Oral history interview with Gayle Offenbacher Lewis

Women Veterans Historical PROJECT Oral History Collection INTERVIEWEE:Gayle Lewis INTERVIEWER:Therese Strohmer DATE:December 22, 2008[Begin Interview] TS: This is Therese Strohmer. It’s December 22, 2008, and I’m in Jacksonville, Oregon. And this an oral history interview for the Women’s Veterans Historical Project at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. And I have Gayle Lewis here with me. Gayle, why don’t you go ahead and say your name the way that you’d like it on your transcript?

GL: Gayle Offenbacher Lewis.`

TS:Okay, excellent. Well, Gayle, why don’t we start out by having you tell me about growing up? When and where were you born?

GL:I was born right here in Jackson county. My family lived here in Jacksonville. And I was born in Medford in a little osteopathic hospital. And it was in a Victorian house. It is no longer there. I grew up with a wonderful extended family. I lived next door to my maternal grandparents, and my paternal grandparents lived up on the Applegate River. I had eleven grandparents when I was born, because my mother had both sets of her—both sets of her grandparents were living when I was born. And I had my great grandmothers on my paternal side. So I had lots of aunts and uncles. My mother had many aunts. And then our families dwindled. So I had one aunt who didn’t live in the area, and my mother was an only child. I have a brother who’s two years younger—Curt.

We grew up on Oregon Street, in a little house that’s being renovated now. You can drive by and look at the project. It was in the Medford Mail Tribune a couple of weeks ago, because they have an archeologist working and— TS:Oh, I saw that. They found the Chinese—[Evidence of the oldest known Chinatown in Oregon, circa 1850].

GL:The Chinese, yeah.

TS:That’s right.

GL:That’s the house that I grew up in. My grandparents built the house that’s next door. And then they bought that house, my mother said, to control who their neighbors were. In 1958, my—About 1958, I think, My parents built a house about three blocks away on Applegate Street; next door to my great grandparents, who had a walnut orchard that they had planted in the early part of the century. And we took out some of the trees and built our house. And I went to Jacksonville schools, which was an independent school system, until I was a seventh grader; and it [then] consolidated with Medford school districts. So I went from a little-bitty school where we had that sense of community—our own football team and we knew all the kids—the big kids took care of the little kids—into Medford, which was quite a big shock. And I went to a big—bigger junior high, which was about the same size as it is today.

My father was a state policeman. And my mother went back to work when my brother started school; because my grandfather owned a printing shop in Medford. He had his own business, so my mom worked for him in the business office. And we didn’t have baby sitters, because I had a grandmother next door. And I had a grandmother out on the Applegate who was a school teacher. And so the summers were spent out on the ranch.

And in town—in this little town—it was really wonderful in the fifties. You know, those were the days that you could go outside in the morning and not come home until somebody’s mother whistled for you at dark. [Chuckles] And we rode our bicycles all over the valley. We played in the woods. It’s amazing that we’re alive—that we survived growing up here.

Medford School district, I think, had a very good school program. I had wonderful teachers—wonderful teachers growing up and a lot of personal attention. But in high school, I had great opportunity. I was a good student. I was in the band. And I wanted to be a—I was interested in everything, but I really wanted to be a lawyer, I thought. And I wanted to get a degree in history and then be a lawyer. And then the medical TV shows were on. Do you remember Ben Casey [TV series 1961-66]? Dr. Kildare [TV series 1961-66] was the first. I was just in love with Richard Chamberlain and he still looks good.

TS:Yes he does.

GL: And there was a brief show, with Angie Dickinson, about a navy doctor and a navy nurse on a ship. And I think that imprinted me when I was about thirteen. My dad was in the navy. He was a gunners’ mate, and loved the navy, despite having his ship blown out from under him in the Indian Ocean. And one day he came home from work—remember he’s a state policeman, and he knows everybody— he’s very social—he said, “Guess who I had lunch with today?” Well I had no idea, of course. It was the navy recruiter, and that man, I believe, is still alive in Medford. And I work with his daughter, who’s a nurse, so I’m very amused by that.

I remember that day distinctly. My dad had a pamphlet—like your Betty H. Carter project pamphlet—and he said, “Have you thought about the nurse corps?” Well I—you know, I think I was maybe a sophomore in the high school?

TS:Right.

GL:I said, “Okay, sure Dad.” And then my mother observed that I was interested in everything medical—that I was full of advice and knowledge. She said, “Why don’t you become a candy striper [hospital volunteer], and see if you like the hospital?” And they had just built 00:05:00the new Rogue Valley—what was called the Rogue Valley Memorial Hospital—way out in the boonies. So I was a candy striper in high school. And that was okay, but, to tell you the truth, I didn’t much like being in the hospital. But they gave me jobs like switchboard, snack bar—you know, no patient care. [Laughter] Because I was a pretty responsible teenager, they gave me big, responsible jobs. And so, I think my senior year, I decided I would go to nursing school. And I just wanted to go. I wanted to get it done. Then you could go to a three year diploma program and practice nursing. So I thought, “Well I’ll just go to nursing school, and then I can work.” I remember my father telling me, he said, “Women should be able to take care of themselves in life. You need—” Which I think is very forward thinking in retrospect. I now know why he said that. His mother was independent. She graduated from college when she was sixty-two.

TS:Wow, neat.

GL:Or sixty. Yeah, she had her bachelor’s degree really late. She was part of those teachers after World War II. There weren’t any teachers, and, if they had a teaching certificate at all, they invited them back to teach with the stipulation they would get their degree. Well she spent the next fifteen years getting her degree. [Laughter] TS:She must have liked school.

GL:Well she had to go. I’m not sure she liked school, but she was a wonderful elementary teacher.

But my father thought that I should be able to take care of myself and so I didn’t go to college to find a man. I went to college to be able to take care of myself in life. And my mother, who did not go to college but should have, because she was very bright and capable—but she was a girl. My mother said, “You need to go—you need to get a degree in nursing.” Because if you weren’t going to be a nurse; you’d be getting a degree in something. So I credit my mother with making me get a degree. [Chuckles] So I went to the University of Oregon in pre-nursing; and that’s where I almost changed to anthropology, because that was a lot more fun, than I thought—than punching the ticket— TS:Tell us about that—the anthropology.

