Nursing Friends' Memories

Memories from the Class of '44


Marianna Henderson (Nanner)
Jeannie was always the life of the party. Whenever anyone was depressed, she would come into their room with goodies and say, Let's have an Unbirthday Party. We don't have to have an actual birthday to celebrate. She always cheered us up when we were down. We went on affiliation in Pueblo, CO. to do our Psych. training together wih Ruthie and Skeeter. Jean and I were roommates. We had a weekend off, but if we wanted to leave the training, we had to have our parents' permission. We wrote letters home and asked for permission to go and see my brother who lived about 150 miles away on a ranch. We were gonna ride a bus there. Jeannie waited and waited for her parents to write back, and at the last second, her letter came. Well, my brother had some sort of emergency and canceled on us. We sure didn't want to waste our weekend off though, so Jean thought of a plan. She called up a girl that she knew from high school who was doing her nurses' training in Denver, and made arrangements to go and see her. We went to get on the bus, and saw the director of nursing from our affiliation there. We didn't have permission to go to Denver, so we got on that bus as quickly as we could and sat in the very back as quiet as two little mice. She sat in the front and never noticed us! When we got to Denver, we went to the Brown Hotel which in those days was the nicest place in town. We didn't have money to get a room there, but we rented a locker and checked our bags there so we didn't have to tote them around with us. We got to the Presbyterian hospital where Jeannie's friend was, and had to crawl in the window, because they weren't allowed to have guests. We spent a fun night with those girls there and then crawled back out the window then next morning. We got our bags from the hotel and rode the bus back to Pueblo. When we got there, we told the girls that we had checked into the Brown Hotel. It was mostly true! We did another affiliation in Kansas City. That was our pediatric. We spent 4 months there. Quite often, we would climb up the fire escape and sunbathe on top of the nurses home in our bras and underpants. There was an airport close to there and planes would fly over pretty regularly. One of the girls dated one of those pilots...I cant remember who, but she found out that they had a pretty good view of us girls as they flew over! Once, I remember I was working nights and Jeannie was working days. It was a Sunday, around noon and I had probably been asleep for about 3 hours when Jean came in my room and woke me up. She said, "Nanner, you've got to get up! They're having your favorite at dinner...strawberries and fried chicken!" I didn't want to get up, but she dressed me and walked me over to the dining room and sat me down in there. I fell asleep at the table while Jeannie was getting our food, and when she got back, she woke me up and I said, "What is going on?" Jean just said, "Well I couldn't let you sleep when I knew they were having your favorite food!" After graduation, Jean was in South Dakota and called me up (I was in Dodge City then) and wanted to celebrate. Well, I took a bus up to Sturgeuos and I remember thinking, I had never seen so much snow or been so cold in all my life! I got off the bus at Rapid City to change busses, and it just happened that Jeannie was there...just by chance, she was in Rapid City for some reason. We got a ride with someone to her parents' house and after we were there a few days, we wanted to go see Elaine up in Lemon, SD. I had met Elaine in Kansas a few years back. The only way to get there was to ride in the back of the mail truck! We bounced and froze all the way there...about a 5 hour ride, I think. We had fun visiting Elaine. When we were in Kansas City and had spare time, we'd hop on a bus and ride over Grand Central Station which was a huge, beautiful train station. We liked to sit there on the bench and just watch the people go by. Once, we went shopping and tried on very expensive fur coats. We pretended to be rich, like we might buy them, but really we just wanted to see how wed look in them...just for fun. Once, Jeannie and I traded boyfriends. What happened was: I was seeing this boy, Johnny and we started to get pretty serious. We'd have dances there at the nurses home with the men from the cadet program at Emporia State. Well, Mother Douglas, the house mother told me that I'd gotten too serious with Johnny and that I'd better quit seeing so much of him. You see, we weren't allowed to get married while we were in training, so she kept a good eye out to see we didn't get too serious. I asked Jeannie if she'd take Johnnie to the next dance cause I just didn't want to dump him. She took him and they had a great time. The two of them dated for awhile after that too. I didnt mind. They had fun and I stayed out of trouble. We would also go to relax over at a place called "The Lop." We'd say we were going to go "Flop at the Lop." Everyone picked up smoking during training. You know, no one ever told us that it might be bad for our health. We just smoked because it was a way to relax. If you were stressed out, you'd just go and have a cigarette. That's just the way it was. I think most of us quit later on though. We were all just like sisters. There were a lot of ups and downs. That made us close. We shared life together. No matter what, Jeannie was always happy. She was also really serious about her religion. Years later, after they moved down to Arizona, my husband and I would come and visit she and Harold. We always had a great time. I remember hearing all about your aunts and uncle...and about you. You grandma was so proud of all of you.

