An interesting fact about our family is that all Eddys in the UnitedStates are related. There is an Eddy Family Association that my mother belonged to for a number of years.They published a book and updated it about every five years. My sister and I are in one of them - and Nelson Eddy, a well known romantic singer of the late Depression era. He was often teamed with Jeannette McDonald. We are English, and I have just recently become interested in digging back into our history. I know there is an Eddy family house in Massachusetts that is now a museum. I want to see it some day.

My grandfather came from Illinois, and he was 13 years older than my grandmother. She was a milliner and spent her early adult life in Weldon. She was a wonderful, very fashionable lady. She made elegant hats.She used to ride the train to Atlantic to buy supplies for them. Until she was in her 80s, she bought very expensive hats, which she wore for a couple of years and then took them apart and redid them.I loved to watch her do that. Any style hat looked wonderful on her. I, on the other hand, inherited from someone a large head so I rarely find a hat that will fit.

For quite afew years before they moved to town, my grandparents lived on the farm. When they moved to Osceola, my grandfather promised Grandmother a nice house.There were two to choose from. One, on the comer of Cass and Adams Streets, was very nice, with a portico on the side to allow for horse and buggies. The other was at 115 South Park Street. Grandmother fell in love with the one on Park Street, but Grandfather apparently was a good salesman. He told her that she could have either one she wanted, but if she would take the one on Cass, he'd buy all new furniture.She was persuaded and I think she got some new furniture, but I doubt if she got the whole houseful. I do know about the bill of sale for the dining room table and the curtains, which were imported from Ireland. The panels of lace curtains for three windows cost more than the oak table. Linda has a pictureof the bill of sale framed and hanging in her dining room.

Grandfather became the owner and operator of Eddy Feed and Grain. It was located where the old red barn used to stand, just beyond the railroad trackson North Fillmore. Farmers brought in all kinds of grain, which Grandfather bought and sold. There was a railroad spur and I remember the train cars that Grandfather used for shipping it. My mother kept books for him, so I spent a lot of time there. The big sacks, filled with grain, provided a wonderful place to play hide and seek. In the spring they got baby chicks, kept in a big incubator until they were sold. I loved to play with them.

In early grade school I remember goingto my grandfather's store and if I would do a chore for him, he would give me a nickel. For that nickel I could go to Windrath's Drug Store and get two huge dips of ice cream in an ice cream cone. We thought that was pretty expensive.

During my grade school years, Grandfather had a big walled off space in the garage, where he kept scraps of boards and lumber. We tried to build things out of scraps.Girls weren't supposed to do that. In the back part of the garage was a chicken house separated by a lathe door. My sister and I, and the two Slaymaker girls, Suzanne and Julie, who lived acrossthe street, cleaned it out and had a hideout. Julie was quite a bit younger and sometimes we wouldn't let her in to our secret meetings. There was a slider on the door so we could open it and peek to see who was knocking on the door. They had to have the password to be admitted. Other neighborhood kids, who were our age or older, sometimes came. In our secret meetings we would plot and plan what we were going to do, always sounding brave and dangerous, but we never really did anything. As we got a little older and were advancing in grade school, my sister and Suzanne learned Morse code, so they would shine flashlights back and forth, and agree to meet. We would climb out a window on to the roof, shinny down a tree, and walk back and forth on the streets. We must have climbed back up the tree to get in because, at least we thought, our grandparents never knew. It was an act of defiance.We never did anything once we got away.

Linda and I would stay all night with our grandparents. By then they slept downstairs, so we had the upstairsto ourselves and told each other stories to scare one another. I ignored her for lots of years, unless I had no one else to play with. But I resented her because it seemed as though I always had to drag her along, and she embarrassed me. By fifth or sixth grade she and I became friends. Even though I wanted to do male things, I was brought up to be a little lady, pleasing my elders.I wore little white gloves when we went to Des Moines,and carried a little purse. We took a little train my grandmother called the "Puddle Jumper," that went from here to Des Moines. I would go shoppingwith her at Younkers. All Linda wanted to wear was blue jeans, and that horrified me. When we got to Des Moines, I'd pretend I didn't know her. Looking back, I think she had more fun than I did.

Grandma wanted to teach us responsibility, so to help with our allowances we had chores. In the winter time, our chore was to wipe down the oak steps from the upstairs. We had to dust-mop first and then we wiped them down with clear water. In the summertime we had to scrub the front porch. It was a wrap-round porch that went around the portico and the front of the house. I always wished we had a porch swing.Amy Fowler lived across the street east of my grandparents. When Amy could no longer live alone, she had a sale of all her furniture, and among her belongings was a wonderful porch swing. I begged and begged my grandfather to go over and buy the swing for the frontporch. He said,"Talk to your grandmother," so I did. She said, ''You need to learn how a sale works,so I will give you $2 and if you can buy the swing for $2, you can have it." I had never been to a sale, so I went, clutching the money in my hand. The auctioneer said, ''Now we have this wonderful porch swing. Who will give me 50¢?" I said, "I will," and raised my hand.Someone else said; "75¢." I couldn't stand it! I thought I was going to lose that swing and I yelled, "$2!" He said, "Sold!"I probably could have had it for 80¢or $1, but that was all right. I went home on top of the world! My first experience with a sale! We had that swing for a long time. I think we finally sold it when we moved into a house where there was no room for the swing.

I went to school at East Elementary, which was a big old brick buildingthat looked a lot like our old court house. It had wonderful little crevices that we would hide in. There weren't many so we all knew where they were, but we had an unwrittenrule that no one was ever to find us.  One of my earliest memories of friends in that school was a boy named Dick Harrison. We became more like brother and sister than friends. It was wonderful for me because his father had the J.C. Penney store, and Dick had every toy imaginable. This was during the war and he had one room for his toys. There was a large table that had mountains and valleys, and all these little soldiers. We were all caught up in the war, patriotism, and the whole bit in school and everywhere. The only thing I didn't like was that I always had to be the enemy.

Our consciousness of the war was in kind of a general way. I remember Mother's coupon book. Gas, shoes, bananas,and sugar were rationed. I didn't really understand it, but I remember I couldn't have shoes for quite awhile because our coupons had been used. If we were out of something, we just waited. It is amazing to me how all the horror was going on and we children were just playing, climbing the neighbor's apple trees, going to the movies every Saturday afternoon. They had little clips about the war. There was all the wonderful music and "our Allies have prevailed again." They showed the American planes shooting down the Japaneseor German planes. They never showed what happened to our soldiers. I grew up thinking the saddest part of the war was havingyoung wives and families at home while the husbands were away. We never got a sense of the terrible things that were happening. On VJ (Victory over Japan) Day, as they got word the treaty was signed, the fire whistle blew over and over again. That day an official looking car drove up to our neighbor's house. This was a young wife and her little girl. The officials were bringing news of the husband/father's death.I was nine years old and that was the first time it struck me that the war was really that bad. I didn't think of our people being killed. It was just us getting rid of the bad guys.

From the beginning, I think I was meant to be a male. I had ideas of what I wanted to do and it didn't fit with ladies of the 40s or 50s. My dad always told me I could be anything I wanted to be and when Dick and I got out of high school, we were quite politically minded. We were Democrats, and even though my parents were staunch Republicans, they never said anything about our choice. Dick and I talked about this and he was going to be president of the United States and I would be the first woman vice president.I never thought of myself as top dog - I'd just be vice president. Or, if we didn't do that, we'd be astronauts and go to the moon. Even though obviously neither of us did this, it was fun planning.

School

I had some wonderful teachers. In kindergarten, our teacher was beautiful. She had darkhair, and was a very sweet woman but very sad. Her husband was in the service and there came a time in the early fall when she was able to go with him. I can't remember who the substitute was, but the same thing happened in first grade.There were lots of young women who came to Osceola and left because their husbands were called to serve.

The first half of first grade, I had to go to West Ward, which was locatedwhere West Ward Manor is now. Therewas a big rivalry between East and West and I had to go to school with all those people I wasn't sureabout, but we had wonderful Nellie Bonham for our teacher. Toward the end of the first semester, we prepared for our Christmas program. I had very long, heavy hair - in fact, I could sit on it - and mother braided it. I was picked to be the Dutch girl. Miss Bonham had carved wooden shoes, and she taught me a little Dutch dance, and I had a little costume. Two weeks beforewe were to perform, they got a new teacher for East Elementary and I had to go back. My heart was broken. I didn't get to dance, but I've never forgotten the details of that. I remember the dress, the music, and I could still do the dance. That was 65 years ago, so I know it meant a lot to me. It was a huge disappointment but I lived through it. Somehow we do. We think our hearts are going to break but they don't.

