MF 147 Nursing Collection

Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History: MF 147 Nursing Collection

Number of accessions: 22
Dates when interviews were conducted: 2005 & 2007
Time period covered: 20th century
Principal interviewers: various
Finding aides: some transcripts and some indexes
Access restrictions: none
Description: A series of interviews recorded by students in the nursing program at UMaine for classes taught by Elizabeth Clark on the history of nursing.

3325 Elizabeth Welch, interviewed by Cynthia Boelins, February 17 and March 3, 2005. Accession includes photo, a drawing attached to the back of the essay, and description of interview and painting. Welch talks about her experiences as a student nurse; use of boric acid in wet dressings; change from black to white stockings in the uniform; her early jobs in the industry; private duty; assisting a physician who did tonsillectomies in homes; pay and hours; being a Nurse on Horseback in VA; meeting JFK; construction of Otis Airfield; death of mother and sister; industry of nursing; treating acid burns; 1947 wildfires in Maine; father; doctor/nurse relationship; assisting in thyroid surgeries; in-depth on being a student nurse; early use of penicillin; her time in industrial nursing; nursing during wartime; her experiences in private duty; Mount Washington House Hotel; advice for nurses. Text: 5 pp. index; 3 pp. article; 38 pp. transcript. Recording: CD 0947 55 minutes (CD MIA).

3326 Marty Fisher RN, interviewed by Nicole Yeo, February 19, 2005. Summary of oral history of Marty Fisher RN and index. Text: 18 pp. total: 13 pp. transcript, 1 pp. summary, 4 pp. index. Recording: CD 0948 42 minutes.

3327 Agnes E. Flaherty, interviewed by Melissa Piselli, February 22 and April 26, 2005, South Portland, Maine. Interview 1: 35 minutes, interview 2: 21 minutes, summary for interview 2, indexing for interviews 1&2. Flaherty, born in Portland, Maine, talks about her parents, Anna and Mark Flaherty; her family’s involvement in nursing; enlisting in the military during WWII as a nurse in the Army Air Core; working out of Grenier Field in Manchester, New Hampshire; her experiences and favorite memories as a flight nurse; early medications; experiences with the Women’s Army Core (WAC); patriotism during WWII; serving in the Pacific as a flight nurse; working out of Hicomb Field in Oahu, Hawaii; relationship between nurses and doctors then and now; G.I.’s teasing the nurses; transporting psychiatric patients; landings at Terowa and Canto; experiences with patients suffering from head trauma; Elaine McCarty, a nurse during the Vietnam War; working at Maine Medical Center and Mercy Hospital; serving as president of the Maine State Nurses Assoc.; how nursing has changed since. Also included: WWII Flight Nurses Association Pamphlet; reservation request form for World War II Flight Nurses Association; mailed article “No Time for Fear”; pamphlet. Text: 33 pp. transcript, 1 pp. photocopy of article, 3 pp. index, summary for interview #2. Recording: CD 0949 1 hour 35 minutes.

3328 Beth Parks, interviewed by Sarah Kneeland, February 16 and 23, 2005, Corea, Maine. Parks talks her experiences in the Vietnam War and how she dealt with it afterwards: reasons for becoming a nurse; training at D.C. General Hospital; volunteering as an officer in the Army Nurse Corps (ANC); Viet Cong tunnels underlying the base camp at Cu Chi; attacks against their camp; operating rooms in the MASH and evacuation hospitals; it was the peak of her career; army vs. civilian nursing; attending the reunion; Annie Cunningham, Glenna Goodacre and Diane Carlson Evans; her film “A Chunk of My Soul”; coping with memories; leaving nursing; the Iraq War and public opinion; James Davis Nelson’s oil painting of the 12th EVAC Hospital operating room. Also included: summary and index of interviews 1 and 2; articles: “A Chunk of My Soul” and “A Vietnam Nurse’s Thanksgiving,” 12th Evac, Cu Chi, RVN; 5 photos. Text: 29 pp. transcript, index, summary and index, two articles. Recording: CD 0950 1 hour.

