Carol Caudle Oral History Interview, February 1, 2020

ALEXA ELLIOT: Okay, can you please tell me your name, today's date, and the location of where we are?

CAROL CAUDLE: I'm Carol Caudle, in Canby, Oregon, and this is the day before Groundhog's Day, February 1st. I'm ready for Groundhog's Day. I've built my puzzle and everything.

AE: Let's start at the beginning. Where were you born?

CC: I was born in Vancouver, Washington. My parents actually lived in Oregon but my mother's doctor was in Vancouver, so I was born over there.

AE: Did you move around a lot, or did you mostly grow up in one place?

CC: We stayed in the Portland area until I was about 3 or 4 and I started having breathing problems. I got asthma real bad. I got pneumonia. I was having a really tough time. I was sent out to the Children's Hospital. I think it's a 00:01:00McMenamins now. The county hospital up the river somewhere. I remember being in that hospital when I was 3 years old and they put me in a crib and that was embarrassing. The doctor finally said your daughter will not survive if she stays in the Portland area. She doesn't do well here, so my parents find some friends that lived in Redmond. They asked if I could come stay with them for just a few days to see if I was any better. I went over there and I became a holy terror, I think. I was all over their ranch, just running and playing with the other kids having a wonderful time. That's when my parents moved to Bend and 00:02:00that's where I grew up.

AE: What was it like to grow up in Bend?

CC: Awesome. We had 30 acres of natural land, rocky part of it, part of it was fields. We raised potatoes, alfalfa. We moved irritation pipe as children across the field one set at a time. We had animals. We had cats and dogs. My brothers had pigs because they were in FFA. One brother liked black angus. Another brother liked dairy, cows, jerseys. My mother liked chickens because they had eggs. We had a wonderful, wonderful place to grow up. Now it's apartment buildings.

AE: Tell me more about growing up with your brothers, because you had four, right, or five?

CC: Five brothers. I was the middle child. I got away with a lot because I was the only girl. Their interests were pretty much different from mine but all mealtimes and evenings we all came together and we were a very normal, American family. Very different from now, I think.

AE: Did your parents just work on the farm? Or did they work outside of the house?

CC: My mother did a lot of the work on the farm. She helped us move irritation pipe and she had a garden. My father worked for the SP&S Railroad at night as a 00:04:00night watchman. In the daytime he had a landscaping service that he took care of the yards for people along Maripond there in downtown Bend. He had a really nice job. He enjoyed it. All his customers really liked him and they would always send him home with some goodies or a gift or something. We had it good.

AE: Did you or any of your siblings ever work with him?

CC: No. I don't know why.

AE: Where'd you go to school?

CC: I went to a school called Yewlane on the little street called Yewlane Lane, y-e-w.

I guess it was built during the World War II because there were quonset huts, 00:05:00those kind of buildings made out of metal, or I don't know, anyway there were four little metal buildings all together and offices in the middle. It was a little different. Then I graduated from Bend High School.

AE: Can you tell me what school was like back then? Because I'm sure there were similarities and differences to how it is now.

CC: Yes. Bend started having growing pains a little bit and they had to built the new school, so for a little bit the senior high went to school in the morning and the junior high went to school in the afternoon. That probably only lasted a year, not more than two. Then I graduated from the new high school. I 00:06:00was probably the second or third class that graduated. We had six classes throughout the day. Three in the morning and three in the afternoon, probably three minutes to get from class to class. They were mostly lecture. I would think similar as it is today.

AE: Yeah. How were you as a student?

CC: I was pretty social, but schoolwork came easy for me and I was a good student. I didn't get straight A's, but almost.

AE: Are there any goods friends that stick out in your memory from your childhood?

CC: Yes. I had a friend that I met in junior high and our friendship was the typical junior high friendship. I'm not sure if it's typical for today but we would call each other because we were in the afternoon part of junior high. We'd 00:07:00call each other in the morning and find out what the other was wearing and then maybe it was going to be the same or sort of same or I don't know why we had to find out what the other was wearing. It was a big deal. We were good friends. We did a lot of things together. She was crazy. I was a follower but to a certain extent I did not go for everything that she thought she'd like to do.

AE: You helped keep her a little grounded?

CC: Yes. I was more grounded.

AE: Were you involved in any sports or organizations while you were in school?

CC: I always wanted to be a cheerleader and I'd go out in the back field and I would jump and yell and do cheers and all this stuff before it was time to try out. I never made cheerleader status. We lived out far enough I really couldn't 00:08:00do sports. No sports.

AE: Not any clubs or anything either, or?

CC: Well, I was in honors society and there was something called Future Homemakers of America but I don't know if we ever met after school, never in the evening. It was just a club like Future Farmers, I suppose, FFA, but they of course met on weekends and had fair things. It was pretty normal.

AE: Did you spend a lot of your free time just playing and spending time with your friends?

CC: Yeah.

AE: Did you have any jobs while you were growing up?

CC: I did. There was a lady that needed somebody to help clean cabins out at a 00:09:00resort on the Metolius Lake Creek Lodge, and I was looking for something to do during the summer and I don't know how the match came, but she hired me to come out and do that with some other gals that came up from the LA area. Did that. That was really good work experience. We cleaned cabins each day, especially in between vacationers. We helped serve meals. We did regular resort type things way before resorts are so common today. It was a pretty exclusive resort. It was good.