In fourth and fifth grades, Clara Mae Howard was our principal. She ran a tight ship and that didn't hurt us, either. When we got drinks or went to the bathroom, it meant lining up, having hall monitors, not even speaking to each other. Eva Crawford(Hagie) was the school nurse, a very nice woman. I remember her checking my teeth, and checking to make sure my back was straight. My favorite teacher other than the one in Kindergarten was Leota Johnson, who taught the fifth and sixth grades combined. We had study time part of the day and class time the rest. She read to us, the Caddie Woodlawn series, which was about the adventures of a young girl about our age. She had brothers, and they lived in the country, but they had occasional visits by a rich cousin, Annabelle, which is my given name. No one liked Annabelle and they played tricks on her, so of course, everyone would turn to look at me and laugh whenevershe was in the story. But I think what made the stories so real to us was that Mrs. Johnson would become emotionally involved as she read. If it was sad,she would get choked up, and we were all feeling the same way.

The discipline was a lot different from what it is now. Most of the time if we were chewing gum or passing notes, we'd be sent to the cloakroom to sit in thereby ourselves. One day one of the boys did something very bad. I don't remember what it was but Mrs. Johnson asked the class,"What do you think we should do to him? Should we send him to the cloak room?" We all said,' 'No”, because what he did was too bad for that. We formed a double line and he had to crawl through, and we all swatted him on the hind side. I don'tremember what we hit him with. I don't think it was our hands, but we probably didn't hit very hard. The humiliation may have told the tale. In any case, it worked. He never misbehaved again.

There had been children getting into troubleon the way home from school. Another of my very good friends was Nancy Jones (Price). She was also a friendof Dick Harrison so the three of us were kind of an inseparable trio. Clara Mae Howard came into each room and explained the rules had changed. From then on any children doing something bad on the way home from school would have to answer to her. Two boys had scheduled a fight for after school that day and we wanted to watch, but we knew Miss Howard's rule was law. So we thought andt hought and decided that if we did this after we were home no one could do anything. So as soon as the bell rang, we ran as fast as we could, touched our feet on the porch, which constituted being home, and we were just waiting for anyone to challenge us. Oh, the things that were so important then!

The junior high building was where the United Methodist Church is now. We had seventh and eighth grades there. Part of that time is a blur. Two teachers weren't doing too well. Minnie Hertz was the principal and taught some of the classes. She was a wonderful lady, too, but the school board hadn't been kind to her, hiring the other two teachers. They had no control of the classrooms and it must have been a terrible year for that poor lady. It was so wild no one would have believed it. There were students who chased the teacher around the room. One kid was pretty tough, and ended up in reform school. It was chaos most of the time until we got upstairs to Minnie's classes.

Dick was still my close friend. He had such an imagination that he talked with his hands and talked all the time. Dick's father was on the school board and we talked about what was going on at school, and laughed about how James had chased the teacher around the room, and Charlie Morgan and somebody else had to grab him and take him up to the principal. The Harrisons ignored us because Dick had such a wild imagination they thought we were making it all up. The story I've always heard is the two teachers left, Minnie retired, and for eighth grade they hired two male teachers to come here and straighten out our school, and they did. They were both wonderful people. We're still in contactwith the one, Dick McBeth. I don't remember what he taught, but he coached at the highschool. These fellows were hired to be disciplinarians and they started the first day. We were all excited, everyone was talking and laughing. My seat was right up against the teacher's desk. I was turned around talking to the person sitting behind me. He walked into the room, nobody paying any attentionto him, and he took a book, threw it down on the desk, yelling "QUIET!" at the top of his voice.You could have heard a pin drop. Then he laid down the rules and there was no trouble that whole year.

I was invited to the Harrisons for lunch lots of times, because with Dick's constant talking, it was hard for him to stop to eat, but if we were eating together,we would talk but he would eat, too. He was so concentrated on politics and the war. I remember him making maps ofAfrica with his mashed potatoes. We thought we were pretty politically active. We sponsored school elections. He and I voted for Harry Truman and everyone laughed at us. We were pretty cocky when he won.

We had a junior high band, taught by Andy Campbell. He was wonderful. He taught all the bands in school, junior high and high school. If kids were good enough at the end of the fifth grade year, they could be in the high school band. There were three of us in the sixth grade that started in the high school band. They let us out of school early, we'd run to the high school, of course being totally ignored by the high schoolers. We took awards at the Drake Relays every year. We could march, and we could play. Mr. Campbell was a wonderful instructor. Whatever he said, we did. We wouldn't have thought to argue with him. We didn't go into symphony music or have a jazz band, but one man wouldn't have time to do all that. He was well known in the area. One of the younger members of the band was David Twombly. I first remember him in sixth grade. He was short and a bit pudgy and I'd say, "Here comes that little guy whose clarinet is taller than he is."David grew up and became a band instructor as well an accomplished flutist and clarinet player after I graduated. To this day I considerhim a good friend.

In eighth grade we took county tests before entering high school and we had county-wide eighth grade graduation. That was in the old Christian Church. I grew up in that church. It had a huge horseshoe shaped balcony.It was really the town meeting place. It had the most room of any building in town and it was well filled for this event because students from all over the county as well as their relatives attended. Before the ceremony, our girls' sextet and our junior high chorus sang. Then the kids from the country performed, and there was one good looking young man who gave a humorous reading, "Old MotherHubbard." My friend Janene Anama poked me in the ribs and said, "He's cute! I think I'll go after him." That person turned out to be Fred Diehl. I am still close to Janene. She comes back for reunions so we see her every year.

We had lots of trips to the country that summer. We had our learners'permits, Janene would gether dad to let us drive the car, and we would happen to drive five miles out in the country to see this young man mowing the yard and then come back.I don't know what good she thought that did becausehe didn't know we were doing it. Every Saturday, he took piano lessons from Aletha McIntire and he always walked down town the same way. Part of that route was past the telephone company on the alley, so the two of us would conveniently be walking along that way so we could say "Hi." I remember saying to Janene one day, "You know, he is pretty nice looking. If he were a little taller, you'd have some competition from me." They did go out that fall, but Fred wasn't as smitten as she was. He acknowledges he was pretty naive. In 1951, the last of our freshman year, I broke a date with another guy to go with Fred on an FFA hayride, and by the time we graduated from high school, Fred and I had dated for about three years.

High School

We went to high school in what became north elementary then it was torn down and now is an apartment complex on NorthMain Street. Mother went to highs chool and junior college in the old building. I remember how frightened I was the first day, being sure I'd not be able to find my way around. It looked so big. I wanted to take shop class - I'd never gotten over loving to pound nails in my grandfather's shop. I was not allowed to do that because I was a girl and girls didn't take shop. However, there was a Home Ec teacher right out of school, her name was Effie Moffitt who became Effie Crawford. I was in her very first class, and she was a good teacher.

Right down the hall and around the corner was the boys' agriculture class. I remember Fred telling me one day his Ag teacher had said, "Women are like street cars, you miss one, and another one comes along." We were taking a Home and Family course in Home Ec, and everything was so sweet and here was what the ag teacher was telling the boys. I immediately told Effie and she was so disgusted!

Our principal at that time was Paul Weiler. He was a nice man but I was afraid of him because he was the principal. He left at the end of the year and his replacement was Jim Thomas. All the high school girls were madly in love with Jim Thomas. He had piercing brown eyes, wore tweed sport jackets, and smoked a pipe. Sometimes we did ornery things so we would get sent to the principal's office and see him. I was actually pretty prim and prissy in high school, so I guess the reason I remember doing ornery things is because I didn't usually do them. I always wanted to, but I never had the nerve.

I was in chorus and band in high school. I did go out for basketball for awhile. The gym, by the way, used to look so big! It was a sunken place in north elementary, and spectators at the games sat in a balcony looking down. Well, I lasted three days. I'm kind of a couch potato. When my muscles became so sore I couldn't lean over and pick up a piece of paper from the floor, I quit basketball and joined the pep band. I was also in drama and speech. We had contests out of town, and the kids going to compete took the train. That was the accepted mode of travel, and we went to the Creston Band Festival by train, and took the train to visit relatives in Chariton. When we went anywhere east or west, that was our transportation and it was fun.

I had lots of fun in high school. These were the 50s happy days. The only homework I remember having was in Mr. Anderson's class. We went to all the football and basketball games. Even though Fred and I had begun dating, we ran around with a big group. There were seven or eight of us, boys and girls, and it didn't matter if we were dating or not. We just had fun together, and we've stayed in very close contact with all of them. Janene was in our group, and Marilyn Matthews(Paul). Marilyn's father was the minister at the Community Bible Church, which is now the Calvary Baptist. He was such a jolly man. We'd go on caroling parties and then he'd have us come to their house. He had a good influence on us. Their congregation was verys traight-laced. Dancing was wrong, no TV, no movies. I always had to argue and one time I challenged him by asking,"What is wrong with going to movies if they're not bad movies." He replied, "If the world were to end today, and you were at the movies, would you want Jesus Christ to come down the aisle looking for you?" I wasn't sure. What is so inconsistent is that his favorite movie star was Marilyn Monroe. It had nothing to do with the life she led. He thought she was beautiful.