3329 Edith Beauchamps, interviewed by Ryan Millett, February 17 and March 29, 2005, Holden, Maine. Beauchamps talks about working at Massachusetts General Hospital while attending Emmanuel College in Boston; nursing during the Polio epidemic; iron lungs; treating Polio sufferers; how nursing has changes over the years; why she enjoys being a nurse; satisfaction derived from her career; Bill Miller and his drugstore; challenges facing future nurses; nursing and technology; colleague Patricia Eye, owner of New Hope Hospice in Eddington, Maine; Phyllis Goss, teacher of the first cardiac care course in Maine; Gerry Monstrom, a nurse in the Vietnam War; reasons for choosing nursing as a career; getting her 3rd master’s degree in psychiatric nursing (clinical specialist); Stewart Flurlage, a doctor in Boston; working as a hospice nurse and handling the death process. Text: 28 pp. transcript, summary, index. Recording: CD 0951 1 hour.

3330 Tracy Sutherland, interviewed by Delight Joseyn, April 19, 2005, Bangor, Maine. Index of interview and essay. Sutherland talks about her reasons for choosing nursing as a career; how people viewed nurses in the early 1990s; attending Easter Maine Technical College (now Easter Maine Community College); getting hired by Gale Gillette and working in rehabilitation; colleagues Deb Bryer and Cathy Ringo; choosing to work in the cardiac unit; historical events, including 9/11, that have impacted nursing; how nursing has changed over the years; technology used in the cardiac unit; challenges she faced as a nurse; working as a clinical educator; staffing ratios; principles of caring as a nurse; interaction with patients; the nursing shortage of the 1990s; assessing patients. Text: 15 pp. transcript, 4 pp. index, 2 pp. summary, biographical profile. Recording: CD 0952 34 minutes.

3331 Janice L. Byard, interviewed by Delight Joslyn, April 13, 2005, Bradley, Maine. Byard, b. 1941, talks about her reasons for becoming a nurse; her education at Eastern Maine General Hospital; tea parties at the hospital for students; working a s a charge nurse; moving to Wilmington, Delaware; moving to Newfoundland; volunteering in a pediatric clinic in Canada; moving to Charleston, South Carolina and working as nurse during integration; working with black nurses; moving back to Maine and working as a float nurse; working in the ICU and taking the ICU course; historical events that impacted nursing; the Polio epidemic and the iron lung; technology changes in nursing; soap notes; working as a burn nurse and traveling to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, the Shiner’s Hospital, and joining the Pine Tree Burn Foundation; the role of media in the practice of nursing; principles of caring as a nurse; instructors Susan McGrath and Irene Shannon; traveling to Bend, Oregon with the Girl Scouts of Maine; nursing in the future. Text: 23 pp. transcript, 4 pp. index, 2 pp. summary, biographical profile. Recording: CD 0953 51 minutes.

3332 James P. Allen, interviewed by Delight Joslyn, April 20, 2005, at Eastern Maine Medical Center, Bangor, Maine. Allen talks about why he became a nurse; serving as a core man in the Navy; working as a psych tech in Augusta Mental Health Inst.; education at Central Maine General Hospital; training in the Navy; stationed at a hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, during his core years; serving in the Vietnam War as a core man; working at a CD (constructed battalion) in Mississippi; working as and ICU and CCU nurse; participating in an ACLS (advances cardiac life support) course; events that have impacted nursing; cardiac surgery’s arrival in Maine; working at Eastern Maine Medical Center taking care of neurological patients; transporting patients; technological changes over the years; challenges he has faced; principles of caring; obstacles to caring for a patient; nursing in the present vs. the past; current nursing shortage; nursing in the future. Text: 21 pp. transcript, 4 pp. index, summary, biographical profile.

3333 Fran Loring, interviewed by Amanda Whitney, March 04, 2005, Bangor, Maine. Loring talks about her mother, Elchie Rackless Overnan; her father’s death in WWII; attending Joseph Butler School in South Thomaston, Maine, Rockland High School in Rockland, Maine, and UMaine; getting her associate’s degree at UMaine at Augusta and her BA at UMaine; working as a psych tech at the Bangor State Hospital; working as a nurse’s aide at Westgate Manor in Bangor; being a non-traditional student; doing clinicals in Camden, Rockland, Waterville, and Togas; working at Eastern Maine Medical Center; participating in the traveling nurses program and working in San Jose, California and Florida; advice for those who want to do traveling nursing; working in administration; colleague Lorraine Margerson; her regrets about not becoming a nurse sooner; advice for new nurses. Text: 19 pp. transcript, biographical profile, summary. Recording: CD 2365.