GL:The anthropology? I wanted to be Margaret Mead [American academic anthropologist], I think. Even as a little girl I liked other countries, I liked other cultures. I was always trying to learn about another culture or somebody different. And the classes didn’t seem like they were studying. It seemed like fun to me. You know, I loved the reading. I loved the memorizing. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go on a dig in South America or Egypt. Or did I want to go to American Samoa? Or did I want to go to Africa? And I think if I had switched to anthropology, I would have probably would have gone in the Peace Corps. If I hadn’t been a nurse, I would have gone in the Peace Corps, because I just like learning about other people. I’m very poor at languages though. I have a no-good memory. Nothing stays in the brain. It goes though. It has to be written down. And I have no aptitude for music or languages despite being in the band for twelve years. But the band taught me to march, therefore that helped me out when I went in the navy.

So when I got—finished my first year at the University of Oregon—then you go to Portland for the University Of Oregon School Of Nursing, which is now Oregon Health Sciences University [Oregon Hill Health and Science University]. And we lived in the dorm. You know, those were the days when you still were supposed to be single and chaste and live in the dorm.

TS:What was that like?

GL:It was the sixties. It was fine. It was a brand new building. We found it restrictive though, because we had a house mother and hours. And you know when you look at how young people are treated today, how they’re given choice and responsibility, we had to put up with some things that I think were a little demeaning for people who worked in the summer and had cars and took care of their own lives. We had to be in at midnight, and we were punished if we weren’t. And that happened to me after I was twenty-one. I spent my last summer—my last weekend in the dorm, my junior year, confined to quarters; because one of my guests had not gotten in at curfew, and somebody had let her in. You know, they would rather have you stay on the streets in Portland, or be left—perhaps they had no idea what the parties were like. You know, they would rather have a young woman left overnight in an awful, well, already— TS:[Chuckles] Well, what were the parties like?

GL:It was the sixties. [Laughter] TS:[Chuckles] What does that mean, Gayle?

GL:That means marijuana, booze, LSD. The University of Oregon, I kind of blocked my experience there. But when I went to a party there I had my own plastic cup with a lid, and I never let anybody give me a drink. And I didn’t—and I learned really quickly that I didn’t want to drink alcohol or smoke pot because I observed that people were not in control. [Laughs] But I liked to party. So I carried my own cup, and I never let anybody give me anything to eat 00:10:00or drink; because those were the days when they were lacing drinks with LSD, and mind expanding drugs. You could get sedatives, stimulants—I don’t remember cocaine being available. But there was stuff around. I wasn’t particularly interested in it, but I didn’t want to be out of it either. So I think it was kind of dangerous times. But I grew up with pretty good self-esteem, a dad who was a policeman—now, some policeman kids go the other way.

TS:That’s true.

GL:But he gave me enough advice and leeway that I didn’t feel that I had to party to the extent that I would endanger myself. And I always had cab money. I was very prudent. But at nursing school—Medical students were wild too. I don’t care how smart people are, or intellectually—you know, they still make bad choices sometimes. So it was kind of dangerous out there. Yeah. It was good to be alert and not drunk. [Laughs] TS:Well, so what years— GL:That was— TS:—did you go to college?

GL:I went to the University of Oregon in ’64. And 1965, I was “up on the hill” [as] we called it in Portland. And I graduated in ’68.

TS:Okay, can I back up a little bit then? So when you were in high school JFK [John Fitzgerald Kennedy] was president? Did— GL:I remember that day.

TS:Which day?

GL:The day he was assassinated. I was a junior in high school.

TS:Okay.

GL:I saw him. I felt very fortunate. He came to Medford.

TS:That’s right.

GL:He was a pear-blossom [Marshall of the Pear Blossom Parade, an event held annually in southern Oregon].

TS:That was 1960, right?

GL:I think so.

TS:Yeah.

GL:And I was in the band—it would have been the junior high band—and I knew who he was. I knew he was a senator from Massachusetts, and that he was running for president. And I wasn’t particularly impressed by what I had read up to that point. But I do remember the band was ahead of him. The band broke up, and I remember coming back on the street to watch him go by. So I—You know, it was kind of magic that we, here in Medford, did get to see him.

And then that cold November day in homeroom, they just announced it. And I was in the cafeteria. And I thought that boys were joking. They said, “The President’s been shot”. And we were at lunch. And I thought it was—You know, kids come up with these horrible jokes to get people stirred up. And I didn’t take it too seriously until I got to homeroom and they told us. And I think school was let out. So I have a good memory of that.

TS:Do you remember how you were feeling about that, at the time?

GL:I was shocked, dismayed, and not too frightened, because I think that we had a sense that it was an inside—you know, that it was an American thing. It was not like an invasion or a conspiracy. It was just a bad person. I was very sad and very uneasy. And I think kids during the Cold War were very patriotic. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and being very frightened by that. I spent a lot of time when we built our new house on Applegate Street, which has a daylight basement, building a nuclear bomb shelter in my mind; because we had a perfect house where you could do it. It had a cement basement. It had a cement enclosed room, where we put sawdust for our sawdust furnace. And I spent a lot of time thinking about survival in that house should something bad happen, you know. It was the Cold War “be afraid” mentality. And I remember my mother canned, and we had lots of food. But, you know, if we have lots of food and they drop nuclear bombs on San Diego—because that’s where the ships are—the Californians will come north looking for safety and food. So do I want to keep food that I’ll be killed for? Or do I want to take my chances with surviving in what happens on the land? So I obviously did spend a lot of time thinking about it.

TS:I guess so.

GL:And we did not stockpile food. I felt that it would be folly to do that. It’s just like having a stockpile of guns and ammunition.

TS:They’re going to come get it.

GL:They’re going to come get it. And you better be prepared to kill them. And I wasn’t going to hurt anybody.

TS:That’s interesting.

GL:So we had that Cold War kind of fear. But I don’t remember being afraid personally. Just being—I remember being upset by what it did to the country. And to tell you the truth, I ran with a pretty intellectual group of kids. We were—I was in the top percentage of my class. But I wasn’t in the foreign affairs club. I read Time and Newsweek and World News and Report [U.S. News and World Report] [news magazines], and I watched Walter Cronkite [anchorman for CBS Evening News]. But I don’t remember thinking too much about politics and world affairs. I was getting 00:15:00ready to vote. I was pretty politically astute, locally, because my parents’ attorney was going to run for the state senate, when I was a high school senior. But I don’t remember having any particular thoughts about it except being very sad.

TS:Yeah.

GL:And worried.