Dick Harrison moved to Missouri when we were freshmen. The Harrisons invited us all to come down for a long 4th of July weekend. Five or six of us went by train and we had a wonderful time. Dick went on to college. True to our sixth grade dream, he minored in Political Science, but he majored in religion and became a Christian minister. He was in the ministry for quite a few years. He came back occasionally to visit. He showed up at our door one day with a huge red beard, and I didn't recognize him, although his dancing eyes looked familiar, but the minute I heard his voice, I knew who it was. He died of a heart attack at a fairly early age. I think he was in his 40s, living in Seattle. They found him in his apartment. His father was living in Missouri and didn't inform any of us. I found out months later through Waid Lentz, who remained a good friend of Craig Harrison. That was really hard. I understood through that experience what funerals are for. In that case there was no closure.

Our prom was in the high school gym, which we decorated one year in a Hawaiian motif, with a mural on one wall, and flowers draped down. The only problem was proms were always on Friday night. We didn't have weekend activities - ball games or anything. I remember a big issue at the Junior-Senior Banquet. There were three Catholic kids, Fred, Joan Wilson, and one other person. They had to have fish, while the rest of us had steak or something. The banquet was in the gym and then we would clear out the chairs, and have our dance. We had entertainment. One year girls from Hawaii came from GracelandCollege and danced. Fred was the MC.

I had different jobs during high school. When I was a freshman, I worked for Nellie Allison in her Drug Store for 25¢ an hour. Nellie was a taskmaster. She made us do things right, which was good training. There was a soda fountain, and we made wonderful sodas and sundaes. To get ice for drinks, we had to go to the back room and chop it by hand from a big block of ice. Marilyn Matthews worked there at the same time I did and we had a lot of fun, especially when Nellie went on trips and left Charles in charge.As long as nothing was going awry, he just let us run the place.The Allison boys loved ice cream, and I remember one time when I turnedaround and saw, I think Jimmy, whose two feet were sticking out of the deep ice cream freezer. I thought I might get into trouble over that one but Jimmy was her grandson so she didn't say anything.

George Heinreich was the pharmacist. His wife was Ruth and they lived just west of the four corners, on the north side of the highway. George loved kids, and when he was working in the pharmacy and we wanted him to come out, we'd sing, here George would come and talk to us. There were two cash registers, both had marble tops. There was a small one on the south side and a great big one where people paid for medication.  Only with Nellie's blessing could we touch the big one. I still remember the day I was left in charge and I could run the big register.

Then in 1951 or 1952, I got a chance to go Robinson's Drug Store! That was on the corner of Washington and Main, in the old Masonic building.  There I got 50¢ an hour! I was on top of the world! I was going to be rich! Nancy Jones (Price) worked there also. We'd wait until Jerry Wolfe went home for lunch, then we would make each other these horrible concoctions of ice cream and everything else. I was thin then and we'd eat this stuff all the time. All the business men came for coffee. That's where I learned to wait on tables. I don't think we were ever tipped. In fact they pretty much ignored us unless we remembered which one took cream and sugar or wanted a doughnut. Then they wouldcompliment us and we thoughtthat was wonderful!

I had the job of painting the "specials" signs on the windows. It was water soluble paint and one day when it was raining, Rich (Robinson) happenedto see me painting backward from the inside. He said, "I think you have a talent. How would you like to make all the signs for the dime store and the clothing store?" That would be wonderful! I was so excited that someone would think I could do that! I didn't do calligraphy, but I did neat, detailed signs. I didn't get paid any more for the added task, but that was a step up in life. I could do something no one else did. Everyone who worked for him could charge whateverthey wanted and he would take it out of the paycheck. The result was I very rarely got a pay check, but I added to my wardrobe.

Career

When we were seniors, I began to get serious about what I was going to do with my life. I thought about going to Iowa State and learning about textiles, with the goal of becominga buyer for a department store in a big city like New York, but when we took aptitude tests, I scored highest in math and science. At that time,the choices in those fields were pretty slim, especially for girls. The indication was I should go into nursing. By then I was dating Fred pretty steadily. The nursing course took three years, so I could be out a year earlier than if I went for a university degree, and we could get married earlier. So I chose nursing for all those reasons. Lucky for me, I really liked it. Sometimes our choices aren't made for the right reasons even if they turn out okay.

I knew I had to take more science classes so I signed up for chemistry and physics. Physics was required for boys, but they didn't keep the girls out. The teacher was young, just out of college, very intelligent, and very opinionated. I disliked him intensely. On the first day of chemistry class, he strode in, looked around at us, and said, "There are 20 of you here today. Any of you who think this is going to be a snap, can change your mind right now, because I will guarantee you that in a week, half of you will be gone because you won't be able to take it."

Those were fighting words for me. I thought, "I'll show you." I stayed in. It came time for our final semester test and he put a flask of fluid on everybody's desk. He said,"There are five elements in each one of these flasks.You will all identify three out of the five except for Annabelle and Wayne and Phil. You will identify four of the five or you will not pass." I immediately raised my hand and said, "You are not being fair. You are picking on us." He replied, "No, I'm not. You are capable of doing it and you will do it or you won't pass my class." Okay, I passed and the next year when I started nurses'training, I didn't have to crack a chemistry book, which was wonderful. In spite of how intensely I disliked him, because of his class I came out knowing chemistry forward and backward. I do appreciate him for that. He was right - you either learned or were out of his class. I actually owe him a lot.

The summer after I graduated, Madge Dodson contacted me. I didn't know her but she knew my family. She said they had an opening at ASCS (Agricultural Stabilization Conservation Services) office which was below the post office. I made a little more than at the drug store, but it was an office job, with better hours. I felt like I was really going up in the world.

I had to take tests to get into nursing school. I remember wondering if I could survive away from home. Of course, I'd been away from home lots of times but there was something about leaving permanently and knowing I'd not be back. I was accepted into Methodist Hospital.

This was in 1954. The war was over. There were still a lot of nurses who had taken their training, with the government paying, which obligated them to the government as nurses for three or five years. This caused the hospitals to be very short handed.  I went through three years of nurses'training for $700-$800 which included tuition to Drake University for our science courses. I think I had money in a bond my uncle started for me when I was born and my parents paid on it. After the first year we worked on the hospital unit so we didn't have to pay any additional tuition for our class.

The hard part was that we lived in dorms and became close friends with people on the floor and those we worked with. When I came home, friends who had gone to universities talked about sorority and fraternity parties. I was missing those. By the time we started our second year, we were working alone at night on a full floor at Methodist, being responsible for people's lives. People were really sick, and we didn'tknow how sick they were. A few times I got pretty discouraged. I'd come home and tell my mother I wasn't going back. When Sunday afternoon came, Mother would pack my bag and they would drive me back. I'm glad I stayed with it.

The highlight for me there was the hands-on care. In most cases that's all we could do for people in those days. Until then I didn't realize the power of human touch. I remember people saying to me, "I'm glad you are on duty this evening. Would you give me a back rub? I always feel better when you do that." I decided it is the intent with which it is done. If we'd go in and just slap on some lotion, it didn't do much, but I took everything seriously. Holding someone's hand, or putting our hand on their forehead, or giving a little squeeze on their shoulder was in some cases all we could do, but it made a difference. At that time, people with cancer came to the hospital to die. Sometimes we gave them (intravenous) nitrogen mustard, and knowing what that was used to scare the wits out of me, but that was the only treatment we had for cancer. There has been such a change from 50s until now! Being 18 and 19 year olds, thrown into all that seriousness was grim at times.

We made our own fun in the dorm. We were little rebels. We were never supposed to put a piece of linen on the floor. When we made a bed we were instructed to put the pillowcase on the back of the chair and put all the dirty linen in it. The same rule applied in the dorm. Sheets were supposed to be folded nicely and put on a table in the hall. One time we thought we were being picked on so we all threw our laundry in one big pile in the hallway. I lived with nine other students and our dorm was built onto the back of an old mansion that was a small version of Terrace Hill. It was beautiful old red brick house and we lived on the second floor. The Director of Nursing lived in an apartment right below us. I didn't usually get into trouble, but in this case I was trying to study. We'd all thrown our laundry out, and it was piled outside my door.The other girls started squirting each other with water guns, all screaming and yelling, interfering with my concentration.  I flung open the door, and yelled, "YOU GUYS BE QUIET!" and was face to face with the Directorof Nursing.  She'd gotten tired of all the noise and had come upstairs.  I thought I would be sent home for that but it didn't happen. She talked to me gently but firmly and went back downstairs. Until then, all the other doors were shut, but at that point all the doors opened and everyone died laughing because I was the one who got caught.

