later on.
GB: Well, and then, see, when I married Ralph, we lived over there two and a half years, and we traveled all over everywhere.
EE: This is when you lived in Saudi?
GB: Yes. So, yes, the only place I haven’t been is the Orient. I’ve never been to Japan, but I have been in a lot of countries.21
EE: Well, I appreciate you sitting down with us today to tell about some of these good things.
GB: Yes, I’m getting tired.
EE: Actually, it’s amazing to me sometimes the stuff that folks remember from fifty years ago. I can’t remember five weeks ago. So on behalf of the school, thank you for doing this, and thank you, transcriber, wherever you are today.
[End of Interview]