AE: How did you decide to attend Oregon State?

CC: Well, I always knew Oregon State was the best. At that time it was Oregon 00:10:00State College. A few years later it became Oregon State University. My second brother chose to go there. He was the brother just a little bit older than I, and so that was a natural thing. Oregon state was where this family went to school. I did. It was exciting.

AE: Had your parents gone there?

CC: No. They didn't go to college. I think it was just my older brother that went there. I don't know how that decision came about. We really didn't have the money for us to be going, but it was much cheaper then. I did apply for a scholarship and got that. That helped out. It was good.

AE: Did any of your younger brothers end up going, too?

CC: Let's see, one went to the University of Oregon. No, I don't think any more of us did. Yeah.

AE: What was it like to move from Bend to Oregon State College?

CC: It was exciting. It was my first time away from home and I was all grown up, I thought. It was a big deal to learn who my roommate would be and where she was from and how the dorm would be. We were in Holly Hall, I think that was a boy's dorm but they made it a girl's dorm at that time. That's what they needed. We were right in the center of everything.

AE: On campus?

CC: Close to classes.

AE: That's nice. So did you feel you had a pretty good adjustment to living away from home?

CC: Yes. I got a job in the cafeteria serving and then a little later I got a job fixing dinner for a family that lived a few miles away, just they both worked and so I just had an off-campus job.

AE: That was pretty soon after you moved there?

CC: It might have started winter term or before, I can't remember exactly when that was.

AE: Were there other people from your town that went to Oregon State, too?

CC: There were a few. I didn't see them. They were in other dorms. I was on my own and my roommate and I bonded readily. We both came from similar rural areas and she was a lot of fun. We just chose to do things a lot together.

AE: What was your dorm room like?

CC: It was a boy's dorm. It didn't have any long closets. The closets were for shirts. There were two beds, a desk, a window and then the bathroom was down the hall. Probably normal.

AE: Sounds pretty standard. So you talked about clothes and we talked in my class a bit about how there were certain dress clothes and expectations for what you wore on campus. Do you remember that being different than what you grew up with?

CC: I do not. I do remember that nobody wore jeans or long pants hardly.

AE: Girls?

CC: Girls. Yeah. I almost always wore a skirt or a dress. I do remember, though, that I went out for powder puff football. Do you they still have powder puff football?

AE: We did it in my high school, but I haven't heard about it at OSU.

CC: They did it at Oregon State, and I know because I had some pictures of us on the field passing and all this stuff. I wore long pants, so we did do that. It was cold, cold and wet.

AE: When you played powder puff, or just in general the weather?

CC: In between classes, yeah. Winter term was kind of long that way, but it was good. It was a very good place to go to school.

AE: Was powder puff a pretty big event or was it just for fun?

CC: I think to me it was a big event because I wanted to do it and I really 00:15:00wanted to play it. Our coaches were football players.

AE: Oh.

CC: Yeah, so that was a big deal. They taught us plays and everything. Then, one Saturday they had the game. I don't know if we were two teams we played against each other or how that went, but I just remember it was really fun.

AE: Did you grow close to your teammates?

CC: No, it was a pretty short term thing. It was maybe only three weeks.

AE: Sounds like fun though.

CC: Yeah it was fun.

AE: For living in the dorm, do you remember any rules or expectations that were different than you were used to?

CC: No. We had curfew. I expected that. I thought that was the right thing. I 00:16:00was never late for curfew. I don't remember anything I felt unreasonable about or was a burden to me that I felt was-it was all just that's the way we were raised, for the most part. There were girls that had trouble making curfew at night.

AE: Do you remember if they would get in trouble for that?

CC: Yeah, there was some kind of thing, but I don't remember.

AE: Does late minutes ring a bell?

CC: Late minutes?

AE: Yeah, we read about that in my class. It was like every minute late was like a late minute and if you got too many you'd be reprimanded in some way, you'd have to stay in the next evening.

CC: That may easily have been the case.

AE: Yeah.

CC: But I wasn't aware of it.

AE: Because it didn't really-

CC: It didn't really enter my life.

AE: Then you said you worked the cafeteria, right?

CC: Yes, I did.

AE: What was that like?

CC: It was fun. It was social. You want potatoes? That, you know. There were, let's see, Holly and Weatherford, and it seems like there may have been another dorm that all ate in that cafeteria. I can't remember even which building the cafeteria was in, but we got to know people from the other dorms locally. That was nice.

AE: Did you guys ever have dinners in your dorm or was that not a thing?

CC: No.

AE: Okay, that must have been before?

CC: There was probably a hot plate or something, where if you had something you wanted to heat up you could. There was a little lounge down at the end of the hall. There were some table, chairs, maybe a sofa that you could relax and 00:18:00interact with your dorm mates and we also had our dorm meetings there. That sort of thing, but it seemed to be real normal life to me.

AE: Makes sense. What was your area of study while you were there?

CC: I think I started out in math, I'm pretty sure. Somehow I kind of got hooked into map making and I took a cartography class, map making. I don't know why. But it was probably like an elective. It was math. I enjoyed math.