We had restrictions. One was that we were not allowed to marry while still in school. By the time we were seniors, we could be married the last six months of school. At that time there was no wage and hour law. We worked 11:00 at night until 7:00 in the morning, then ate breakfast and went to class. We had 44 or 46 hour shifts a lot of times and nobody thought anything about it.

There were four schools of nursing in Des Moines - Methodist, Lutheran, Broadlawns, and Mercy, and for the first year all our science courses- anatomy,physiology, and pharmacology were taken at Drake University. The hospitals hired taxis to take us, and I imagine it was quite a sight on that campus when every nursing student in Des Moines arrived on campus to go in for our lectures.That's when my chemistry paid off, becausethose classes were hard. They were usually taught by the heads of departments. I really didn't know how to study becauseI hadn't had to study in high school.

After the first year, our classes were at the hospitals.We took our psychiatric training in St. Louis and that was fun. We took the train and were there for three months. The students who had just gotten back would tell us all the fun places. They said, "The first day the social director will come and talk to you about the activities at the hospital. She will give you a list of places that are off limits.Write all those down because those are the places you want to go."

There were medical and dental students that worked at the hospital where we went. We would have picnics and wiener roasts in Forest Park, which we weren't supposed to do. We were never supposed to be caught outside the dorms with anyone but our fellow students. Several of my friends married fellows they met in St. Louis. Several of them married Catholics and joined the Catholic Church to the consternation of the Methodist chaplain. Fred was Catholic so I was one of the five called in and given a severe talking to because we were dating Catholic boys. It was a big concern in those days. The year after we were there, they switched from St. Louis to Independence, Iowa. We always considered ourselves lucky.

Fred hitchhiked to Des Moines once in awhile to take me out for a date.We would either go to a movie or to Babe's for pizza. And I took the bus to go to his fraternity parties. We kept in touch long distance.

After my sister Linda graduated from high school, she went to the Kansas City Art Institute, and studied graphic arts for a semester. She decided she and her fiancée would never want to live in a city so she quit that and enrolled in Broadlawns School of Nursing. This was mid-semester, so she had to find a job before school started. She was hired at Methodist in the Admitting Department at night. I was a student, and by that time we were running the floors by ourselves. We had one night supervisor for the 350 bed hospital run mostly by students.I don't know how the woman did it. She had to have been a saint and brilliant. I would never have taken that responsibility but she did.

There came a night when Linda was in admitting, I was working on the women's ward, and she called to say, "We are sending you a patient." I said, "Who is this?" "Your sister. We have a man who they believe is having a heart attack." I said, "You are not putting a man on my floor. This is a women's ward." "You have the only bed in the hospital and I am in charge." And she was! They brought him to my floor and just as they lifted him off the gurney, he drew his last breath. I was furious! As I look back I realize I had no sympathy for the man or his family, I was thinking of all the paper work I had to do for this man who shouldn't have been on my floor in the first place. That was a bone of contention between Linda and me for several months after that. Linda thought it was funny.

Another time I was on the floor when Dr. Dwight Harken, a well-known heart surgeon from back east, was admitted. The Harkens were friends of my mother. Dwight had come to this area to visit his father, who had been a family physician in Osceola for years. He flew his own plane and when he took off from the airport he hit a wire. The plane was wrecked but he was only injured. He was at Methodist and I took care of him, which was a little nerve-wracking for a lowly student. He and his wife treated me as though I was a competent, experienced nurse. I never forgot that great compliment.

There were a lot of crazy stories that happened then. I think it was because we were working the floor by ourselves. I always thought I wanted to work in OB (obstetrics) because it was such a happy place most of the time. I was working in delivery and there were two ladies in the same room, who had been there in labor most of the day. They were getting really tired so I decided to cheer them up and joke with them a little bit. Every so often I'd have to go in to check their vital signs and listen with a stethoscope to the baby's heart beat. To the one ladyI said "Oh, your baby's heartbeat is a little slow - not dangerously slow but just slow. You are going to have a boy.” I laughed and she said,"Oh, really?” and I said, "Yes ha ha” went to the other lady and said, "Yours is a little faster, you'll have a girl.” I was joking around and thought they knew I was joking because they joked back.

Neither of them had delivered when I left, but a friend of mine, who came on the shift after me, came back to the dorm and said,"What on earth is the matter with you?” I asked what she meant. Both ladies had delivered and both had babies as I had said. It went all over the hospital that there was a student nurse who could tell babies' genders before they were born. That would have been grounds for dismissal if they hadn't been so short-handed. From then on I was very careful with what I said.

There are lots more stories I could tell about nursing school, but that would be a book in itself. On the weekend when I am doing all this reminiscing (June 9th, 2007), I am traveling to Des Moines to our annual Iowa Methodist Hospital class reunion. Although the school was closed several years ago, we continue to have reunions, and this year I am a member of the 50 year class. We thought it would never happen, but it did. There are a lot of festivities planned for the weekend and I'm really looking forward to it, especially because this year we don't have to pay for anything - banquet, wine and cheese party, potluck, breakfast, and a slumber party on Friday night. A weekendof non-stop fun.

We have lost quite a few class members, and we were a pretty close knit group. There were about 60 of us who graduated together, but it's amazing when we lived together in a dormitory for three years, and were deprived of much social life, how close we became. With five or six I remained in a very close relationship. I'll mention twins from Montezuma, Iowa. They were the wildest girls I had met in a long time.As I look back, they weren't wild at all. They both smoked and I was horrified at that. And they had a lot of fun, but they could fight like bobcats. I remember once breaking up fisticuffs between the two of them in their room, and I got in the middle of it. I inadvertently got smacked so I never tried to interfere again. They are  wonderful people! One lives in Connecticut now and several of us had a wonderful trip visiting her three years ago. The other lives in Texas in the wintertime. She and her husband had settled there and after he died, she came back and rented a condo in their hometown of Montezuma. She lives there in the summertime, so we get to visit in Texas and Iowa.

Another I probably remain the closest to was a roommate. She lives in Des Moines, has retired and has lots of health problems. But she still perks up and has a good time when we get together. When she first applied for schooling, they weren't going to admit her because she was under five feet tall. They thought that would be a big detriment if she ever had to scrub in surgery. When we got to that point, and were learning surgery procedures, they provided her with a stool about seven inches high so she could stand on it. That solved the problem.

In September, after I graduated from nursing school, I moved to Ames and got a job in the maternity department of Mary Greeley Hospital. The OB floor was blocked off from the rest of the hospital, and they had a nurse who ran that place with an iron fist. All of her "mothers" had to be bathed by 10:00 a.m., and therefore we nurses were required to sort of herd them out into the hall. It was a sight to behold, which I suspect was why they kept it locked. The women would be out there in very little clothing, maybe a towel wrapped around them, some in slippers, some barefooted. They were, of course, all sizes. They waited in line then went into the showers. Three of us had shower duty and had to scrub their backs. Then they could go back to their rooms. One of the artistic mothers later sent us a Christmas card. It was long and narrow with caricatures of fat, tall, short, skinny women half naked, some with shower caps, with Nurse Marie standing behind them holding a back scrubber, herding them into the bathroom.

I do want to mention Marie again. She was the head nurse and it was her department! She had an RN, a very submissive person who worked with her, but Marie was amazing! The labor room was out on a big sun porch, and unless she was at lunch, no one was allowed out there but Marie. She would sit and listen to mothers in labor, and she could tell when they were ready to deliver just by listening to the tone of their voice, their little moans and groans. I never saw her get a mother into the delivery room more than five or ten minutes ahead of time, and I never saw her get them there late. It was like she was magic. That was Marie's world.

Being in Marie's department was like being back in school. We did what she said! The beds had draw sheets in the middle.Marie would come along and bounce a dime on them every once in awhile just to make sure we were doing them properly. This was back in 1954, and a lot of veterans who were returning from war, enrolled in the college, taking advantageof grants for schooling. There was a high birth rate, so we would have 15 to 20 babies in the nursery at one time. When it was feeding time, we would take the babies out for the mothers to feed them, and someone had built a long wooden cart, about 36 inches wide and five or six feet long, divided into little sections. We would wrap the babies in their blankets like little Hopi Indians, put the bottles if they were bottle feeding - in with them, and a nurse could take six babies to the mothers at a time, like delivering papers.That was a very uniqueplace. I never saw that done again. The need was there because of short staffing, and someone made good use of their imagination.

I rented an apartment in a house in downtown Ames, not far from the hospital so I could walk to work. Fred was doing his student teaching in Oskaloosa, so I suggested and he agreed that I use his car while he was gone. Of course it bad to be parked in front of the house. One day the landlady knocked on the door. When I answered it she said,"Well?" I said, "Well, what?" She said, "Don't you have somethingto tell me?" I was puzzled and said, ''No, I don't think so."She got an indignant look on her face, put her hands on her hips, and said, "You aren't married, are you? His car has been out there all night for the last three nights." I hadn't even thought about it. I explained and finally convinced her that we weren't married yet but we were going to be.