Juanita Kidd (Skeeter)
Jeannie was a dear friend of mine and boy, did she love her Black Hills. We vistited Mesa in 1991 with Nanner and her husband. We had such a great time. She and I went to California when she was in the Army. Jeannie called me in the middle of the night from South Dakota...see, we had been planning to go to California, and she had just gotten it all figured out. She wanted me to meet her in Cheyenne, Wyoming the next day. I was in Emporia. I had to pack up quickly and make arrangements to leave, but I did it. We each took a train to Cheyenne. Our trains pulled up to the station right at the same time and we hung our heads out of our windows and waved to eachother. Jeannie sang to me, "Meet me in St. Louis,Louis" as the trains pulled to a stop. We went to get on our train to CA and got on the wrong one. Luckily, a man told us which train was the right one before it left! So,we went to Los Angeles. We moved in with some girls who worked at Cedars of Lebanon hospital. Jean and I worked at Good Samaritan. That was late 1944 and early '45. Honey, those were hard times. We were pinching pennies. Once, I remember we were gonna get on the bus to go and pick up our pay check, but we didn't have enough money for bus fare. Jeannie said to me, Dear, you're no good at pretending. You'll give us away. You just get on and sit down and I'll throw our pennies in the box and make a lot of noise. So, we did it and went on our way. We had a room at the resident hall and a place to eat. We payed 75 cents for our dinners and a quarter for breakfast. The cook was from Texas and for not very much money, we got some good southern cooking...the first either of us had ever had! Jeannie had some Rogers cousins in San Pedro and we were gonna go spend New Years with them. One of the cousins came to pick us up in his car. On the way, we saw Ray (my boyfriend at the time now husband) walking and we picked him up and he came too. The Rogers had tickets to the Rose Bowl game the next day. I was so sick and I couldn't go. Ray stayed with me and to his dying day claims that he must've been crazy in love to have missed that football game! Before that, in Emporia, Jeannie and I had great times together. I remember sunbathing on the roof in Kansas City with those girls in our underwear too. Sometimes when we'd have a little time off (in Emporia) we'd walk go to the movies. There were 3 theatres; The Granada, the Lyric, and the Strand. The Lyric played double features for 15 cents. We'd say we were going "Downtown to the Crown". We only ever had time to stay for one show though, so we'd talk the ticket taker into letting us only pay a nickel cuz we'd only be there for one show. One time, I remember Jeannie decided that the thermometers in the hospital needed cleaning. We kept them in a blue solution and she thought it wasn't sanitary enough, I guess, so she gathered all the thermometers and Honey, she boiled them...every one they had. Boy if Mrs. Stout didn't go sideways on that one! Jeannie said, "I was just cleaning them!" We used to tease her and say, "Jean, what do we do to thermometers?" and she'd say, "Nothing." When we did our psych. affiliation in Pueblo, we had a weekend off once and wanted to go to see my brother. He lived in Colorado Springs, so we got permission and spent the day at Garden on the Gods there with him and his friends. Another time, we went to Denver and spent the whole night trying to get a drink. We were too young though and my brother who was with us said, "Juanita you guys get out of here so someone will serve me a drink!" Well, there was a huge snow storm that night when we were trying to get home, and no busses were running. There was a man there at the station who said he'd give us a ride to Pueblo. My brother didn't like the idea of us riding with some strange man, so he went along with us. It was a good thing he did, cuz that man was drunk and he slid all over those roads. We made it though and my brother got a ride back somehow. Boys took care of their sisters in those days. Sometimes we couldn't get letters to our parents in time to get permission to go away for the weekend, so we had to forge them. Honey, we had good penmanship! I think all of us girls were put in the same place at the same time for a reason. We didn't have any falling outs. We just enjoyed eachother. We were the only class that kept in touch with eachother, as far as I know. I named my daughter Jean after your grandma. When Jeannie passed away, I donated money to the Emporia State Teachers College and Nursing School. We all do that when another one of us passes away. Jeannie was a dear dear friend of mine. We had our bumps, but we had a lot of fun too!



Dorothy Geesewines (Geesy)
During the third year of training, Jean and Niecie went to Seattle to the Navy Cadet Corps. She came back to Emporia to graduate and then we moved out to California. Jeannie lived with Skeeter and worked at Good Samaritan and I worked at Cedars of Lebanon. We went into the Army together. I got stationed at Palm Springs and your grandma went to some other places, I can't remember. Jean wrote after a year or so to see if I wanted to come back to Emporia to finish our bachelors degrees. I did it. We were there for 2 years, and then Jean got married before she finished. I always had a lot of respect for her, going back to school in the 1960s those summers and finishing her degree. We LOVED to sunbathe. Every chance we got, we were out there getting a tan. We were SO dark. Its a wonder we didn't get melanoma! We'd take buckets of water with us and periodically dowse ourselves so we'd get even browner! When the war broke out, I was working in the diet kitchen and they gave us mundane little jobs to do, like setting up the trays at the hospital. I'd work all night in that kitchen and eat pint after pint of ice cream I'm pretty sure Jeannie did the same thing! We took classes together. I got a C- in inorganic chemistry...organic was easier. We had the funniest chemistry teacher. He was a real direlect guy he spewed saliva when he talked. We sit in there and just about die laughing! When we went back to finish our degrees, I remember going home with Jean for a break once. We rode the bus to Sturgeous and spend Christmas vacation with her family. We had a wonderful time. I was Lutheran, growing up and Jeannie encouraged me to become a Christian. Shortly after we went our separate ways, I went and got baptized. I attribute that to her. I loved her. I cried when I heard she had gone to Heaven. Your grandma was very vivacious...witty and full of fun. The boys liked her.She was very out-going. She always had little clever thing to say. In 1987, I went to Weaverville to stay with Jean and Harold in their A frame home. She was such a wonderful hostess. We went to the pottery shop, there in town while I was there and I bought a honey pot that I still have. I also bought a soup terrain there for Jeannie, as a thank you gift. The two of us drove over to Eureka one night and got a hotel, just for fun. It was raining, so we got our food and just stayed up in the hotel room. You know, I think we stayed up all night talking. It was so wonderful. I miss her.