I did know—let’s see that was ‘63—In 1962 my friend’s brother had joined the army after graduating. And I don’t remember which year he went to Vietnam, but within a year he was in Vietnam. So I was somewhat aware that there was something going on in the mid-east, and that we were doing something. He was on one of those Green Beret [United States Army Special Forces] teams that went out to win the “hearts and minds”.

TS:Oh, yeah.

GL:He was a medic for one of those twelve—I think they were twelve man teams. So I had a little bit of knowledge just because I knew somebody.

TS:Yeah.

GL:But I don’t remember my thoughts, particularly. I remember being worried more during the Cuban Missile Crisis, [about] what would happen to us. I think I might have been ten—nine— TS:Right.

GL:My husband could tell you, because his dad was on a ship, deployed, so he was really worried. But I remember— TS:During the missile crisis?

GL:Yes.

TS:Oh, okay, in the quarantine [a naval encirclement of Cuba that attempted to halt the flow of offensive weapons]?

GL:Yes.

TS:Interesting.

GL: So, no— TS:Okay.

GL:I have no great thoughts about it.

TS:Well so, I guess we’ll go back up to Portland, and you’re in nursing school. So how does that go? How are you enjoying nursing school?

GL:Well, we didn’t have a summer break, so during my freshman year of college, I had appendicitis [during] finals week of winter term. And I was very thin—lost a lot of weight. We didn’t have access to food. Kids now in college have access to food. We did not have access to food. I lived in a poor man’s—poor girl’s sorority which is a co-op. And we ate meals at a scheduled time. And I didn’t have the budget to allow me to eat meals ad lib at the student union. You know, I probably had one hamburger a week. And we didn’t eat a lot of snacks. We didn’t have bags of Cheetos around. So I was very thin. And then when I had my appendix out it disrupted my schedule quite a lot, and I lost a lot of weight. So I was very thin and probably very tired. I didn’t look very good. And when I came home, I could tell my family was worried. They were trying to feed me. But I think I felt okay. I was very chipper.

But we started college on the hill in the summer. We had no break. And it was a very heavy summer. We had organic chemistry, pharmacology, anatomy and physiology. We had psychology. I had a sociology course down at Portland State. We had a full summer.

TS:Sounds like it.

GL:And so I was underweight, tired, and I went right into my summer. So by the time it came to Fall and we started our clinicals—in those days—I don’t think they start them so quickly now, but they put us on the units right away. I was pretty tired. And I fainted at school. They thought I was hypoglycemic, because I was so thin, and hypoglycemia was a new concept. So they made me carry candy. In retrospect, I have that gene that—my brother has it to—that your body gives a vasovagal response to stress—perceived stress. So I may feel pretty fine, and not know that anything is bothering me, but my body says, “Hit the deck, before that rock or that club knocks you out!” You know, “there are arrows on the way”, or whatever. It’s like a playing possum response. So my heart rate drops to below fifty [beats per minute] and I faint.

TS:Oh wow! What did you call that? A vagal— GL:It’s like a vasovagal—You know, when people have heart attacks when they’re straining, or hold their breath, because their heart rate drops? It’s the vagal nerve [vagus nerve]. And it’s a—You know, it’s a brain response that is unfortunate. So a couple of times [I have fainted]. One time a medical student—or resident—said—I had just made this lady’s bed, in the days when [if] you had a cataract operation you couldn’t move, and had to have your head sand-bagged. And I just made up her bed with her in it. I worked up a sweat, I was a 120 pounder—and he said, “Oh look at this! Look at her eye!” Because he was so fascinated [that] you could see the stitches. We used to really stitch them in. So I lifted up the instrument and looked in to her eye, and hit the floor.

TS:Oh!

GL:So it wasn’t anything terribly traumatic, but my brain said— TS:A response.

GL:“Whoa!” And it happened to me in other social situations that shouldn’t have made anybody faint. It has happened to me—I know how to control it now. I cough, and I can feel it. So I stop it before I faint. But it’s happened to me in the last few years. My brother, in his fifties, has taken a very expensive ride in an ambulance; because he did it at work. 00:20:00You know, if you’re fifty-five and collapse at work, they think heart attack. So I’ve talked to him. I said, “You know, you’ve had several ambulance rides for similar—I bet you do that too.” So he’s kind of tuned in to it now. I said, “Don’t let them—cough, hold your breath, tell people what’s happening, lie flat. Don’t let them dial 911. It costs too much money.” [laughs] So I was kind of, you know—not physically—I don’t that I was physically at my peak. And I got pretty discouraged. That year—first year—I saw a lot of very sick people. That was the year—around that year—they started doing kidney transplants. And I was on the urology unit. Then we had the county hospital, and we had very sick people coming there to die. And we did not have ways to prolong people’s lives with technology. I don’t think we save lives now any much better than we did then; we just do a lot of things while we’re waiting. [Chuckles] And so I saw a lot of things that were pretty discouraging.

And the old hospital did not have air conditioning. That spring, my first year, was a very hot spring in Portland. And that old hospital and the smells and I can remember—I hate to talk about it on paper, but it is a nurse story. [Laughs] TS:That’s all right.

GL:We had a lady who had a fatty liver disease, and they were saving all of her stool, which was copious. And we saved it in big—those big restaurant ice cream containers—those brown containers. So every time she had a stool, I had to scrape it out of the bedpan and put it in this container. Well it was ninety degrees. The container was in the refrigerator—but how much did it weigh? I don’t know. I’d pull this thing out of the refrigerator, and scrape the specimen in for twenty-four hours. And that almost—That was almost enough, because, apparently, that particular week I wasn’t getting enough satisfaction out of the other things to outweigh what I could see were a future of things that smelt bad and were disgusting. And we had—we reused everything. So the room smelled, because we had to steam all of our metal equipment. So it was fairly unpleasant. And I almost thought, “What am I doing? I’m smart enough. I can do anything that I want. I don’t have to do this.” But it was pretty brief. [Laughs] TS:[Chuckles] You passed through that.

GL:It was pretty brief. And then that summer I came home. And in the summers in high school, I had been working for the Southern Oregon Historical Society.

TS:Oh, neat.

GL:Yeah. So I had this good job. I could type. [Chuckles] And I knew the Hanley sisters, and they asked if I’d like to work for them. So I was a docent. I was the seventh employee in the summer, and I think the poor historical society is back down to seven, with a lot more to do. But I was their summer charm and personality, I guess. I did a lot of window washing and greeting people and answering questions. And then the summer I came home from college, they had a grant to catalog the newspaper. And the man doing that was a librarian from Ashland [Oregon], and I was his assistant. So he would write in hand, from the microfiche, and I would type the cards. And I understand that they still use those catalog cards from the newspaper at the historical society. They have never managed to put them on disc, or do anything different with them.