I always think about her and get a little ache in my heart because she must have been a very unhappy woman. Her husband died when the youngest child was six or seven, and she raised their five childrenby herself. In itself it is a sad story and she apparently didn't handle it too well. I think she blamed him for dying on purpose and leaving her to raise those children alone. After the incident about the car, I was cleaning it out before Fred was due back from his practice teaching. The landlady confronted me again and asked,"What do you think you are doing?" I explained that I was cleaning out Fred's car. She said, "My dear, let me tell you one thing you'd better remember. Never ever let a man know you are capable of doing anything or you will end up doing it for the rest of your life." End of story. I hope she is in a happier place now.

That was in September and Fred and I were married on November 23rd. At that time the Catholic congregation had raised a tremendous amount of money to build a new church but the only part finished was the basement. So we were married in the basement. To complicate our plans, it snowed that day, was bitterly cold, and driving to Ames from Osceola on highway 69 was quite a trip. I was afraid no one would come, but they did.

My father's family was not Catholic and they were not very tolerant of Catholics. I don't know any way to explain to someone who didn't live during those years, the animosity between the Protestants and Catholics. Neither could attend the services of the other and the lack of understanding produced some wild stories. Mixed marriages could not be performed in their sanctuary, but I had taken instructions - three times, in fact, before I was ready to convert. However, by then I had become a Catholic, which eliminated some problems. Our wedding could be in the sanctuary but my sister could not be my attendant. In regard to the music: in 1957, Perry Como’s "Ave Maria" was very popular so I had asked our vocalist to sing that one. That was not allowed. It was secular music so we settled for Schubert's "Ave Maria," which was beautiful - just not the one I wanted. Our organist was Leland Kearney, also from Osceola, and in our class in highschool. He came prepared to play a lot of music between the church hymns and regular church music. All of that was secular, too, so Leland sat there and played throughout the service, making it up as he went along. His music was absolutely beautiful and even the priest complimented him.

Dad had accepted Fred when he decided it was inevitable that we would marry, having dated for over six years and being engaged for two. Mother was at the church early to help me dress for the wedding. As the time grew nearer, no Dad. I decided his anti-Catholicism had gotten the better of him, and he'd decided not to come to give me away. When he burst through the door, he explained he had taken a wrong turn and gotten lost. None of his family came to the wedding, but I was relieved to see him there.

I think I know what broke the barrier in Osceola. When the Christian Church burned that summer or the next, a group of men who had performed together regularly, gave a minstrel show in which several Catholics asked if they could participate. The fellows became acquainted and enjoyed one another. From that time on, there were more ecumenical events.

Fred and I settled in for his last year of college, and I continued working at Mary Greeley. The landlady rented us half of the downstairs of her house. There was an upstairs apartment and she lived in one half of the first floor, and rented the other half to us.

Fred graduated 1958 facing possible draft. Having been a member of ROTC (Reserve Officers'Training Corps) unit at Iowa State, when he graduated, he was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant in the Artillery. He wanted to be in the Air Force and fly fighter planes. He tried the Air Force and the Navy, but in both cases they told him he was too short and didn't qualify. So the Army got him. We were in a bit of a quandary because the service was looming over him, he'd had an offer from DeKalb Hybrid in DeKalb, Illinois, and he had also put in an application with WHO Radio Farm Department, where he'd done an internship while he was in school. He'd not heard back from them, so he decided he had better take the job with DeKalb. He was hired with the understanding that when he was called up for service, he could take the time off and come back when he was discharged. In the meantime, he heard from Herb Plambeck of WHO (radio station) "Come to work forme." Fred explained what had happened and Herb said, "If you're not going to DeKalb until fall, come to work for me during the summer."

We moved back to Des Moines, I found a job at Blank Hospital, on the 3:00 to 11:00 shift. Two days a week I relieved the evening supervisor, which meant I had to take reports from all the nurses and I wouldn't get out ofthe Hospital until very late at night. I'd go to bed, fall asleep, and Fred would be up dancing and singing at 4:30 a.m. I wasn't sure the marriage was going to last, because I am a night-owl and he is a daytime person, but we got through it.

I remember one summer night walking home from work about 1:00 in the morning. We lived in a little third story apartment. There was no air conditioning and it was hot. The windows were open. I went up the steps to the apartment and Fred had me locked out. I don't remember why I didn't have a key, but I didn't. I banged and banged on the door and couldn't get him awake. I went back outside and tried calling up to the windows, trying not to yell too loud, then I threw rocks at window. Still no Fred. Finally I saw a single light on in the first floor apartment. Because I worked all the time, I didn't know my neighbors, but I knocked on the door hoping whoever lived there would let me in, and also it would be somebody I wanted to see. However, the lady let me in, I explained my dilemma, and she let me use her phone. I finally was able to wake up Fred, but I've never let him forget that incident.

In the fall Fred took the job in DeKalb,Illinois, in the advertising department of DeKalb Hybrid. This was a bit away from his major in college, which had been Agricultural Education which would have led to teaching, and he had a minor in Radio and TV. They pretty much let him write his own job description, which I thought was amazing. At that time apartments were pretty scarce in DeKalb so he stayed with a friend in the company, until he could find a place for us to live, and I think we had to wait another month before we could actually move in. I moved back to Osceola and stayed with my parents.               

One evening Fred called from Illinois and said, "Quick, learn to play bridge. I have entered us in the company bridge tournament." I think I may have played some Canasta in those days but that was all. Dutifully, Mother took me to one of her bridge clubs, which turned out to be quite a learning experience, since I play bridge like some people play poker. I was notified by one particularly vocal person that I should have known bridge rules. I really didn't do anything illegal. I think the problem was that I happened to set her when she thought she would make her bid.

DeKalb was a wonderful family-owned company. We spent time in the homes of department heads on a social basis.They had a lot of parties for us, all non-alcoholic, which was interesting, but made for some very nice sociable parties. We were even invited to dinner at the home of the president of the company. These were the most friendly, gracious, every-day people I think I have ever met.We made lasting friends.

I got a job in a little Catholic hospital, and I'd never worked in a Catholic hospital. My direct supervisors were nuns, very nice ladies from the order of Mercy. The Hospital Administrator was a nun also. Her name was Sister Mary Matilda, and what a character! She had been a Nursing Arts instructor, which meant she taught student nurses. I had been out of school for over a year, and thought I was quite a good nurse, who didn't need a lot of supervision. She thought all of her nurses who were not nuns needed supervision. I worked in a six-bed unit just off the lobby where all the important patients were placed.

Sister Mary Matilda wanted everything done properly. The bedside table had to bestocked just so. The equipment had to be in certain spots on certain shelves. I would be working away in the daytime and suddenly the double doors would burst open, and Sister Mary Matilda, who was quite a large woman, close to six feet tall or at least she seemed so, in her white flowing robes, her arms out would come down the hall, never giving me a glance or a word of greeting. She would go into an empty room, go through the items on the bedside tables, to make sure everything was as it should be. Then she would come into my nursing station and go through the medicines and make sure they were in the proper order. She might move some things but never say a word, and leave. I felt like it was a big white hawk descending on me, that it was going to swoop down, pick me up and fly away. I was terrified of this woman!

When I dated Fred, he talked about the nuns coming down for summer school or teaching Bible school. He always talked about them with such respect and awe, that I had the impression they were just a few steps below the Lord himself. But I'd never met a woman like this. She wanted things done her way and that was it! I talked to the other nurses and no one was happy there. They didn't like the way she pushed us around, and gave us no explanation. The answer, "Because I said so," was supposed to suffice.

Finally I said, "This is silly. We have a nurses' meeting with her once a month. Why don't we all present our complaints and see if we can't resolve some of them?" Everyone thought, what a wonderful idea! Came time for the meeting the question was, "Who will speak for us? We really don't know how to do this." I made a list. I got everyone's opinions. We all agreed, and at the meeting, I very politely got up and read my list of concerns. The White Hawk stood there and one single tear rolled down her cheek, which made us all wither. She looked around the room and asked, "Does anyone else in the room feel this way?" Not one hand went up. So I learned a good life lesson from that experience. However, Sister Matilda and I came to terms later on. She decided she was not going to be unfairt o me, and I decided I would respect her superiority and position in the hospital even though I didn't agree with everything. But I was not happy there.