AE: Why were you interested in math?

CC: It was easy. I liked figuring things out and things making sense much more 00:19:00than social studies. Studying other peoples from other countries and that sort of thing was always very interesting, but behaviors and thought patterns and that sort of thing was not concrete enough for me to enjoy it. I liked something I could learn it, see how it worked, and that was good. That was satisfying.

AE: Was it a pretty male-dominated field of study?

CC: Maybe a little bit. A little bit.

AE: But it didn't really bother you or stand out to you?

CC: No.

AE: Do you remember other classes that you took?

CC: Well, everyone took English. Did we call it that? American Civ. I can't 00:20:00remember which math classes I took. College algebra, trigonometry, I don't remember. But we did take a PE kind of class. I don't remember what that was.

AE: Do you remember having to swim?

CC: We may have had to swim for part of one of our terms, yeah. I didn't look forward to it.

AE: We read about how swimming was required for everyone to get their degrees up to a certain point, so I don't know if it was still when you were there.

CC: You know it may have been required but I don't think it was a whole term. We may have needed to get a certification or something like that.

AE: It probably depended on how much you knew about swimming?

CC: Yeah. On our farm we had a stock pond. It was a pond that the irrigation water ran into and then our pump would pump the water out to water the fields through the pipes and also the stock that we had were close by and they could drink out of that stock pond. It was like a reservoir. We swam and played in there during the summer. We always had a swimming pool. I swam.

AE: That sounds fun.

CC: Yeah. It was really nice.

AE: Do you remember any traditions that the university or the students took part in?

CC: The first week I think is paw paw picking. Did you do that?

AE: No. I don't think we've talked about that in my class, either.

CC: That is probably so long-gone. I don't remember. I think just all of the freshman meet on the football field and you're picking up paw paws.

AE: What are paw paws?

CC: I can't remember. It was imaginary and maybe somebody else at Oregon State or an instructor or somebody might remember paw paw picking. That was the tradition for freshman for the first week. I'm sure there were other traditions, but that one I guess was bizarre enough that I would remember it.

AE: Was it like a thing you would just do for a little bit each day?

CC: No, it was just one evening after the first week. Everybody gathered and the loudspeaker and it was probably would be called a mixer for the freshman to bump 00:23:00into each other and say hi, who are you or where are you from? Maybe something like that. I don't know the purpose of it other than that.

AE: Do you recall freshman having to wear green ribbons or green caps?

CC: No. That sounds anti-Beaver.

AE: It does, doesn't it? Maybe it would have gone away by your time, but for a long time the freshman girls would wear green ribbons in their hair on Wednesdays and the boy would wear green caps.

CC: To indicate they're new, or green?

AE: Yeah.

CC: No, huh-uh, we didn't do that.

AE: Did you attend sporting events?

CC: Yes. Always. Basketball games, football games. It was the thing you do.

AE: Was there a lot of school spirit?

CC: Mm-hmm.

AE: Did you have to dress a certain way to go to the games?

CC: No.

AE: Or was it pretty much the same as the campus wear?

CC: Yeah, just campus wear?

AE: Would you go with friends?

CC: Mm-hmm. Probably a lot of people had a shirt at that time. I think most students had an OSU or Beaver shirt of some sort at that time, those kind of shirts were on the scene, but not lots like now.

AE: Did you attend any dances while you were at Oregon State?

CC: It seems like I did. Not memorable. I don't know what would be the occasion.

Maybe after a football game or something there was that sort of thing. But I 00:25:00didn't do a lot of that. I don't think anybody did a lot of it.

AE: What would you do in your free time?

CC: Well I did need to study.

AE: Right.

CC: Walked downtown. Meet someone for a coke. Go for walks. I didn't have a lot of free time since I had the cafeteria and also working for these people.

AE: So you did those at the same time?

CC: I may have done like a lunch in the cafeteria and then after class do the dinner thing for the private couple.

AE: Gotcha. Were you involved in any organizations or club at school?

CC: No.

AE: No. Did you go to the Women's Building often? Do you remember that being-?

CC: Yes, it was there. I was in it. I don't remember, I don't think I ever had a class there or what I did. Was there a swimming pool in there?

AE: I believe so.

CC: That might be where I swam.

AE: Makes sense. Do you remember that there was a dean of women?

CC: Oh yes.

AE: Did you ever interact with her, or?

CC: No. We all knew who she was and we would hear about people that had to go talk to the dean if their grades weren't very good, but yeah she was the close authority figure for the students.

AE: Do you remember what people thought of her generally or what you thought of her?

CC: I didn't know her that well. I think she was accepted and probably appreciated by the students. It was a good thing. A bunch of 18-year-olds invade the campus, you need to have some kind of a little bit of an authority figure. A little bit, still.

AE: What was the social atmosphere of the school like? Was there a lot of focus on dating and like trying to find a spouse or was it more casual than that?

CC: It was pretty casual. If we didn't go downtown for a coke we always met in the MU or we studied in the MU and chatted a lot and met up with people. Dating-there was a lot of dating but it was so uninvolved for the most part. 00:28:00There was a girl on our floor that just, she wasn't stable relationship-wise and there was always some big crisis and it was something most of us couldn't identify with, but unfortunately I heard after the first year she committed suicide where she lived at home. You know, she was having a struggle and none of us saw it. We just saw that she was just very emotional, but it wasn't like people were thinking marriage or needing to find a partner. Probably there was 00:29:00more then, however, than now, because the impression I get now is that students in college generally wait until they're out of college to get married. I don't know. Maybe that's just me.

