Oral history interview with Elosie R. Lewis, 1990

AP: I want to ask you about your background where you were born and about your educational background, how you got here--but, first of all, about your childhood and where you were born.

EL: I was born in Pageland, South Carolina. My father was a country physician. 00:01:00My mother was a college speech teacher. And they emphasized throughout our childhood that an education was an important part of our heritage. When I announced that I wanted to be a nurse, there was very grave concern about this, and in those times we did often what father said. So he simply said, "No, you will go to college as your mother and your sisters. When you have completed your college education, basically, we will talk about it." My mother was a graduate of Winthrop [University] and my sisters [also], so that's where I went. But I had the good fortune to have as my advisor--because I chose to be a double major, biology and history--my advisor was a Vanderbilt [University] graduate. She knew of my interest in nursing and what I wanted to do, but also appreciated 00:02:00the direction I was getting from my father. And one summer she went back to Vanderbilt to summer school, And the next fall when I went back to Winthrop, she said, "I have a way. I learned this summer that Vanderbilt is to begin a new baccalaureate program in nursing. And I think this will satisfy your father." So we began to work on the kinds of things that might intrigue him about this change or at least a new direction. I did go to Vanderbilt. I went in the fall of '38 and was in their first class that had only college persons in it. And all of us were working for a baccalaureate degree in nursing. When I finished my baccalaureate degree in nursing, we in this country were already in the throes 00:03:00of the beginning and involved in World War II, and there were concerns about the shortage of prepared people in nursing. And nursing in this country decided to have a training program where we prepared nurses quickly for overseas duty, and it was in connection with Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. And I was called to the dean's office one day, and she said, "What are you going to do when you finish?" And I said I hadn't made up my mind. She said, "Well, I've made it up for you. Graduates of Yale [University], Cornell [University], Massachusetts General [Hospital], Vanderbilt, are being chosen to work on the faculty of this new program to quickly prepare nurses for overseas duty or for World War II duty. And we would like you to be the person from Vanderbilt." You don't--in those 00:04:00days you didn't disagree very much with the dean, besides I wasn't finished yet. And I did agree and my first job was teaching at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. And you say how can that be? [laughs] Well, we were weird creatures, those of us who had baccalaureate degrees at that time and were nurses also. So my first job--and the day after I finished Vanderbilt, I got on the train and went to Philadelphia to teach and to work. And I never--I was involved in teaching at the Woman's Medical College. And then a very interesting thing in my career--the Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing was looking for degreed people and stole away three of us that had gone on that project to come 00:05:00to Hopkins. At that point, all teachers in schools of nursing in this country were frozen in their jobs. Although two of us very much wanted to go in the army. And we continued to have that wish, but we were not allowed. Then when we began to have serious trouble in the East, in the European Theater--the Battle of the Bulge and all that kind of problem. One day I was called to the director's office, and she just said, "Well, you can go now." [laughs] So I--when I went into the army, into basic training, I knew where I was going to be assigned, although I was pledged to secrecy. I was going to be assigned to be responsible for the Cadet Nurse Corps in the 3rd Service Command [Ft. Meade, Maryland].

AP: And you went there from Hopkins?

EL: Yes. I went to basic training. And then I--the headquarters of that operation was Valley Forge General Hospital. And I was responsible for six hundred senior students for their-- for all of their activities. When I finished basic training, that's where I went. The colonel just said to me, "Go over there in the dorm and live with the kids and do what you have to do, and I'll give you the support you need." So that--you see, I had a brother in the ETO [European Theater of Operations], brother-in-laws, husband, in the service. But I served with George Washington at Valley Forge [laughs]and six hundred students. Again the idea of an educated nurse was--at the college level was not, you know--a 00:07:00universally-accepted notion. I was asked one day by the dean of the School of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania to come and talk to the seniors because I had some of their seniors who were in the Cadet Nurse Corps. Come and talk with them. And during my presentation, she sent a note, "Please come by her office to see her on the way back to Valley Forge." This I did. And she just said, "When you get out of the [United States] Army, how about coming and teaching at the University of Pennsylvania with me?" She was one of the early nurses in this country to have a doctorate. She was a Southerner, came from Winchester, Virginia, Dr. [Teresa] Resa I. Lynch. So when I got out of the army, I did go and work with Dr. Lynch. And at that--during my years with her, I helped her and was one of the faculty members that helped her develop the 00:08:00baccalaureate program at the University of Pennsylvania. And she said to me one day, "Get your master's [degree]," though there were no master's in nursing at that time, I got my master's in education. Then one day she said to me, "The time has come for you to leave here. They are beginning a baccalaureate program in the School of Nursing at the--in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at the University of North Carolina. And Dr. Elizabeth Kimball, who is a former student of mine and a friend, is going down there to be dean. Those of you who are from the South who are educated and have experience need to go help." And I said to her, "But I haven't been asked yet." And she said, "You will be." But I got the opportunity to spend a year in New Orleans between the time I left the University of Pennsylvania and the time I came to Chapel Hill on a special 00:09:00project that added immensely to my understanding and to my educational background. And then I did get the call from Dr. Kimball, and she asked me to come to work on the original faculty over there. And I came to the University of North Carolina [at] Chapel Hill on June the first, in '53. And it was an interesting experience because we were the first group of just women faculty on that campus. It took us two years to be allowed to go to the faculty club for lunch.

AP: How did you feel about that?

EL: Well, those were interesting days. Dean Kimball didn't let it last. She