TS:Oh, wow.

GL:So I would sit by the window and count log trucks and type on the typewriter. Because I had a very good summer job, and it was very—my summers were very pleasant. You know, it’s very nice here in the summer. I could walk home. The Britt Festival started in ’64. And so at lunch time, I would take my lunch and walk up to the Britt Festival and eat my lunch while the musicians would rehearse.

TS:Could you say what the Britt Festival is?

GL:The Britt Festival is a music festival that started out as classical venue, and it’s outdoors on a hillside. It started out—It was just a platform and a canvas awning to protect the musicians and people sat on the lawn. And today it holds 2,200 people. It has restrooms for the handicapped, concessions, and doubles the population of our town every night that there is a concert in the summer.

TS:Yes, Jacksonville is a small town.

GL:And it’s beyond culture—classical—it’s everything now. You know, we have some large venues. So it makes our town what it is quite frankly. So I would walk there for lunch, or I would walk to my grandmother’s—whose house is right below the Britt Festival—and have lunch with my grandmother, and 00:25:00get off work at five. And I got paid minimum wage. And it was a pretty good job. I was lucky I didn’t have to work at the Arctic Circle [Oregon fast food chain], or pick pears, like some of my friends. And that summer—that was the summer after my junior year—No, the summer after my sophomore year, because that was just kind of a quiet summer. And then in my junior year—By the time I was in my junior year I was committed. And that’s when I joined the navy.

TS:And how did that happen?

GL:I have to stop and think. Isn’t that terrible?

TS:No, it’s fine.

GL:It was 1966—Yeah, it was a long time ago. Well I remember how it happened just like yesterday. In fact, I’ve been in that room since. It was one of those sloped auditoriums in the old hospital at the university. And the recruiters came— TS:The same recruiter as before?

GL:No, the navy recruiter my dad was talking to was recruiting men. He was a chief. No, these were the nurse corps recruiters. During the time I was at the University of Oregon my boyfriend was struggling to stay in school. He didn’t—he knew he was going to get drafted. And eventually after that year—when I went away to nursing school and the romance fizzled—he did join the army rather than wait to get drafted, hoping that he’d have a better choice. And I think he became a medic. I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t think he got killed though. And I knew lots of men in college who were really worried, and who were getting drafted. At the nursing school, because it was nursing school, we had four men in our class who didn’t appear to be worried. And the medical students were a little uneasy. But because they were graduate students they weren’t quite so vulnerable. But a lot of them had signed up for the Berry Plan.

TS:The Berry Plan?

TS:Yes. I don’t know how to spell it. I don’t know if it was b-e, or b-a. The Berry Plan signed up physician—medical students to be physicians—and [who then] serve[d] in the military to pay off their debt. So many of the students—the medical students I remember, and know—were signed up for a Berry Plan. And then they would have a choice of services when they finished. And I was dating a medical student who was signed up for the Berry Plan. So that summer of—The spring of ’66, my sophomore year, the recruiters—the nurse corps recruiters, army, air force, navy—and they filled the room. I think most of us went to the—It beat studying. Well maybe it was part of a class. It was probably part of our leadership class. And they came to talk to us about the nurse corps. And the nurse corps had the nurse corps candidate program. If you signed up, they paid for your last two years of college, and you owed them three years. And I was already—you know, coming from a navy family, I was already more interested in the navy.

But the navy recruiter looked so good. They were beautiful women, all three of them. But the uniforms really are part of the marketing. The navy uniform really looks nice. It’s crisp. It’s black. It doesn’t have things on it. The army and the air force, they tend to “boy scout up” their look, and they have all these stuff hanging on them. And the army was that green. And the air force is that blue. I also knew that if you were in the army they put boots and camouflage on you right away. Well the navy nurse corps philosophy was that, “We are angels of mercy, and we are to look like that”. So I knew that I wasn’t going to get boots [Laughs]—yet.

TS:Oh, okay.

GL:Yet. But my girlfriend, Barbara Helzer Cayere—who lives in Alamo, California, and retired from active duty after twenty years—looked at me and said, “Why don’t you go in the Navy with me?” She apparently had been giving it some thought. I didn’t know that. It took me a second. I don’t think I thought about it much at all. I said, “Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea.” Well then, you know, your peers just go crazy.

“What are you doing? That’s five years!” I said, “Well”—We looked at each other and we said, “Well they’ll pay for our education, and then its three years. And we need jobs—we just know that we’re going to have a job. And it’s a place to go.” And I was dating the Berry Plan medical student. And the question to me was, “What if he asks you to marry him?” I said, “Well, what if he does? I have plans!” TS:[Laughs] 00:30:00Oh, is this an “out” plan?

GL:Well I have plans. It will work or not. I need to take care of myself.

TS:I see.

GL:And he was very angry, although he was obviously not real committed to me. But he was very angry— that, I think, a woman would choose to do something—that a woman would have a plan, because that was still the generation where, you know, you went with your man. And he said, “Well, I’ll go in the navy with you.” And I said, “Well, we’ll see how it works.” Well it did not work. It was real clear to me that it probably wasn’t going to work. So I felt really good about it. I did not consult my parents, because I didn’t want to put them on the spot. I didn’t think that they would have any objections. But I did tell them I was ready to sign-up, and I had done the—got the paper work rolling. And they said, “Oh that’s wonderful.” But they didn’t get excited until I got commissioned, and then my dad was beside himself. He was just beside himself that I would choose to do that. He was just thrilled.

And I don’t think they were so worried about the heat of affording college. You know, college was more affordable then. My mother was angry, because they had no debt other than their home and I had really good grades and a good resume and a good portfolio; but I didn’t get many scholarships because they could afford to send me to school. So—But it did take the heat off as far as my brother, because my brother was headed to college two years behind me. I felt good being independent. I had no money worries. So that summer that I worked at home that I had signed up for the navy, was a very liberating summer.