AE: That sounds about right.

CC: Yeah. Not many married while in college then, but quite a few did find serious relationships.

AE: You met your husband at Oregon State?

CC: Yes, I did.

AE: Will you tell me about that?

CC: Yes. Well, I did not like history of American civ. I don't know if it was the lecture, math was fun and challenging. But history of American civ was a lot of stuff to remember and he was standing outside my class one day.

I came out after a test and he said, how'd you do on the test? I think he was going into that classroom for the same class, evidently. Oh, no it might have been a different class because I said, oh, it was terrible, of course. He said, I could get you some old tests. I said, really? Old tests? Where do you find that? At my fraternity. Oh. Yeah, that'd be good. That'd be good. I don't remember if he skipped his next class and we had a coke and he set up to bring me a couple old tests, but that's how I met him. He was my hero. Not that I was failing, but I probably-

AE: It was just easier.

CC: Yeah, I didn't get an A in that class, ever.

AE: At what point did you meet him in your year, was it-?

CC: It was probably in the winter term.

AE: Okay. So what kind of stuff would you guys do together after that?

CC: We'd go for a coke. Got to the MU. Meet there. It mostly involved eating and drinking of coke. For me it was always root beer, though.

AE: You didn't like coke?

CC: l love root beer. Especially a root beer float, that's even better.

AE: You left Oregon State not long after that, right? Would you tell me about the decision to leave?

CC: It was, I decided to drop out of school toward the middle to end of spring 00:32:00term. That wasn't a wise decision, but we had talked a lot about the future. That was his last term at school. He graduating then and I just felt like he was the one for me and that I could continue my education somewhere in the future, which I did. But, yeah, I dropped out and we got married first of May. That was that.

AE: Where'd you guys go after you left school?

CC: We went down to the Coquille area where he had a job driving log truck. That 00:33:00was his dream after he finished school is driving a log truck. It was just in his blood. His major was geology, so I always asked him oh, those rocks what are they? Why are those rocks red? He never could tell me a thing about rocks, so that was a big disappointment to me but it's okay.

AE: Then, how long did you guys stay in Coquille?

CC: We were there for a little while and then we decided to build a house in Coos Bay which was very close and we stayed in that house for probably 9 years.

AE: Most your kids were born there, was Meagan the youngest born down there?

CC: Your mother was born there.

AE: Yeah.

CC: Then we moved to California for a couple years while he built another plywood plant and then our fourth child was born there.

AE: In California?

CC: In California. But building that plant only took a couple years and then we came back to Oregon and we came back to Eugene and we were there.

AE: How was raising kids in Coos Bay?

CC: It was good. We lived in an area that had farms fairly close and playmates close and the road was a dirt road.

Everything was totally unstructured, even at that time, and the kids enjoyed it. 00:35:00They could have animals and it was a good life.

AE: Did you have a lot of animals?

CC: No we just had dogs and cats.

AE: Were you like a stay at home mom or did you work a bit too?

CC: I was pretty much a stay at home mom. I would volunteer for things, but when our youngest was 3 I decided I wanted to take nurses training because I was just tired of calling a friend who was a nurse to find out what should I do about this? What do you think? Is something wrong? I thought just taking nurses training would help me be a much better mother. I'd like to know all that stuff, so I told my husband. He laughed. He said you? A nurse? Haha. So, I did. I did 00:36:00that while the kids were at school. It was good. Then I thought after I was through with that I will look in the paper and see which hospital does not have an ad for needing nurses. I would contact them and see if they needed a nurse because working really wasn't my goal. It was just being a better mom. I called them and they said well, could you just come in at 2:00 or whatever? I went in for an interview and she said well could you start tonight? I said, oh, tonight? She said, we need somebody on night shift, that's usually when nurses start in is on night shift and work their way up to day shift. I said, well, I guess I'm 00:37:00not usually doing anything at night, just sleeping. How could you say, oh, I'm busy? That's how I started working, like maybe just 3 days a week. I started doing that and I just loved it. I just loved it. For most of my nursing time I ended up in the emergency room for all of that time I do believe. I would have done that job even if they didn't pay me. I loved it. I've been blessed.

AE: Was this when you were living in Eugene?

CC: Yes. I started work when, yes, we were in Eugene. I started working there at 00:38:00Good Sam. In fact, I did emergency at the Eugene Clinic and Hospital, it was called in those days. That's changed. Or, no, that was Sacred Heart down there. I worked some at Sacred Heart and then I did emergency at Eugene Clinic and Hospital. I stuck with emergency nursing for the rest of my time because I loved it.

AE: Backing up a bit to your training. Did you officially apply to nursing school and had to get in? Or what was that process like?

CC: It was becoming hard to get into nursing school at that time. They had more applicants than spaces. I'm thinking maybe I applied in a lottery, but I'm 00:39:00thinking probably most of the people got in at that time. I did get right in after I applied. Soon after that it got real hard to get in and now it's still, they're screened and a bunch of things. The education is meeting up with the demand better than it did for quite a while there.