3334 Arna McNamee, interviewed by Daniel J. Patterson, February 19, 2005, Fort Fairfield, Maine. McNamee talks about why she became a nurse; her education at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut; working in Aroostook County, Maine; her role in implementing the 911 system in the county; working at Aroostook Medical Center; working at Cary Medical Center as a supervisor; transporting infants to Portland and Bangor; choosing to become a school nurse; working at a hospital in a rural area; foreign doctors who sneak into the U. S. by working first in Canada; doctor-nurse relationships; advice for young nurses; changes in nursing over the years; memorable patients; nursing director Kate Brown; nursing-patient ratio changes; technology and computers in nursing; her family’s view on nursing; her views on male nurses; the current shortage of nurses. Text: 21 pp. transcript, 2 pp. index, summary. Recording: CD 0955 68 minutes.

3335 Susan P. McGrath, interviewed by Kyla Stearns, February 14 and April 4, 2005, Bangor, Maine. McGrath talks about why she became a nurse; her education at the New England Hospital in Boston, MA; the impact of WWII on nursing education; moving to Maine after her husband died; taking Guidance and Counseling courses at UMaine; working in administration; getting her degree at Boston College; working at Eastern Maine Medical Center in the faculty program; getting her MA; working as the Director of Education at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s; being a nurse educator; setting up a hospital in Saudi Arabia; Project Hope; her work in China; advice for upcoming nurses; nursing in the future; nursing as an art; involvement of lawyers in healthcare; psychiatric patients; preparing medication; her work with the Student Nurses Assn.; the American nurse; mentorship’s place in nursing; stresses related to nursing; continuing education for nurses; her work with the Massachusetts Nurses Assn.; technological advances; being a member of Theta Tau. Text: 49 pp. transcript, index, summary, biographical profile. Recording: CD 0956 97 minutes.

3336 Dorothy Woods Smith, interviewed by Kristina Jones, April 2005, Portland, Maine. Smith talks about the development of therapautic touch; developers Dolores Kreuger and Dora Kuhns; therapeutic touch in the future; the Strive Program; her membership in the Maine State Nurses Assn., the American Nurses Assn., the American Holistic Nurses Assn., and Nurse Healers Professional Assn.; memorable patients; what nurses can learn from patients; reasons for becoming a nurse and her interest in therapeutic touch; taking courses taught be Kreuger; Martha Roger’s theory; Chinese medicines; starting a center at University of Southern Maine; working at the AIDS Project; Janet King’s theory of burnout; treating patients with AIDS; starting a healing center in Portland; Herbert Benson’s work on relaxation responses; New York University Medical Center; Pat Frye’s research; dying patients; advise for current nursing students. Also included: articles: “Toward Developing a Theory of Spirituality” with outline handout, overview, summary of Therapeautic Touch, SRS Newsletter. “Fullfilling a Mission” handout. “Life’s Best Survivors” 1 pp. “The Truth About Healing Hands” 1 pp. “Experiences of Administering and Receiving Therapeutic Touch in Intensive Care” 3 pp. “A Study of Power and Spirituality in Polio Survivors.” Text: 28 pp. transcript, 2 pp. index, 2 pp. summary, biographical profile, articles. Recording: CD 0957 43 minutes.

3337 Preston “Pret” Bjorn, interviewed by Candice Achorn and Jayne Hansen, March 23 and 29, 2005, Bangor, Maine. Essay “Nursing in the Emergency Department.” Text: 42 pp. total: 34 pp. transcript, 3 pp. index, 4 pp. papers, 1 pp. summary. Recording: CD 0958 63 minutes.

3338 Sister Mary Norberta Malinowski, C.S.S.F, FACHE, interviewed by Omekia MacDonald, February 25 and April 22, 2005. Malinowski talks about her birth in Boston, Massachusetts; her parents; the family’s expectation on her education; attending St. Elizabeth Hospital School of Nursing in 1956; difference between the diploma programs and BS of nursing programs; joining the Felician Sisters after graduating for the opportunities; them bringing her to Bangor as the President of St. Joseph Hospital and President Joseph healthcare; becoming a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner at Massachusetts General in 1969; opposition from physicians; working at a home with 150 children who had been removed from their parents; aspects of her career that bring her the most pride; working at Boston Floating children’s hospital at Tuft University and that hospital’s name. Also included: a note; 4 photos. Text: 1 pp. summary, 2 pp. index, 3 pp. biographical profile, 5 pp. curriculum vitae. Recording: CD 0959 38 minutes. Photos: P04035 – P04038.