And then when I went back as a junior, I was very focused. I knew where I was going. I could just kind of let go and study. And it was fun. I didn’t have any money worries. Every Friday, Barbara and I would take the bus down to Pioneer Square, in Portland, where there’s—it’s an old post office building. And the recruiter was there. Their deal with us was that we had to show up every other Friday to pick up our check, because they wanted to know that we were on our feet, alive, healthy. I’m sure that that’s the rationale, rather than just putting our check in the mail. So it was a ritual: ride the bus down, get our checks, go over to Meier and Frank [department store], get some cash, and go out and eat. [Laughs] I took a last trip up those Meier and Frank stairs a couple of years ago; because they have redone that building into some kind of boutique hotel, I think. But I took a memory trip up those stairs because—And I still have those bank books from those—I know—well, you put things in boxes and send them home to mom to store.

TS:I’m a saver, so I understand.

GL:And, well, they’re history. So I pulled those out. And I tell you what I spent—you know in those days when I picked up my checks—It seems to me that when I was a senior, it was a $120 every other week. Now, that was quite a bit of money, quite frankly. I bought—if I wanted something nice, I bought it. We went out to eat on Sundays. There were about ten of us in the military by then—nurse corps—either army or navy. And so we could afford to go out to lunch at the Red Lion in Portland. We all had cars. Everybody had to have a car when you’re a senior, because our experience required us to drive around. I commuted to Salem [Oregon]. And we could afford cars. My friend Barbara leased her car. Which I think is very interesting.

TS:For that time, sure.

GL:Yeah. She just leased her car, because she didn’t know what kind of car she wanted. My dad, however, went out and picked out a car for me. I had a ’65 [Chevrolet] Malibu Super Sport. [Laughs] A very nice car which I wish I had still had it. But the navy allowed me to have a lovely first car. It was used. It wasn’t new. But it was fairly new and it was, you know, a car.

TS:Well now, when you—Okay, so you were talking about your peers were, like, wondering what the heck— GL:“What are you doing?!” TS:Was it because it was the military or was it—what do you think that was?

GL:It was the commitment. I think a lot of it was the commitment. I didn’t feel any adverse reaction because I was going in the military. We were nurses and so that is the difference. I mean, nurses are able to compartmentalize. We did not like the war, we did not understand the war, but none of us had time to get on the street and protest, which I regret. Because I should have been on the street protesting when I could, because as soon as I put the uniform on—no more talking about it. And they were just appalled that we would make that commitment. And it was into the unknown. I don’t think there was very much knowledge about what happened in the military, 00:35:00or what the military was like. And I never thought of myself as very adventurous. In fact, if I hadn’t done that I think I would still be living in Portland. I don’t think I would have gone anywhere, just because of the comfort zone of being an Oregonian. But I didn’t feel anything either one way or the other about going into the military. Most of them just didn’t want to do it. Now, one of my good friends—I have a picture of her in here—went to Vietnam as a civilian for a church organization: a civilian humanitarian. So she has in-country time. And she would not have gone in the military because of her ethic. But she, like me, felt like “we need to do something”.

And I felt a sense of—because I had a brother, especially—I just felt a sense of “I need to do something”. Just by the luck of being a girl, both—I had second cousins—both of my cousins were in Vietnam in the army and I had second cousins in Germany. I wrote to all of these guys. I had quite the correspondence list. And I just felt, “Well, you know, these men don’t want to be there particularly. And they’re getting hurt. And they need nurses. And I’m going.” And I was able to compartmentalize. I didn’t feel like I was supporting the war by going. I felt like I was taking care of people who had no choice in going, people who were doing a job. And it’s exactly the way I feel today. Our troops aren’t asked. When you sign that line, they own you, and that’s shocking to people as you probably recall.

“Wait, but no, I don’t want to do that.” “Well, we’re sorry!” I don’t know if they use that line anymore, “the needs of the navy”. Or—You know, I can’t tell you how many time I saw that; because I always pushed the envelope to get what I thought I deserved and wanted. But I saw that line several times. But you know, I just felt really a sense that I had to participate, and that by participating I was not supporting the war—that I was doing a job my government needed me to do based on someone else’s decision. When I was—My first year in Boston we did have nurses who did go on the street, incognito, and that was very risky to do that, as a military person.

TS:You mean to protest?

GL:Yes. Or they would go to hippie parties. You know, I believe I was in Boston for Woodstock.

TS:Sixty-eight?

GL:Yes it was [The Woodstock Music Festival, properly called “Woodstock Music and Art Fair”, was held August 15-19, 1969]. Or it was just before I got there. But, you know, those were the Woodstock years. We had corpsmen who lived in apartments and smoked pot and had peace signs and wore wigs over their long hair. So, you know, there were— TS:They wore wigs over their long hair—at work?

GL:Yes. We did that into the seventies. It was very bizarre.

TS:Is that right? Interesting, I hadn’t heard that.

GL:They would grow their hair and wear—it was really goofy. [Laughter] It was very silly. I don’t think I have any pictures of any of my troops here in Medford with wigs, but I do remember them in Virginia. I was in the reserves in Virginia.

TS:So how was it then that you got—So you finished your schooling?

GL:Yes.

TS:And then how did it start that you were then in the— GL:Oh, I got commissioned in December of my senior year.

TS:Okay.

GL:And we went downtown. It was December 7, wasn’t that wonderful? And we got commissioned together. I think there were five of us. And then we went to the Trader Vic’s [a Polynesian themed restaurant chain] in Portland for Mai Tais. It seemed quite appropriate—we were going into the navy.

TS:I would think so.

GL:And my pay went up. And I was a commissioned officer. And then in June we took our boards. The first week in June—June 14, I think. My friend Barbara and I got in my car and drove across country to Newport, Rhode Island, for what I call “charm school”. It was Nurse Corps Officer Candidate School. We were already officers, so they had to treat us with some deference. But we didn’t have uniforms. We didn’t know a thing. I knew more than some because I had been studying. And I was—already kind of had that military— TS:Your dad was in the navy.

GL:Yes. My dad was in the navy and I could march. So I was really ahead of the game. But we also had the WAVES [Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service] officer candidates there.

TS:So you were together. The nurses corps and the— GL:We lived in the same quarters, but because we were officers we were in charge. And I remember having to pull duty on July 4th weekend with a bad cold. I probably had strep throat, and [was] not feeling well at all. And we were in charge of the WAVES. And some of them probably 00:40:00didn’t do well in the navy. And I remember thinking, “Why are we babysitting these women who are college graduates? And why are they getting into trouble? Why don’t they just do what they’re supposed to?” You know, but they weren’t in their beds and they were acting up and they—you know, I remember just wanting to get on with it. Officer Candidate School, or Nurse Corps Officer School, was fun for me. It’s very important for people in the military to have a good sense of humor. I think that’s what saved me, because I can be goofy and put things in perspective and I could always find the funny. I could also put it in the larger context. You know, the stupid thing they’re telling you—the stupid thing you’re going to do, like wear a girdle—don’t have a tantrum, just laugh, and go on with things. Because you won’t be wearing a girdle. Humor them during this archaic lecture, chuckle, and move on.