AE: Did you feel like you were a little bit under-educated when you entered the field, or what did you mean by the last statement?

CC: I don't know what I said.

AE: You said you felt like now the education is ramping up to meet the demands, or is that the demands have increased?

CC: I mean the established education out there, there's enough spots in the nursing field education to meet the need of nurses in the hospitals.

I felt my nursing was very good. I took two years at Clackamas Community College 00:40:00and maybe half of my education at Oregon State, applied there. Then I got registered nurse degree there and then I went on to Oregon Health Sciences in Portland. Then I got my bachelors in nursing, and that was wise and good. I liked that.

AE: About how many years of training was that altogether?

CC: [Holds up four fingers]

AE: Four?

CC: [Nods]

AE: Yeah. How was it doing that while you were raising a family?

CC: I think I did it well. I think I managed it well.

AE: Was it challenging, though?

CC: You know I have a really bad memory for hard or bad things, I think. My 00:41:00memory stores good times, good things. I don't remember. I know that my youngest was 3 when I started and she went a couple days a week to our church nursery school, when she was 3. One day the director of the nursery school came to me with a smile on her face and she says I want to know what you know that your daughter, she's very short, very petite, and she's got these red curls all over her head. She marched from her classroom down to the director's office and put her hands on her hips and she said, my teacher wants us to take a nap and I'm not going to do it. That is the main thing, the biggest thing, that ever happened while I was in school. I don't know. I just remember that.

AE: You said you went from the community college to Oregon State to OHSU?

CC: Well, Oregon State first, then to take nursing at the community college, then OHSU.

AE: Okay. When you went up to OHSU did you move up to Portland, like your family?

CC: We were up here. We had been transferred from Eugene to this area.

AE: Gotcha. Was it a lot different living up there than Eugene, or?

CC: Well, I was here and then I commuted up to OHSU.

AE: Okay, I see.

CC: That was the only place, not the only place to get a bachelor's in nursing but the others were just like Linfield and maybe a couple more schools were starting to add a bachelor's in nursing and they were not very well-attended 00:43:00yet. I just went to OHSU. It was there and it was good.

AE: Right. You said you really enjoyed nursing? Will you tell me a little bit what it was like in the early days when you started nursing?

CC: Oh, boy. I think in those days what would this be?

AE: '70s?

CC: The late '70s, early '80s that people were in hospitals kept in longer for different illnesses or surgeries. I think a lot of surgeries people would stay in the hospital for 7 to 10 days as now some of it is outpatient, where you get to stay one night or whatever. That's been an improvement in the medical process, so a lot of nursing at that time was bringing pills, changing the beds, 00:44:00helping the person to the bathroom, giving baths, just that kind of thing. I was not on floor nursing for only a couple weeks after I got my first job. They put me in the ICU. Coronary care. There was more watching monitors. Watching for death-producing heart rhythms and that sort of thing. They still do that. That's unchanged from now. Medicines are better.

Heart arrhythmias are much more well-controlled but in that time it was not rare to defibrillate a patient, and you know what that is.

AE: Yeah.

CC: The pads, shock them.

AE: Yes.

CC: I don't think, I think maybe in coronary care or in intensive care they have to do that once in a while but I don't know. I guess is how it's changed most. There's not as many acute patients in those days on the floor as now. I think nursing is more involved now on the floor than it used to be because the people don't stay very long.

AE: Right. What were the relationships like between the doctors and the nurses?

CC: They're all different. Some doctors are just, you don't make a mistake. I 00:46:00don't want the nurse taking care of my patient to make a mistake. That's just it and if you do it's like, rarr, rarr, rarr. You don't do it anymore, right? There's I think I only knew one that was a prima donna to the extreme. The minute he retired he became the most friendly, unassuming, accepting person. I could not believe the change. He's probably just stressed with his job. I don't know. He over-valued, I guess you shouldn't say over-valued. I don't know what 00:47:00it was the reason that he was like that. I don't know. But otherwise, the doctors and nurses real close. Worked together. There's always an exception.

AE: How about the relationships among the nurses?

CC: They were good. Generally if there was some friction that lasted very long at all, somebody would change to a different shift or different day or something. Yeah. There's not room in the hospital for that sort of thing.

AE: Did it feel like much of a change between when you went from school to nursing, especially family-wise. Were you away more or was it about the same?

CC: I was gone a little bit more. That was kind of hard because there would be a 00:48:00few evenings or few times when I would miss out on what the kids were doing and that was just a part of it. I always tried to do our best and they were in school all day, all of them. Then they went away to college. It was just kind of worked out pretty well, I think. Your mother could tell you.

AE: Yeah. You said that one of the big changes was moving from a lot of in-patient to a lot less. Were there other changes you noticed along your career in the medical field? Like technology advances, probably?

CC: A lot of new medications came on board. Even now I'll watch TV and they're 00:49:00advertising medicines I've never heard of. Of course I think that is a big way to get doctors to start using them is put it on TV, have the patient ask the doctor say, I saw something on TV. There's this medicine. I want to try this. I think it'd be really good for me. That's what the doctor gets. There was none of that but the medications did improve a lot from the beginning, like I said. You know in coronary care there were a lot of things that we did for patients that they don't have to do so much now because of controlled situations with meds, fluids.