Later I had a chance to work in a General Electric plant as a payroll clerk. They made washing machines, refrigerators and stoves. It was quite an operation. I could go to work dressed up every day in high heels, wear fingernail polish, and didn't have to work weekends or nights. It was wonderful but short lived. By that time Fred and I had been married 2 ½ to three years, and were trying to have a baby. We'd been through a lot of tests and it seemed I was unable to conceive. When I got this job I told Fred, "I really like this job. I don't care if we don't get pregnant for awhile." In this company, we could work for six months of pregnancy and that was as long as I lasted. All it took was the pressure of not liking a job, the pressure of thinking I might be sterile, and when that was forgotten the family started. Maybe I have Sister Matilda to thank.

Our first child was a daughter. I had worked in OB in other hospitals so I thought I knew everything there was to know about having a baby but of course, I hadn't had one, and I found out I didn't know everything. It was a rather long labor, but I didn't know it. They had given me something to make me doze between contractions. Poor Fred was beside himself, and since he knew everyone in the hospital he was bugging all the nurses and nuns. He even went up and talked to the nun who ran Central Supply until she finally kicked him out. At 9:30 that night our daughter was born, weighing nine pounds twelve ounces. I didn't have any trouble delivering her. It is possible if I'd known how big she was, I would have. She was beautiful! Fat, wide, red face, screaming and crying - the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. This was Laura Anne. By that time we'd rented a little house on top of a hill. I think it was on Morningside Drive. It was an ideal situation. A beautiful house - a new baby - Fred in his job - good friends. Life couldn't have been better. What we didn't know was that I'd had a baby who didn't like to sleep more than five or six hours at a time. It took awhile to adjust to that but I had plenty of help. My mother came and stayed a few days. Fred's parents came and stayed. In those days mothers were kept in bed a week after giving birth, so we were weak from inactivity when we went home.

We were thinking we would settle in DeKalb, so we were house hunting for something we could afford, and found just the one. I had plans for fixing it up, and was so excited, when the Realtor called and said, "I'm sorry. Someone has offered more than you did and the house is sold." I thought for sure it was the end of world, but the next morning Fred received a notice from his boss that they were transferring him to Cedar Rapids, Iowa and he would be the district sales manager. There's a divine hand in everything. Had we bought that house, we'd have had it to sell.

Fred went to house hunt for his new district. The office had been in Cedar Rapids and I thought, "What a wonderful town to move to." The only problem was that Cedar Rapids was on the edge of the district, and the sales-manager decided we should live in the center of the district. Fred visited Anamosa, where the men's state reformatory is, and he visited Monticello, about 10 miles away. Both towns were about the size of Osceola, as different from one another as night and day. He brought home literature and items from their Chambers of Commerce, which I looked over. It sticks in my mind that from Monticello there was a brochure from "Little Brute" manufacturing company, with a big bear about to attack, and another that read, "Welcome to the home of the worlds largest feather duster factory." I said, "I'm not moving there." Big mistake. We visited both communities, ended up in Monticello and loved every bit of it. We made good friends immediately. The neighbors came and visited us, bringing food the first day we moved in. The next day I answered a knock at the door. A man and woman were standing there. The man said, "Hello, I am the Administrator of John McDonald Hospital. I hear you are a nurse. This is the Director of Nursing and we would like to hire you." I declined saying my baby was too little, but I found that very interesting. Word gets round fast in a small town.

We lived there quite a few years. Fred traveled 10 or 11 county districts, so he was gone a lot but home every night. We became acquainted not only with neighbors but people in the same circumstances as we. Some of those young people had started what they called the Monticello Travelers' Club, made up of traveling salesmen and their families. Once a month on Saturday night we would go out to eat or to someone else's house. We'd put the kids to bed and have a good time talking, comparing stories and generally having a good time. We still have some close relationships with people we came to know then.

Our second child, David William, was born in 1962, in the hospital in Monticello, where I had worked. By that time, mothers were only kept in bed three or four days. We had moved into a new house a week before David was born. So I went home with a new baby, boxes everywhere, a 17 month old, who was quite angry with me for leaving her. She wouldn't let me pass through a doorway or an open archway without being right there with me. It was almost smothering but I understood what she was feeling.

We were very happy with Monticello. It was a very welcoming town. They had the largest county fair in the world. People in the banking business loaned money to some whom I doubt other bankers consider. We lived close enough to the swimming pool that the kids could pack up and go swim, I could stay home with the babies. If there is one place I'd like to have stayed, it would have been Monticello. But that wasn't in the cards. In 1963, Fred was transferred to Wisconsin, where he had the whole western half of the state, selling flocks of chickens to commercial growers. We were only there a year, and at that time I was expecting our third child.

I delivered Matthew Fredrick in April 1964, at the big Catholic hospital in Janesville, Wisconsin, where we lived. One day a nun came to the door of my room and said, "You don't know me, do you?" She had been the surgical nurse in the hospital working under Sister Mary Matilda. So we had a good time reminiscing. She asked, "What are you going to name your baby?" We had thought this baby would be a girl, so we had only a girl's name picked out. She was appalled! "This child cannot go without a name!" She began pacing. "What can we call him? What can we call him?" Suddenly she stopped, raised one finger, and in a soft but very dramatic tone exclaimed, "I have it! Neil!" My response was, "Sister! Neil Diehl?" She laughed and left the name selection to us.

When Matthew was six weeks old, David and Laura four and three, we moved back to the Monticello area. In Fred's travels, he had met a lot of people who owned what they called there, "Shoppers." The more he talked to them, the more he thought it would be a good business to get into. He was not happy selling chickens and getting into the big operations. He didn't like what he had begun to see as the handwriting on the wall. My brother- in-law and sister, Richard and Linda Ruble, moved from Des Moines to Anamosa and the two men started their own "Advertiser." We paid $500 for a great big, old clunky printing press, which was broken down most of the time, but Richard being very mechanical could fix anything. Fred, on the other hand, was sales oriented so Fred sold the ads, Richard did the printing, Linda and I both worked part time as nurses, she at Anamosa and I went back to the hospital in Monticello where I had worked previously. We both worked evenings so before we went to work, she and I collated the papers. We would arrive at work with white uniforms but black ink-stained hands. We'd have to scrub and scrub before we could attend patients.

Looking back, I don't know how we did it, but nobody told us we couldn't so we just dove in and did it. That little paper was called "The Town Crier," and Linda created a fat little man ringing a bell as a masthead. It happened that the newspaper editor in Anamosa was a good friend of the newspaper editor in Osceola so the word got back to Osceola that they were going to run these young upstarts out of business in six months. Fred's mother heard it from a neighbor and was sure it was going to happen, but not only is that business still running and the little Town Crier still ringing his bell, but the man who owns it bought out the newspaper.

My brother-in-law decided he was not cut out to be a business owner, and they missed Des Moines, so probably in the mid-60s, Fred bought them out. They sold the clunky printing press and delivered copies to Leclair, a small town near Davenport, where the papers were printed, collated, and ready to go in about two hours. That worked for awhile and then Fred had a chance to sell the newspaper to a young man who wanted to settle near Anamosa, and Fred went to work for Paul Revere Insurance Company. We moved back to Monticello into a lovely two-story house built in the 1920s. It was in a cul-de-sac, and again I thought I couldn't be happier - good neighbors, good friends, a wonderful place to live. However, we were transferred to Davenport, Iowa.

Here was another experience of meeting several people who had gone to high school in Osceola. Apparently a lot of people from here settled in that area. It was a nice place but it was big. Our children couldn't walk anywhere alone. I had to hover over them all the time. This is what mothers are supposed to do and I didn't object, but there was not that sense of freedom and security in which neighbors watched out for each others' children. When I took them to the shopping mall, I couldn't let them out of my sight because a child was kidnapped from our local mall. I had a sitter two days a week and worked as an Industrial Nurse for the Oscar Meyer Company while the children were in school. The hours were perfect. I was home shortly after they were home, and I could keep up my nursing skills.

About this time, Fred began to realize he couldn't spend his life working for somebody else, and began looking toward setting up his own agency. We discussed the possibilities of a small town and the quality of life in regard to raising our children. We considered Monroe, and talked a lot about Osceola. At first I was against it. We had established our own pattern of family life and I was afraid coming back would disrupt that. But Fred finally convinced me that Osceola was a wonderful place to raise children and reluctantly I agreed to move back. I'm glad we did. He was right. I worked at Clarke County Hospital, the first night supervisor they had hired. There was not much turn over at the hospital, they had several nurses, and hired all new graduates who, of course, started out on the 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. shift. The result was the hospital was being run at night by inexperienced people, so they opened the position of night supervisor.

A year later the Director of Nursing resigned, and I was hired for that post. I got to know lots of wonderful people very well. I had worked in nursing in so many places, and in so many different types of nursing that I felt qualified for the position, although I didn't have a degree at that time. That was a good time. I got to know Yvonne Perry. I was able to see first hand the kind of care that I thought should be given. This is the value of a small town hospital, in my opinion - the personal care. You might go to larger hospitals for certain procedures but for personal care, you get it here.

