Bringing My History To Duke: Part Four

I am so grateful to those of you who give me feedback about this blog.  One of you raised the question  about why I was spending so much time on my past.  My second husband was a wonderful historian.  He taught me lessons about who we are today.  We must look at the past to truly understand our present.  I indicated to you that each one of us who experienced Duke from the School of Nursing perspective, came with a different past.  We learned our lessons at Duke in a different way, depending on that past.

Just recently, in a casual conversation with one of my classmates, I found out that some of us came to Duke with detailed instructions that our primary objective was to "trap" the best for a life of plenty.  Yes, I was told, parents actually instructed them on how to choose the best of the best.  They must have family, money, and position.  I never got this lecture.  I was at Duke to get the best education in nursing that was available, anywhere in the country at that time, and to learn how to take care of myself.  IF MY PAST had been different, I would certainly be in a different place, not necessarily better, than I am today.


In this bright future you can't forget your past.

Bob Marley

I hope that this answers your questions about my approach to this blog.

Back to my pre-Duke teen experiences.  As one working day passed and another began, I was assigned many different patient care activities.  I worked hard to do things well and to really evoke trust from the nurses that taught me.  Even now, over sixty years later, I have a need to know that HILDA TAYLOR, MISS MATTHEWS, DR.JOE STEVENS, JO, LIVENGOOD, DR. SMITH, and many others remembered me with respect.

DR. JOE STEVENS was my family's' physician.  He was a friend of my grandfather.  I had been working at WESLEY LONG HOSPITAL, for a little over a year and he stopped me in the hall.  He asked me to come to his office.  I was too awe stricken to ask why and after my shift I showed up there.  He sat me down and asked me what I planned to do after high school.  I told him proudly that I was going to be a nurse.  He said, OH NO, you want to be a physician.  That was not at all in my frame of reference.  He informed me that he could assure me that I would be admitted to Duke, to the Medical School and he would stand by the money to do it.  I left his office weak as I could be.  I certainly could not imagine myself, from very ordinary intelligence, a girl, and not among the privileged, becoming a DOCTOR. Later he assured my entrance to DUKE SCHOOL OF NURSING, and kept up with my progress.  It only occurred to me in the 70's what an opportunity I had turned down.  I took this, however, from a saying in his office and have kept it in my heart and as I wrote it down.

"Always be tender with the young, compassionate with the elderly, sympathetic to those who struggle, and tolerant with the weak and wrong. At some point in your life, you will have been all of these."

I do not know who wrote the words, but they have been part of me ever since. This may be incorrect in all the words, but like Abou Ben Adhem, I committed it to memory.

My grandfather was also very much part of the decision to become a nurse.  It was well into my employ at WESLEY LONG that I worked evenings.  Granddaddy was a policeman in HAMILTON LAKES  and would drive into Greensboro at 11 in the evening to pick me up.  He would come into the Emergency Room and wait for me and chat with the other cops that were hanging around there.  On one evening he was hanging out and I had been called to a bloody mess in the Emergency Room and it was just ONE room.  I was deep in blood, vomitus, old alcohol, doctors, other nurses, all making a picture of a life in the balance.  I did not know he had been watching, but as I scooted out to tell him I would be later, all covered in blood, I saw tears in his eyes.  He patted me on the back and said, " I am so proud of you."  I was hooked then and there into Nursing.  I had never felt so good and I have never felt as good as I did that night.

HILDA TAYLOR's Pin.
 I wanted one too.

Of course, HILDA TAYLOR, chimed in.  I discussed the conversation with DR. JOE STEVENS.  She informed me that I certainly did not want to be a physician.  "Medicine is such a limited profession. They learn to be a medical doctor, a surgeon, eye doctor -- on and on-- but a nurse can choose, and later choose another specialty.  You are never limited as a nurse. She was a JOHNS HOPKINS GRADUATE and she truly knew nursing.

So it was a NURSE that I would be.  And a DUKE NURSE too boot.  The GREENSBORO MEDICAL SOCIETY, EDWARD BENJAMIN, and my grandparents made it financially possible. I have always been grateful.