AE: Did your duties shift over time as more people were in and out rather than 00:50:00staying long-term in the hospital?

CC: Not really. They stayed pretty much the same the whole time. Intensive care and coronary care is much different than floor nursing. That's the big differences. They're both very important, but there's a reason you only have one and maybe two patients instead of 4 or 6.

AE: When you're in intensive care?

CC: Yeah.

AE: Is that different than emergency? Or pretty similar?

CC: Emergency's way different because there are a few times you have no patients, especially if it's in the night. But most of the time in emergency room you're running.

AE: That's what you ended up doing for most of your career?

CC: Yeah.

AE: Can you tell me a bit more about that experience?

CC: I really liked that. That's where I became extremely bossy, no doubt. People would come in with expectations and they didn't always get what they expected and usually it was the nurse that had to tell them, no, that's how we treat that. We do, da, da, da, da, da. Then some would argue back. Unfortunately it still is that way, maybe not so much, but it's the people who have no insurance, no regular doctor, no healthcare organization go to the emergency room and so their care reflects that. They come in with unreasonable requests or are angry 00:52:00about something. A lot of, I shouldn't say a lot, some people leave angry from the emergency room because they have a preconceived idea of what they want and if that's not in line with medical protocol at that time there's just nothing we can do about that. Not too many times they'll end up going to a different emergency room because they can't begin to pay for that emergency visit. It's a pretty expensive thing.

AE: What do you think really drew you to emergency room nursing over floor nursing?

CC: The intensity. The action. The pace, maybe the excitement. That's just me.

AE: Makes sense. Were you ever promoted to be more of a head nurse or something like that?

CC: Yes, I was head nurse from time to time. I never did want to be in administration, however. I could have done that. I had a bachelor's degree. I think now you have to have a master's degree probably. But I never did want to leave what I was doing with the patients.

AE: You preferred the patient interaction.

CC: Yeah it was good.

AE: Makes sense. I know church has always been a really big part of your life. You want to tell me a bit about that over the years?

CC: Yes. Our family always went to church on Sundays and I don't know where that piano came from that my parents got, but we got a piano so I got to take piano lessons. It wasn't wrong before our little church needed somebody to play the piano, so I became the pianist for our little church. I did that clear till I graduated from high school. Regular church attendance. God is relevant in my life and knowing him and knowing that makes my life way different than those that maybe have a random feel about what life is all about.

I feel very secure in my relationship with God knowing what Jesus Christ did for me. I'm blessed and thankful. It's a wonderful life. Yeah, we've always gone to church. My husband didn't go to church always but I took myself and my children to church and I guess maybe it became easier for him just to join us rather than to stay home. We still go to the same church that we went not continuously because we've moved a little bit but the same church we went to when our 00:56:00children were growing up and teenagers. We've had a lot of the same friends that we've had for 40, almost 50, years at church. It's a good thing. They're our closest friends.

AE: I guess you went during college too, like while you were at Oregon State.

CC: Yeah. Not consistently, but I did.

AE: Was there a group of people that you would go with or was it more something you did on your own?

CC: It was mostly on my own. I remember it was a bad thing.

AE: To go to church?

CC: This experience.

AE: Yeah, gotcha.

CC: I had this boyfriend. I really liked him so I said I want to go to church tomorrow morning. It's at 9:00 or 10:00 or whatever. He goes, oh, okay and so 00:57:00the next morning he calls oh, I can't make it. I just don't feel good or something. I thought, oh brother. But anyway, that only happened once but why do I remember that? I don't know. It's crazy. It's a good life.

AE: Was religion a very big thing at Oregon State or was it kind of people were on their own?

CC: I don't think a lot of students went to church. Although there was an organization, oh what was that? It was campus crusade came along a little bit 00:58:00later. I'm not sure if they were there or just a few years later. But campus crusade was a wonderful college organization for getting students who were Christians and ones that were interested together to support each other do more things with a biblical perspective. It's a wonderful organization. You still have, it's grew now.

AE: There's multiple organizations.

CC: Are there?

AE: Yeah. I don't know the specifics. Then, you volunteered, I know you volunteered with medical teams or that you have more recently. Have you always volunteered with your church or through your church or was that more something 00:59:00you did after you retired.

CC: I think the volunteering came more after I retired. I had a little bit of time that I could do things like that. It kind of probably replaced my work routine a little bit. Medical teams international. I pretty much started with them by going to disaster areas to take medical help to people. So many, I think I went 11 times one month at a time. Do you want to hear about this?

AE: Yeah, yeah. I kind of actually forgot about it because you haven't done it in a long time. But yeah we could talk about it.

CC: There was a time when in Honduras they got rain focused in one area of Honduras.