I was accustomed to doing my own work, doing nursing and being responsible for what I'd done, but suddenly I was responsible for all the nurses and all the aides in the entire hospital. I began being called into a little cubby hole to be chewed out for something one of my nurses had done, as if I could control that. I began having nurses' meetings and discussing some of these things. At one time I got so passionate about the division between the east and west wings that I told them they needed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and worry about their own work, not being concerned with what was going on in the other wing. There seemed to be a perception that I didn't do anything but sit in my office, so I had a suggestion box and tried to make changes when they were appropriate. I also had a standing policy that if anyone felt overworked, or not getting a fair shake in their job, all they had to do was come to my office and trade places for an eight-hour shift. I would do their shift, they could do my work. I never had any takers.

In 1973, I saw a newspaper ad about a pilot project to train Nurse Practitioners in Iowa. At that time we had a few physician assistants but the only Nurse Practitioners I knew of were in pediatrics, the children's area. There would be resumes to submit, and tests to be taken. They wanted people from all types of nursing, people with degrees or without degrees. They would interview anyone who was interested, and select six people to send to a Nurse Practitioner Family Practitioner program, all expenses paid. The Board of Nursing and the Board of the Iowa Medical Society would study our skills and decide whether to put a Nurse Practitioner program in one of the Universities in Iowa.

I called my sister in Des Moines and asked if she had seen the advertisement. She had and was going to call me, so we both applied. We went through interview process, the whole bit. One day I got a letter, "You have been accepted to be one of the six people." I was so excited I didn't know what to do so I called my sister. There was silence on her end of the phone. She said, "I'm so happy for you." She hadn't gotten a letter. We both cried, but the next day she got hers. So the two Stansell sisters, both with other names by this time, were accepted for the pilot program. It was fun and exciting. Again, I was in a field of nursing where I was responsible just for myself and what I did. My ideals were what I followed, and that was really important to me.

Now the hunt was on. We each had to secure our own preceptor, a physician who would agree to be responsible for providing hands-on training after we had taken our didactic schooling in North Dakota. I considered myself very fortunate that James Kimball agreed to be my preceptor. We started at the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks. We had a month of intensive schooling, learned to do physical examinations, take patients' histories and write them up in medical format for use in hospital charts and clinics. After a month we came back to our home clinic, our assignment was to do the same thing here. The first couple of times Dr. Kimball sat and watched at least part of the exam, always with the patient's permission. I never knew when he'd be in, but we reached the point when he didn't come in any longer. I remember him looking at the first physical exam I did and dictated for a hospital chart, and saying, "You did this?" I said, "Yes." He said, ''No, I mean you did all this and wrote it up yourself?" I said, ''Yes,'' and he said, "Wonderful!" That was a great moment!

We practiced in our home clinics for several months then went back to North Dakota, this time at Minot, which is in the very northwestern area, and we were taught by the doctors at the Air Force Base. The second session was learning how to manage chronic diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, and that sort of situation. Again they were very intensive studies, after which we came back to our home clinics, and with the patients' permission, we would see those who came into the clinic, with the doctors deciding when we were competent enough to be on our own.

It was a new form of schooling so ours was a pilot project for Iowa but also for North Dakota. We had people from both states and it was wonderful and stimulating. It was fun being in school with my sister. The third session was acute illnesses. We learned to put on casts, and how to sew up lacerations, which we practiced on pig's ears. This was in the wintertime, the buildings were very tight, and they kept them very warm. After a couple of days, the pigs' ears didn’t smell too good, but we learned to put in stitches.

I thought I was pretty good until I got back home and a farmer came in. He had cut his finger. Dr. Kimball asked if he would mind my putting the stitches in since I'd had this excellent training and he would be right there. Him being "right there” was the problem. My hands were shaking so bad that I wasn't sure I would get the first stitch in. Then I had trouble tying the knot, but finally Jim walked out of the room, I became calm and whipped those last stitches in with no problem.

It was wonderful schooling, a wonderful opportunity, and it gave me the distinction of being one of the first Family Nurse Practitioners in Iowa. A problem was that the Board of Nursing had no ruling about us. They continued to study us and argue about us trying to decide what to do with us. That delay made me ineligible to write National Board exams. Physicians in Iowa asked if we would mind taking the Physician's Assistant Board exams, leaving it as a matter of choice. My sister and I both took them because we wanted to show them what we knew. They were pleased with the results.

I am not sure why it took another two or three years for rules and regulations to be written. Several people offered to help and were ignored, or the issue was put on the back burner. One day I was at the nursing home making rounds and renewing orders, when the examiner from the Board of Medical Examiners, an investigator, called me and asked me to come to the Highway Patrol Office to visit with him about what I was doing. I knew that was not something I should be doing, so I said I couldn't do that. He wanted to know why and I said, "Because I'm on my employer's time. If you want me to come there, you will have to call and get their permission."

There followed maybe 10 weeks in limbo - still in the process of compiling the rules and regulations. They had come down and reviewed records that I had done at the hospital. I was being investigated for practicing medicine and surgery without a license. If you don't think that makes your stomach turn over a few times, you're mistaken. I knew I hadn't but there we were. The surgery was trimming the callouses from an elderly gentleman's feet, and practicing medicine was doing a pelvic exam on a lady who was having problems. It was all very non-invasive, everyday stuff, but it was decided none of us could practice until the whole thing was resolved. In their kindness, my employers kept me on the payroll, and set me to work with a dermatologist, Dr. Schultz, a brilliant man, and an excellent teacher in an area in which we'd not had much schooling.

They used my time wisely. I wrote formal application papers to become a Physicians' Assistant, and I wasn't out of work that long, but what an experience! Nurse Practitioners today have no idea what we went through - not just me but what we all had to put up with. We had to have our name tags on right because some people might say we were impersonating a doctor. It was that sort of scrutiny constantly.

However, this is a new day. There are now probably 1200 or more in Iowa. In some places Nurse Practitioners can prescribe medication and even have their own clinics. We tend to work in smaller towns where there is a shortage of physicians. We can have an independent practice; can collaborate with physicians similarly to physicians collaborating with specialists. It is a wonderful climate and we offer a great service. We know, as Nurse Practitioners, we don't have all the answers but we can fill a big void. Now we are going into specialty areas. I was grandfathered in as far as licensing goes. I only have a three-year diploma, and now they are required to have a Masters degree and they even have a PhD program. I think we are here to stay.

Accident

I worked at the Clarke Medical Clinic as a Nurse Practitioner from 1975 to the fall of 1983. In October 1983, we were headed for Brookings to attend a parents' weekend where our middle son, Matt, was in school. We stopped in Ames to pick up our oldest son and our two boys, Fred and I, left Ames late afternoon. Our youngest son, Michael, was 15 and had his driver's permit. We decided to let him drive when we got on the Interstate, mainly because he was an inexperienced driver and we thought the roads were good. Besides that, he is the night-owl and it was getting late.

As it turned out all four of us fell asleep. I was in the back seat and I remember waking up and feeling the car began to drift toward the median. I yelled at Michael who tried to correct the problem but he was too sleepy to realize the cruise control was on. We went into the median and hit one of the turn-around roads provided for patrolmen. We were literally air borne. The car came down, knocking the wind out of all of us, and we thought no one was hurt. Then I realized I couldn't feel my toes. I figured I had injured my back.

It was probably about midnight when all this happened. Soon a car came, and the head-lights indicated the driver was pulling over. It was a nurse from one of the big hospitals in Sioux Falls, and we found we were about 13 miles from there. By now I knew I had a serious injury so she gave us directions to the hospital. Fred took over the wheel, and I won't say how fast he drove. We took a wrong turn and realized we weren't going to McKenna Hospital. We turned a corner and in front of us, in bright lights, was Sioux Valley Trauma Center. They managed to get me out of the back seat of a two-door car without so much as wiggling me. It was amazing! We spent the night there, not knowing anyone or anything except that I had probably injured my back severely.

The doctor finally came in after he had looked at the x-rays, and then I realized what a small world it was. He looked down and said, "Are you folks by chance from anywhere near Des Moines?" I said we were. He said, "You wouldn't happen to know Steve Taylor, would you?" He is an orthopedic doctor in Des Moines. These two men had done a residency together at Mayo Clinic and were close friends. This made everything all right.

After watching me they decided I was deteriorating too much and they would have to do surgery immediately. They told Fred I had fractured a bone in my middle back and a bone chip had gone into the spinal cord. It was swelling and they had to get the chip out of there or circumstances would be worse. Of course, I don't remember anything until I woke up the next morning, flat in bed and I couldn't roll over or do anything except to use my arms. I couldn't even feel my feet. It was pretty scary. I was accustomed to taking care of people and now I was the patient.