And we had inspections and rigors. And we’re all, “Excuse me, we’re nurse corps. We’re officers. Why are we doing this?” And the rationale is always that you need to know what the troops do. And I had no problem with it. I knew, you know. I think that it was six or eight weeks. I don’t know how long it was. And I would tell these women who were balking, “Just do it! Get up, and do it! It will pass. You will be in charge someday.” One of the—we had these old barracks that had probably linoleum flooring. And so this woman got—this is my friend Barbara—and this woman who was older—she had practiced for a few years. She was twenty-five, I think—older. She was in as a JG [lieutenant junior grade]. She got us in to lots of trouble. We decided that we would polish the floors. You know, we had to clean everything. So she went downtown and got bowling alley wax.

TS:Oh oh.

GL:Oh oh! Our floors were hazardous.

TS:I bet they were [laughter].

GL:But what could they do but compliment us.

TS:On how shiny they were.

GL:Oh my goodness. Because they were really old and we had so much fun doing it and laughing at midnight, on hands and knees with our rags, buffing up that floor. And they did have trouble standing on it in their high heels for inspection [laughter].

TS:That would have probably been fun to watch.

GL:It was. It was funny. So my good sense of humor—That was a very heady time, because we were not—we had quite a bit of free time. One of my first memories was going into the officers’ club. They called it Com Closed because it was a lunch place for people—working people—the instructors, administrators. But because we were officers we ate there too. We didn’t have uniforms yet. So when you came in the front door you got in line to go through the buffet—and you walked past tables of men in uniform, older men, who really looked you over—kind of the meat-market. And when you got to the end of the line—That first day I remember saying, “Look at that, a fountain, like at a wedding! Look they have punch!” It was manhattans [cocktail] for lunch. A manhattan fountain in the com-closed at lunch, that’s how the military used to work. And but, it still had its World War II décor: the big drapes, long drapes, to the floor with palm trees on them. Very lovely. And it was just a strange place to be. And I was amused by it. And then we were waited on by stewards. And that was amusing if you grew up in a little town and did all your—you know, you don’t have help. You take care of yourself. So that was a little adjustment. And then adjusting to the scrutiny from a lot of men was kind of a shock, which we got over pretty quickly. And we managed to party pretty hard in Newport, Rhode Island. And my husband happened to be there at the same time in officer candidate school on the other side of the bridge. So it was very annoying to him to hear the stories of what fun that I had. I was dating instructors.

TS:Your now-husband was there.

GL:My now-husband.

TS:But you didn’t know each other?

GL:No.

TS:No? Interesting— GL: And in June, we went for his fortieth reunion back to Newport. So I got to go too. And I was very excited. I didn’t know any of these men. But I feel like I know them, because we had the same experience. And I looked at all the places that had been razed. And the Newport College, they should shut it down. It’s a taxpayer drain, that was our impression when we look at it—that it’s wasteful—but it’s kind of sad to realize that you’re so old it’s not there anymore. We don’t need to train that many people. 00:45:00You know, they were training a hundred or so nurses.

TS:For the war?

GL:Yeah, every eight weeks, just churning them out. And all of us in my class—Well this woman had gone to college on the program, but there were would be a few of the old people who were direct commission. But a lot of us were just candidates. And a lot of them were very shocked. They were not prepared for the military at all and were very eager to get out. You couldn’t be married—well, you could be married but they didn’t care. They weren’t going to accommodate you. You could have— TS:You mean for like your quarters and things.

GL:No. There was no accommodation whatsoever and you couldn’t have a dependent. That’s another one of my stories. So they expected you to be single, and if you got pregnant you were gone. So I can remember two women trying to get pregnant really fast, because they wanted to get out of their deal. Well you can imagine those of us who considered ourselves taxpayers were not happy that they were going to take advantage of their educational benefit, and then not serve. On the other hand, we really didn’t want to be working alongside them. So there were a lot of us who fairly organizationally oriented. You know, we were into it. We were going to go save lives.

TS:So did you know what to expect when you were done with Norfolk—was it Newport?

GL:Newport. Did I know what to expect? Well they gave us big hospitals. We had choices. We could ask where we wanted to go. And the big hospitals, the training hospitals, were: Philadelphia, Portsmouth, San Diego, and Boston, were the big ones—and Oakland. And I wanted to go. If you’re going to go in the navy, see the world. So I think Boston might have been top on my list, or maybe San Diego was first because it’s a lovely climate. So I was really happy to get Boston. And Barbara and I were on the buddy system, so they sent us together.

TS:Oh good.

GL: So you could go with a buddy. But you know, in the military you—it’s your family. You can go by yourself and you have friends there and you have family there. There’s somebody who knows somebody that you know. You all have the same experience and background, so you are not alone, and somebody will take care of you when you get there.

TS:Do you think that’s different from the civilian world?

GL:Oh, absolutely. You know, if I had stayed in—My girl friend who went overseas the next year, Susan, who did the humanitarian work, first went to Denver. And when she went work at the big hospital in Denver she went with a friend; but they didn’t do anything to acclimate you to the environment, or help you find a place to live. She had to find a place to live. You know, you had to make your own friends when you show up on the unit. There was no corporate system to take people in. And I notice it where I work. I work at a big hospital, now. When new people come to us there is no organized way, no buddy system, no welcoming arms to take people in. I think the military is very comforting in that way, that they really take care of each other. I assume they still do it. I still communicate with people in the military. And you always have a family.

And I tell young people going in, “There nothing easier than being in the military, really. You have to stay healthy and fit. Sleep. Get up alert. Look good. Show up. And say, ‘Yes, Sir!’ If you do what they give you to do, and smile,” and I said, “Then you’ll have food to eat, a roof over your head, and some time to relax. And you’ll make some of the best friends of your life. It’s not too hard."

TS:Anyone from your state is like your best friend.

GL:Right! You know, and it’s not—and I think it’s a wonderfully comforting organization to be in. It was for me. And you just pass it on. You know, people just pass it on. I can remember being welcomed and then doing the same thing for somebody else, when it was my turn. Or meeting my mentor and being some—well, we were assigned—In Boston when a new nurse was coming in, you were assigned to take care of [that] nurse for whatever they thought that they needed. So already, you’re assigned to be their best friend.