Inez Barton
Your grandma was a wonderful lady. We were not roommates in nurses training, but we worked many nights together. We made lots and lots of mistakes, but we could always laugh about them. She and I went into the Naval Hospital Cadet Nurses Program together in Seattle. When we got the chance to go, at the end of our 3rd year, we jumped at it because we had accumulated many demerits while we were in Emporia. If we got another demerit or 2, we wouldn't have been able to graduate, so we were happy to have the chance to go. We got demerits for lots of reasons...for being noisy, or for breathing wrong, you know. When it was time for us to go to Seattle, the house mother wasn't there, so we found the demerit rolls and decided to sneak them away with us. We waited till we got to Seattle and deposited them in the trash. We wiped the slate clean for ourselves, and for our classmates! I saw Jean in the 1960s for a reunion in Emporia. We had a great time together.

Berniece Gray (Niecie)
Jean was a very good friend to me. She was very religious...she went to Bob Jones University before I knew her. I used to call her, "Little Pious" because she was so religious. We all attended church in Emporia to get credits so we could get days off at Christmas. Jean named her daughter after my sister, Trula. I dont know where my mother got the name, but we liked it. We'd get 5 cents a piece together and walk a mile to the corner of 12th and Commercial to buy an ice cream cone whenever we could. It was across from the Teacher's College. I can't remember the name of the place. Then we'd walk back, while we ate the ice cream. It wasn't easy to get 5 cents a piece together either! Jean was just a good ol' gal.

Frances Zimmerman (Franny)
There were 14 of us, you know. I never roomed with Jean. We had some good times together though. After I graduated, I married Kenneth and we moved to California. Jeannie and Skeeter came to stay with us while we lived there. We had a nice time. They spent the night with us. Your grandma was a gracious hostess when we visited them in Weaverville. Harold took us on a plane ride. We saw them another time after they moved down to Arizona. I went water excercising with Jean.

Eudora Macmillan
When we were going to school, we worked 3 hour shifts and went to class for 5 hours a day. By the time we were seniors, we had to work 12 hours at night, and we pretty much ran the hospital. We called it "slave labor." Lucille was my roommate. We called her Perky. She's passed away now. We were restricted from going out and if anyone saw us in our uniforms, we'd get in trouble. So what we'd do is, we'd take off our long white stockings and put different shoes on, and put a big coat over our uniform and walk over to the coffee shop to smoke and relax. Boys were usually there too. I remember sunbathing a lot. I think we all did it. We did all sorts of things like that to try and have a good time. We'd climb out on the fire escape at 2:00 in the morning to smoke sometimes. Also, when we affiliated in Pueblo, we needed our parents permission if we wanted to go away for the weekend. We usually wrote those notes ourselves! Mrs. Holmes was the head nurse on the 2nd Floor and she hated my guts! We sure had fun though. Your grandma was always a happy and loving person. She had a great outlook on life and just was a happy-go-lucky person. She also had great faith. We went to see her in Weaverville when we were on vacation in the 70s. I remember that your grandma was driving over those mountain roads to Redding to work at the hospital. She was brave! .

Marta Schweitzer
Oh Jean and I didn't room together, but she'd come on down to my room sometimes at night and we'd lay on my bed and sing together. We'd lay, looking up at the ceiling and sing nursery rhymes together. I do remember them all sunbathing together that was on top of the nurses home. I never went though. Jean and Inez went away early...before they graduated. They lived on the bottom floor with Blondie(Marguerite Coleman,who passed on in 2003) and I. Jean lived down the hall. She had such a nice personality. Mrs. Stout was our teacher. She was a fancy old maid, but had just gotten married. I remember one time, Jean was put in charge of washing all of the false teeth in the geriatric ward of the hospital. She collected them all and put them in the same pan and washed them. When she was done, she had no idea who's teeth were who's. Oh, that was a big mess. We always teased her about that afterward.