I think they were saying 48" or 50" of rain in 24 hours. Well, it flooded 01:00:00everything. Washed out the railroad system. It just washed the dirt right out. Took out the bridges. Took away homes. I joined a team, it's a month-long thing, just taking medications and treating people. That was so wonderful and we pretty much walked from village area to village area. I remember just sleeping on top of a table many times. I chose that over the floor, just so you could do that. It was well-supported by the headquarters here in Portland. I did that. We did the earthquakes in Haiti. Let's see what was it in Mozambique-war in Mozambique 01:01:00and we went out into that field. I really feel like even just 20 years ago I was maybe one of the first white people or Caucasian people that some of the people in Africa that were seeing, because we'd get really back where there was big need. Liberia, that was war. Interesting country. There is a church I swear on every corner of every block in Monrovia. That town is composed of so many people that lived in the United States. They were brought here as slaves and then they had a chance, I forget under which presidency, to go back to Africa, so a lot of slaves went back to Africa. You probably never heard about that. They became 01:02:00Christians, or church oriented, when they were here and they went back and they reestablished Christianity in Liberia. They named their country Liberia around America, them having liberty. Monrovia, their main town, for James Monroe, the president. Their flag looks a lot like the American flag. Liberia loves America. It was so wonderful to see a country that loves America. Yeah, and then Pakistan, an area that I'd never been. So interesting to get to meet the needs of people that are suffering. It was Pakistan. It was all good, yes. Thank you 01:03:00for bringing that up, because I loved that.

AE: Yeah. So was Honduras the first time you went?

CC: I think it was, that was the very first time.

AE: Do you remember was this like early 2000s or earlier or later?

CC: It was probably about mid '90s, I think. '96, '94, something like that.

AE: How did you get into that?

CC: Well, that was interesting. That one really wasn't with medical teams. There's a doctor out here by Newberg. He calls himself the country doctor. He likes to see people in their homes and he heard about that awful think happening 01:04:00in Honduras, so he just got some friends together by word of mouth and I think there were about 11 of us that went down and he got some contacts and we went down that way. After that, then I was ready, or medical teams heard about is, or I heard about them or something after that.

AE: You said that you really enjoyed being able to help these people and in these hard situations.

CC: So much suffering. If you can see the ability for you to help a little bit one suffering person.

That's what it's all about. To say nothing of fixing the whole situation, once 01:05:00in a while we can do that. Splint a break in the arm or you know it's so many things we could do just what they needed. They're just all so grateful, so grateful. They just act like they can't thank us enough for helping them. AE: You talked a little bit about sleeping on tables. I'm guessing conditions really varied depending on where you were and what was going on. CC: Let's see, Mozambique I think they had moved out of an old concrete building in town and then someone had come in and sprayed but they said okay here's where you can 01:06:00sleep, concrete floors, but that's okay. The floor was almost covered with I can't remember what those things are... those awful things that climb all over when things are dirty. Help me out.

AE: Cockroaches?

CC: Yes. They've been sprayed and so one of the people in our group got a broom and found something to use as a dustpan and he was sweeping them up from all over the floor before we rolled out our sleeping bags, but there was just cockroaches all over, but we were thankful for, you know, it's good. We'd put in a full day. We were tired, and it's okay. Just let me lay down for a little bit.

AE: Did you ever feel unsafe when you were in any of these areas?

CC: [Nods].

AE: Yeah.

CC: Honduras. I do believe it was, so it's the middle of the night and I was in a room with one of the other gals and it was midnight or 1:00 or something and I start hearing this yelling and my Spanish wasn't good enough to understand exactly what they were saying from so far away but it was something about the women. They were firing guns. They were yelling the whole time and it was getting closer and closer and closer. I wanted to get under my bed, but I didn't think that would do any good. I felt like it was something about the women in our team. Why else would they be carrying guns around yelling about the women? 01:08:00So, I prayed and my roommate she said, Carol, Carol, do you hear that? I go, yes, I'm praying. She says, I am too. We just laid there and waited and finally it started waning. The next morning we talked to our team about it at breakfast and they said, the locals said oh, yeah, this is the day of the woman and that's what they do to celebrate women [laughs].

AE: You weren't really in danger.

CC: We weren't. I just thought we were.

AE: It's understandable.

CC: That was one of my scariest times. We did leave Pakistan early once because 01:09:00the Taliban, we were on one side of a river, our little tents, and then Red Cross had a better tent on the other side of the river, but the Taliban came one night and tore up the Red Cross tent and wiped it out and then we heard about that the next morning and they decided we should leave at that time, so we'd been there three weeks already so it wasn't all a loss and we had been able to do some good things but a nice part about it was I got to a phone and I asked a gal at headquarters here if she could change my-she had to change my airline ticket anyway, could you just change it to Hawaii, and then I had one of my daughters get a ticket for my husband to meet me in Hawaii.

We ended up with a week of Hawaii after Pakistan, which was very nice.

AE: How did you reconcile knowing that you're going into a place that wasn't very safe? I guess helping people outweighed that for you?

CC: The headquarters met with us and told us, gave us quite a bit of detail about what was going on and they never, ever sent us into a place that they felt was unsafe. That was good and we always tried to behave in a manner that would not inspire any anger from locals or we tried to just be there to help them. There are some places like Afghanistan where the men really didn't like us, but 01:11:00headquarters felt it was safe. Not as nearly as many men came for help as women and children and babies and sometimes they would leave with a chip on a shoulder like well I needed this care but I don't like you here. They'd do that. That was very interesting because the war with Russia there in Afghanistan had been only 8-10 years previous and we saw the buildings that were bombed out. We saw upside down cannons that came from down from Russia. It was just so much war-torn country, but yet on the other hand it looked like pictures you might see in a 01:12:00Bible that has pictures of Bible times. The buildings, everything just looked like 2,000 years ago. I loved it the way people dressed like they dressed, or I'm assuming they dressed, 2,000 years ago. They still had the little boy out there with the herd of sheep and that was a really satisfying placed for me to go because we could help so much because they were still war-torn: a lot of war injuries, a lot of missing fathers and husbands, a lot of struggling just to live. That was good.