TS:That’s like the sponsor program.

GL:Yes. So it wasn’t—I know I did not know what to expect, to tell you the truth, except I had been trained in a big hospital. So I wasn’t spooked by the big hospital. But it was different, though. We had big open wards. I went to Boston for my fortieth year trek, to look again, to close the door. The hospital is gone. There’s a veterans hospital on another hill that I thought about going to look at, because it looks like the same kind of building. You know, the buildings built in the early part of the century, in the 1890s, had big sun porches on the end and then big open bays. And when I look at the pictures of me in those open bays—oh, that was a long time ago. But it would be like—if you think about it, 1968 was only twenty years from ’48. 00:50:00Well now, we’re twenty years from ’88?

TS:Yes.

GL:So it wasn’t that far away for it to look so ancient. And there had been no time to update it. So it was a pretty ancient hospital: Chelsea Naval Hospital, in Boston, up on the hill overlooking the Charles River. We lived in quarters that are still there and they’ve been converted to apartments. And I think that building was built for the War of 1812. And it has thick granite walls three feet thick. And so our room had twelve foot ceilings and a big window seat, a big shelf, so that you could curl up in the window and look out over at Bunker Hill across the Charles River. It was magic place. It still is, but it’s apartments now.

TS:Interesting.

GL:Magic place to live. And the quarters were very grim. They hadn’t been updated since the ‘40s. And they were female quarters only. And we had stewards, which were in those days were mainly Filipino and the occasional African American—but pretty much Filipino. So you had them living downstairs in their little hole. [They] were supposed to clean for us and watch over us; mostly they were just there [laughs]. And we weren’t allowed to have men upstairs, and yeah, well— TS:Yeah. So did—was being at the hospital in Boston—in Viet—now are you active?

GL:Yes, active duty.

TS:Now, how did you feel about being on active duty compared to like all of your training, and going through that?

GL:Well, it was different. When I was training you had no reference. The only reason you knew that you were on active duty: you had this green check and an ID card and you went down to see the recruiter. But it didn’t really hit home until you were putting your uniform on. And in Boston and in Newport, you couldn’t go off base in your uniform, because of the anti-war sentiment. So we led double lives. And then the military required that you have a hat on when you go through the gate to get saluted. So you’d take your hat off and put on your coat or something. We would go to work in Boston—We soon moved off, out of nurses quarters, because it was—well, restrictive. You didn’t have your own stuff. They had rules. Everybody knew what you were doing. It was convenient. And in retrospect, I wished I had stayed there. But we moved out and that was another experience. We lived in a wonderful place, but it added stress to our lives to live off base. But when we came on base, we had to have our uniforms on but not our caps. They didn’t want us identified riding around in our cars as military, because we were targets. As soon as you came through the gate, you know, you’d put your cap on and go to work.

And the same way in Newport. I remember going to the Jazz Festival in Newport. And it wasn’t too hard for the women to look like we weren’t civilians, but the men really had—they really, yeah. So sometimes they’d have alerts in Newport. And you’d think that that would be a safe town.

TS:Even as a nurse?

GL:Yes, just because we were military.

TS:Yeah?

GL: Yes. [End of CD1—Begin CD 2] TS:Did you ever feel anybody— GL:No. I did have an experience in the eighties I’m happy to talk about.

TS:Yeah?

GL:—with a wacko on a metro train. But I didn’t feel anything. You know, we just did what we had to do. It just seemed kind of silly.

TS:Go ahead and talk about the eighties. What happened there?

GL:Oh, the eighties? I was in Washington, D.C., on one of my trips. And I believe I was working at BUMED [Bureau of Medicine and Surgery] for two weeks. And my friend— TS:You’re in the reserve at this time?

GL:I’m in the reserves and I’m doing my two weeks of active duty. I think I’m a commander, I believe. And I was staying up in Maryland with my friend who was on active duty at Bethesda [Naval Medical Center]. And so, I would ride the Metro [subway system] into downtown down to K Street, where the BUMED sits on the Potomac—pretty near the Potomac—in the old naval observatory. And I was on the train in my bridge-coat. You know, in the seventies, we didn’t— you weren’t seen in your uniform; but by the eighties, the Reagan years, the focus on national defense was starting to rise. And they were talking about missile defense systems, so rattling our sword. So I had my bridge coat on. And I had—I was wearing my boonies to walk in, but I had my heels in a canvas bag that said “Navy Nurse Corps” on it. And my brief case. And I wore a beret. You wore a beret in the eighties, didn’t you?

TS:Yes.

GL:I had my beret on, because it was a much more practical hat to travel around in. And I was sitting on the Metro, and a man with a bag sat down next to me. And started a rant about—asking me questions about being a baby killer. “How do I feel about being a baby killer?” Well the bridge coat—you know it just has my rank on it—and I didn’t answer him. 00:55:00I made eye contact because I’m a nurse, I guess. And he was harassing me and it was—his voice was rising and his posture was getting a little threatening. And then he saw me bag that said, “nurse corps”. And he said, “Oh, you’re a nurse. I’m sorry.” But the train had come to stop and there were men standing around me. The train was full—I’m commuting—and the men—I stopped— two men just moved right up to me and touched me and moved me right off of the train. So I got off the train and got on later.

That was probably my worst experience in uniform. I was never spit on or—because I’m a woman. Actually in my uniform, in the airports, I was mistaken for flight crew. And they asked me where was the Delta [airline] going, you know, because the navy uniform is so un-military looking. I mean it just looks like a nice suit.

TS:Right.

GL:So but that was probably my worst experience—very, very scary experience, you know?

TS:Yeah.

GL:Not knowing who was there with me. But in my younger days in Boston, I don’t feel that— TS:Even at the height of the anti-war— GL:No, and I stayed away from the protests. And I never had anybody who was anti-war say anything to me that was personal. And of course, I empathized with them. I didn’t think that it was a good thing to do. I thought it was a horrible thing, a bad war, and we needed to get out. So I think it’s because we were nurses. We were pretty much—insulated.

TS:Well you said you that you compartmentalized.

GL:Yeah, you compartmentalize it. You can say, “I can do this because it’s my job.” I wasn’t hurting people. I wasn’t loading bombs.

TS:How did you feel about Johnson—President [Lyndon B.] Johnson?