I was visited by a local priest, who was comforting, and then I had another visitor. Renita Reynolds, Joe and Francilia's daughter, lived there, working for a drug company. Her parents may have called her to tell her I was there. She came to see me! It was wonderful to see someone from my home town! All in all, it was quite an experience. I was subjected to equipment I'd used and now they were using it on me.

The doctor came back the afternoon following my surgery. He sat by my bed for a long time and I thought, "Something is not right, here." He said, "I don't know how to tell you this but I'm just going to spit it out. The scrub nurse called me at 11:00 this morning (six or seven hours after I'd had my surgery) and said the sponge count was not correct. We may have left a sponge in the incision." I still don't understand how that could have happened. The sponges are usually counted at least three or four times. Back down to x-ray we went and sure enough! Another surgery this time under local anesthetic. They opened the incision and pulled out the sponge, which felt like electricity going through my body. I've never felt anything like it.

I was visited by a doctor who was severely crippled, using crutches with hand braces. Fred said she talked to me about the probability that I wouldn't walk again. I honestly do not remember that. I guess that was not an option for me so I blocked it out. In the meantime, our children who were still in Sioux Falls got in the back and drove that same vehicle home. As an aside, Fred sold the car as soon as he got back home and settled, because he figured we'd have serious problems with it. I saw that car wheeling around Osceola for 15 years after the accident.

The time came to choose a physical therapy rehab facility. They highly recommended a very well-known one in Denver. We said, "Why? We have a perfectly good rehab center in Des Moines, close to home." They planned to arrange sending me home in an ambulance, in spite of the fact that I was still not able to sit up by myself, and I couldn't walk without help. I was still so sore that it was pretty uncomfortable even to be moved. I was really dreading the trip. Dr. Kimball called Fred and asked, "Why don't I rent an ambulance plane and fly up to get her?" I don't like to fly but those words were music to my ears.

Jim had an ambulance plane reserved and a big storm was coming in, so they wouldn't release the plane. Not to let that stop him, Dr. Kimball took out the back seat of his personal plane. They put me on a Gurney, took me out on the tarmac, and I think maybe they loaded me through a window. We were home in an hour instead of six or eight hours. I can never thank him enough. The insurance company would have paid for an ambulance. I can't even imagine what that would have cost. Just in town it is hundreds of dollars, but when we tried to get compensation for Dr. Kimball, even for just the gas, they wouldn't allow it. The plane was not an "authorized vehicle." We paid for his gasoline and he has our eternal gratitude.

I spent from the first part of November until the middle of January 1984, in Younkers Rehab Center, literally learning to walk again. I was in a six-bed ward learning to be a patient instead of a nurse. I have to say that even if I couldn't walk, I was better off than my roommates were. Some of them couldn't talk, some never had visitors, progress is so slow, and it gets to be a bleak existence. There were many stories but I'll tell one. A friend named Marge, directly across from me, had a viral infection of some of the nerves that left her paralyzed, they hoped just for a short time. She and I both weighed enough that the dietician put us on diets.

One day she and I determined we were going to maintain positive attitudes. It went fine until they brought our evening meal. Served on a white plate, it was cold, white albacore tuna, cauliflower, and a little dab of applesauce. I looked at it and thought just a little spiced apple or something with a bit of color would help! Poor Marge said, "I know we weren't going to complain but I can't eat this," and she began to cry. I said, "Don't cry, I'm going to fix it!" I had just been cleared to get out of bed into a wheel chair by myself. It was the second month I'd been there. I got in the wheel chair, wheeled myself out in the hall, looked both ways to make sure no nurses were there, whipped over to the elevator, went up a ramp over to Methodist Hospital, and into the gift shop. I bought cashews, peppermint candy, Snickers bars, everything I could get my hands on and we had a feast! There comes a point when we just have to assert ourselves and it felt good!

I remember another time when I had to comfort a nurse who was uncomfortable because I was crying. I don't remember ever feeling sorry for myself. I would have thoughts of why did this have to happen to me, but I didn't wallow in it. It just seemed like occasionally tears would well up from the stomach and come out with no thought. She said, "Please don't cry." I just looked at her and said, "I have to cry. If it makes you uncomfortable, why don't you go out in the hall? I'll be fine." Those were the two biggest impressions the illness made on me - that and an increased awareness. I became so aware of positive or negative energy. I could be lying with my back to the door and I could tell when a nurse came to the door whether or not she wanted to be there. I don't know if that sounds silly but there were times I wanted to say, "That's all right. I don't want you here, either." This all may have been a slow-down call for me. I had just run and run and maybe I was missing too much of life. I know I became keenly aware of people's energy - positive or negative. I've tried to keep that in my life because I think it is very important. It's what connects us.

I came home from the hospital on a snowy night in January, the night of the Democratic caucuses. My husband, who thought I wouldn't be home that soon, had called the neighborhood group that was accustomed to holding the caucuses at our house. I thought, "I'm not ready for this!" So I went over to Denny and Sandy Kale's and watched television. Here I was with two Republicans while the Democrats caucused at our house.

I continued in physical therapy at Clarke County Hospital, and I'll have to say I had a tough task-master. Anyone who knows Mike Schinzel knows he is. But whatever he did was the right thing because the doctors who said I wouldn't walk were wrong, and those who said I would be on crutches were wrong, and those who said I'd have to use a walker were wrong. I use one cane now just for support outside. I don't use it at home. I credit Mike Schinzel and Clarke County hospital for a lot of that. The lesson this brought home is that you can do a lot if you just dig in and do it.

After I'd been home about 2 ½ years, I was rehired at the Clinic as a Nurse Practitioner, working two days a week, which was wonderful for me. Prior to that I'd tried to help my husband in is office. He thought he was boss and I thought I was, so it was better that we both went back to our own careers. Then I went back to work full-time at a place I had said I'd never work - Broadlawns Hospital in Des Moines. My sister had taken nurses' training there and I thought it was a horrible place. She worked in Psych and De-Tox for awhile. So not only had I said I would never work at Broadlawns but if I had to, I certainly would not work in De-Tox. Guess who offered me a job.

I went up and interviewed, they liked me and I liked them, and there I was. I learned more about alcoholism the first year I was there, more about people's health and mental problems than I had learned the whole eight years of practice before that. It would start on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday, when the police would be hauling people who were intoxicated into the emergency room. They weren't always very kind to them. Some nights we would have one right after another until I wondered if it was ever going to end. I was there 3 ½ years on that particular unit and it gradually changed from alcohol to methamphetamine. I remember saying one night, "What I would give to see a good old fashioned alcoholic!" I mean no disrespect to the people. It's a hereditary disease, but the meth epidemic was horrible then and it still is. I hope they find a way to stop it some day. I've seen kids 13 and 14 years old hauled in. I saw a grandma, the same age as I, brought in having been turned in by her own daughter so she wouldn't be arrested. It was mind boggling!

I gained a great new respect for Broadlawns Hospital. There you can see more of what goes on in the world than any place I've ever been. The staff, the physicians, the nurses, everyone is one big team. They are there to help and that is what they do. It was a wonderful experience to be working for them. My sister was working there, too, so we got to be together again. We were just far enough apart that we didn't butt heads. I drove back and forth for six years working from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. four days a week. It was a 10-hour shift but by the time I did the charting, it was 12. When the weather was bad, I'd go home with Linda and stay there, so everything worked out well.

Mother passed away in Des Moines. She was in a care center there for her last years because that was where both of her daughters were working. She had always said she didn't want to be in a nursing home, and she certainly never wanted to be in a hospital. She was in a nursing home for two weeks. She was admitted to the hospital one night and passed away the next afternoon. They were so kind to her! By then another familiar figure had come on the scene. Dr. Kimball's son, Joe, was doing his internship there and he took care of my mother, which made it so nice for her and us, too. We were fortunate to be with her when she died, and it was very peaceful.

I retired from Broadlawns Hospital on the millennium, the year 2000. I didn't tell anyone for awhile. I just wanted to spend some time at home, reading books, and being quiet. That didn't work. I had been too busy for too many years so I soon started looking for something else to do. I opened a Wellness Clinic next to Crossroads Mental Health. Two massage therapists rented space from me and I did health counseling, healing-touch work, etc. At that time it was hard to get routine physicals done so I offered them. I worked three days a week or by appointment. I really enjoyed that. I exchanged modalities with the massage therapist so I had a lot of good massages. I met a lot of nice people, but I missed people contact, especially children.

It was probably a year after that when I went to Des Moines and studied hypnotism from Dr. Gregg States. He was a well-known hypnotherapist. I wrote the exam so I am certified. That is pretty much what I have been doing lately. I work with people with a smoking addiction, weight problems; I've helped kids with test anxiety, fingernail biting or other habits. It is not magic. It is really self-hypnosis. Anything you want to quit doing badly enough you can quit doing.

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Last Revised October 25, 2013