AE: Is there anything else special that sticks out in your memory from these trips?

CC: Well, each place is certainly a memory. Haiti, I went there three times. Once for the earthquake or maybe it was twice after the earthquake and once for it seems like they had a storm thing. You know that poor country. Just in a country where the people can readily speak English, we can understand more of the plight that they've gone through and how they feel about things, how much they want to come to the U.S., could you just-I've got a family member in the 01:14:00U.S. if I could just get there. Could you make a way? A lot of that sort of thing. Then on the other hand, especially people who believe in God, they're there at church every Sunday and they are rejoicing and being blessed, understanding how wonderful it is for where they are and for their life and their health. Haiti is a country that just gets to your heart because there's so much need. That was a time when they were raising a lot of money for Haiti, $2 billion or something.

It never showed up. I don't know if you ever heard about that. There's so much disappointment.

AE: What was the last trip you did?

CC: My last trip might have been the third trip to Haiti. I think that was the trip where I should mention this, man locally he has a trucking outfit and he has a private airplane. I wish I could tell you his name because he certainly deserves credit. He instead of having headquarters pay to fly us there, he had a plane he wanted to fly us there. It was right after the earthquake and they would schedule airplanes to come in from Florida and you'd have to arrive at 01:16:00this certain time and then you had to be gone 15 minutes later. That was hard for him to do, but he took us there in his airplane and he had to gas up in Kansas because the fuel was cheapest there for his airplane. It was a little tiny place and they knew we were coming so they all brought us lunches. Then we went on to Florida, spent the night, and then got our time slot to get in the next day, because their airports were just swamped with supplies coming in. There are just people that are just really good, love to help out in any way that they can. That means a lot to me. I appreciate that.

AE: Unless you have anything else you want to add about this experience, I was 01:17:00going to segue to something a little different.

CC: Go ahead.

AE: Did Uncle Blake go to OSU?

CC: He did.

AE: Yeah. Do you remember, did you visit him maybe for parents' weekends or anything?

CC: I think we did.

AE: Do you remember your thoughts about how it was different from when you attended?

CC: I don't remember anything that really stood out. I think we went to a football game or something like that.

AE: Yeah.

CC: It was fun to see his room, where he lived, meet his roommate. Yeah. I forgot.

AE: Then I know you visited me a couple times.

CC: Yeah.

AE: In the last couple years.

CC: That was fun.

AE: Do you have thoughts about how campus was different now? Or just what you thought of that?

CC: I think today it appears to me that the students are more free to do whatever they want. That may not be the case. Maybe the students can't live wherever they want or do whatever they want. I think you have to be in a dorm or a sorority or can Oregon State students just live anywhere? In an apartment now?

AE: Your first year you're supposed to live on campus unless you get special permission, but otherwise it's up to you.

CC: A lot more of that changed from way back. I could just see that students 01:19:00were really free to come and go more. More cars on campus. It's freer. I think probably the students are more accustomed to having car freedom, too, than we were. Very few of us, very few students had cars there let alone a driver's license, well maybe a lot had driver's licenses. But it's just a different atmosphere. It looks like it all works itself out. I was impressed.

That many people in that small an area getting things done, doing what they need 01:20:00to do, not causing problems in what they're doing in relationship to their neighbor or whoever's nearby. I'm impressed. That's a big deal. Obviously there's more regulation in those days that I wasn't even really aware of.

AE: Yeah, it didn't really bother you. Makes sense. After all this reminiscing back in time, is there any general life advice you might have for the college students or young adults of today?

CC: Yes. I think college education is a very good thing. I think there's very few exceptions. It's a time when you can learn more about your world, settle 01:21:00into your interests and your own lifestyle, even though you're crowded with a bunch of other people around. College is a huge edge for 20-year-olds now. It just seems like those who haven't gone to college are a little bit at a disadvantage now in their goals, in their life, or expectations, possibilities that they could pursue. I think college maybe, maybe I'm wrong, gives more a 01:22:00person a can-do attitude rather than okay, I've got a job, there. I can work. I can eat. I can pay the rent. In so many cases there's more. A lot of people can make just more for themselves out of just that, too. It's just an outlook on life.

AE: Well, that is all I had prepared. Unless you want to add anything else I think we can conclude.

CC: I'm definitely a Beaver. Oregon State. Oregon has some good colleges. We've had children at several of the colleges and I felt good when our children were 01:23:00at Oregon State. I felt they were there in a pretty much wholesome atmosphere and that they would keep their nose to their studies. I don't know why I would even think about that. My children are pretty darn responsible about their needs. Oregon State's good for Oregon period.

AE: Yeah. Okay, well, thank you so much for doing this.

CC: You're welcome.