3575 Dorothy E. Heir, interviewed by Beth Clark, July 2007. Also included: demographic data, which includes Dorothy Hill’s resume. Text: 10 pp. transcript, 3 pp. demographic data. Recordings: CD 1171.

3576 Virginia R. Prescott, interviewed by Beth Clark, April 12, 2007. Text: 1 pp. biographical profile. Recordings: CD 1172 – CD 1173.

3577 Ida F. Briggs, interviewed by Sunny Bartholomew, March 16, 2007. Also included: 5 pp. “The Maine Informer”; photocopied certificates: 29 “Certificate of Appreciation”, “Certificate of Membership”, “Certificate of Appreciation”, “Waterville Osteopathic Hospital Thank You”, “Metropolital University Greetings”, Board Certification for Nursing, “Certificate of ADEF Diabetes Class”, “Certificate of Appreciation for KVCAP”, “Certificate of Appreciation for Volunteer”, “Hartland Historical Society”, “Generosity Award”, “American Academy of Medical Admnistrators”, “National Registry of Medical Secretaries”, “Certificate of Recognition”, “Certificate Bring Beauty to Life”, “Volunteer Certificate”, “Hartland Historical Society Volunteer”, “Charter Member HHS”, “Generosity Award Hartland Library”, “Sanfield Certificate of Appreciation”, “Certificate of Appreciation”, “KVCAP”, “Certificate of Appreciation Sanfield”, “Word Invention”, “Waterville Osteopahtic Hospital”, “RSVP”, “Mainegeneral Medical Center”,“Certificate Completion”, 1 pp. “Lord I’m 80”; “Happy Birthday RSVP Volunteer” photocopy; 5 pp. Ida F. Briggs’ resume; 2 pp. dedication report (”Our bridge is now known as the Ida Briggs deck!”). Text: biographical profile sheet, 2 pp. interview index, 2 pp. summary, photocopied materials, resume, report. Recordings: CD 1174. Photos: P09000, P09001.

3578 Eleanor Hill, interviewed by Beth Clark, September 20, 2007, Bangor, Maine. Text: biographical profile, 1 pp. summary, 1 pp. questionnaire. Recordings: CD 1175.

3579 Eleanor Sargent, interviewed by Chelsey Swazey, March 27, 2007. Also included: 4 pp. Eleanor L. Sargent resume, “Please Help Feed The Children” brochure; letter from Sargent to Swazey; awards & Certificates: ‘Maryann Hartman Awards’,’Nomination of Eleanor G. Sargent for 1998 Maryann Hartman Award’, ‘Sarah Orne Jewett Award Recipient’, ‘Eastern Maine General Hospital Nursing Certification’, ‘Certificate of Appreciation’, ‘Certificate of Appreciation 2002’, ‘Subordinate Grange Community Citizen Award’, ‘Certificate of Appreciation’, ‘Excellence in Nursing Award’, ‘Award 2002 Sarah Orne Jewett Award’, ‘Maine State Board of Nursing License’, ‘Service to God’s People of the Downeast United Methodist Church’, ‘Place My License on Inactive Status’, ‘Education Day’, ‘Certificate of Attendance’, ‘State of IL and Commonwealth of MA Nursing Licenses’; 1 pp. photocopy article and photograph of Eleanor Sargent “Grand Marshal of Machias”; 2 pp. photocopy inside of Christmas card; 2 pp. letter from Waley R to Sargent, article corresponding; “To Your Good Health”; “Nomination for 1998 Annual Nursing Alumni Award”; letter from Ann Shconberger to Sargent; letter from Eleanor Sargent; letter from Sandra K. Prescott to Sargent. Text: 2 pp. biographical summary, resume, 2 pp. paper, 4 pp. interview index, brochure, letter; awards and certificate. Recordings: CD 1176.

3580 Mary E. Huskins, interviewed by Krista Cole, April 12, 2007. 11 pp. article “Legacy of the Lamp.” Text: biographical sheet. Recordings: CD 1177. Photos: image CD: CD 1178.

3581 Dr. Teresa Steele, interviewed by Ginger Cole, February 27, 2007, Bangor, Maine. Text: biographical profile, 3 pp. paper, 3 pp. interview index. Recordings: CD 1179, CD 1180.

3582 Donna L. Ault, interviewed by Krista Cole, February 22, 2007, Husson College, Bangor, Maine. Text: biographical profile, 2 pp. summary, interview index, 1 pp. image CD index, 12 pp. chronological biography. Recordings: CD 1181.