GL:I didn’t like him. You know, I just—I thought he was kind of a blowhard. And I didn’t think that he was very presidential or gentlemanly. I kind of knew a little bit about him. I had read and studied about his early politics, and I just thought that he was kind of a slimy politician. However, when he gave his speech “I will not seek” [refers to Johnson’s speech announcing that he would not run for re-election] I was feeling a little better about him. But I don’t think I would have been happy with any president. I was, you know, pretty unhappy. I voted for Paul [corrected to “John” by veteran later] Anderson [John Anderson was an independent candidate for President in 1980], after—what election was that?

TS:That was eighties I think?

GL:Was it? Yeah because, I was pretty disenchanted with presidential politics. And, you know, I think going through the [President Richard M.] Nixon-Johnson years did me in. [President Ronald W.] Reagan finished me. [Laughter] I’m not a Reagan woman.

TS:Did you find yourself though, because you were in the military—because you were talking about before when you were in high school, and you said you didn’t—you read the Time and Newsweek, but you didn’t really— GL:In college, we were very isolated. And I’ve thought about this. I tried to read Time Magazine. I think I had—I’ve always had a subscription to Time Magazine. We didn’t have television. We didn’t have internet. There was a television in the dorm in the lounge that was in a very unfriendly room. I remember watching the news occasionally in college. My husband and I talked about our “lost years”. Sixty-eight—Well, Sixty-nine was a “lost year”, because I was overseas on Guam. Sixty-eight was—I can remember almost every day, but I didn’t have enough time to do any in-depth reading. Now I will read. I will find out who has written a long article, and I will read it. I was just getting, you know, the sound bites and what Time Magazine fed me. And we were very busy. That was just a horrendous year.

TS:What was happening where you were working at that time?

GL:Well I graduated in June. But, you know, Bobby Kennedy was—I saw Bobby Kennedy the day before he was assassinated. We were having our baccalaureate program at the Benson [Hotel] in Portland. And he was campaigning in Portland. And he was staying in the Benson and his dog came through the dining room. And so we said, “Whose dog?” And then somebody else said, “Well Bobby Kennedy’s here.” And then his staff said he was coming through the back—you know how they always come through the kitchen?

TS:Yes.

GL:He was heading towards the banquet room through the kitchen. One of his staffers said to him, “This is a room full of newly graduated nurses. You need to talk to them.” So Bobby Kennedy, who was exhausted by the way—he appeared 01:00:00very exhausted, spoke to us for a few minutes and he was assassinated the next day. And so that left quite an impression.

And that summer before, Portland had had a lot of race riots. And I had to circumvent those race riots to get to work. I worked my last summer in Portland at a small hospital, so—and I worked night shift. So going to work at night, I had to go around neighborhoods. You know, there were places—you could see fires burning in Portland. And I think people may have forgotten that, now when you— TS:Yeah, you don’t really think of Portland as one of the cities.

GL:Portland did not have many black people, but, boy, they were mad! [Laughs] TS:Well how did you feel though—back to when Robert Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, was assassinated? After, I mean, you saw him the day before. That had to be really— GL:It was. It was just shocking, you know, to live in a time where it happens. But I was so busy, you know. I was taking my boards the next week. And then, I think I was—I was home—I don’t remember—I don’t know. It’s just so hard to recall it. It was just kind of a stunned feeling. But I don’t—I think I would feel—I would have much stronger feelings now than I did then. Young people are pretty much kind of insulated from that; we kind of roll with the punches.

TS:Right.

GL:And I was pretty pro-Robert Kennedy. But I just remember being shocked.

TS:Being shocked? Because when we talk about now, 1968, some people say that that was a real turning point year, a pivotal year in many different ways.

GL:Well, it was. So much happened to people my age, you know. That’s the year that I graduated from college. And so I went from college, Martin Luther King being assassinated, Robert Kennedy being assassinated, and right away I get in my car and I drive across country and I’m put in to a social situation that is totally bizarre and unique, and then a new work situation in a culture that is totally different. Boston is not Oregon. I had people say to me, “Barbara” —now they called us the “Gold Dust Twins” because we looked like California girls. You know, we were blonde and we fit their—they would ask us did we surf. I had a woman in New England say to me—actually say to me, “Oregon, isn’t that right next to Ohio?” TS:Oh, my gosh.

GL:So people did not have a concept of Oregon. And of course we had Governor Tom McCall then, so he was—and he’s from—his family is from Massachusetts—so people were pretty tuned into who governor McCall was. So we took a lot of grief about that, you know. So it was pretty entertaining, but your question was about?

TS:Just 1968.

GL:Oh, 1968. Oh, the things that happened to me. Yes. That’s the first time I saw a person die. I survived the flu epidemic in 1968. I’m a flu epidemic survivor. Have you had your flu shot? Boston was hit with the Hong Kong Flu at Christmastime forty years ago.

TS:Oh really?

GL:And it just whipped through the city. And I got it on Christmas. So I’d worked Christmas Eve and doubled back. You know, I worked 3 to 11 and went home, slept. There was snow on the ground, which I hated. I’m from Oregon and we don’t like snow. I came back to work in the morning, and every patient who could go somewhere was gone. You know, a lot of them were in that hospital because—well, they were sent there to that hospital because they were from New England. So many of them, if they were able to be out of there, they were gone, but if they that didn’t have families or they were sick, they were still there. So we had kind of a skeleton crew. Christmas morning, I had two big units that were separated by a long hallway in the center of the hospital. And I was walking that hallway. And the corpsman on one unit called over to the other corpsman on the other unit. And they were on the phone looking at each other talking. And he said, “Ask her what’s wrong with her.” TS:Was he talking about you?

GL:Yes. He said, “Ask Ms. Offenbacher what’s wrong with her. Why is she walking funny?” And I said, “Well I think I’m okay, but I hurt. My hips really hurt. “ And so the corpsman took my temperature. He just popped a thermometer in my mouth. My temperature was 104. I didn’t feel too bad yet. And we knew the flu was around. I believe I’d been immunized. I believe we had the vaccine in October. And I thought, “Oh oh”. And 01:05:00I don’t know if it was true in the eighties, but in the sixties you were dead or alive. Either you could work or you were sick and you were hospitalized. So you didn’t complain. Because if you complained, then they were going to take you off duty and put you in a hospital room. But I had—it was Christmas—my first Christmas away from home, ever.

TS:Oh, yeah.

GL:And my Christmas presents hadn’t been opened. We were going to have Christmas, my roommates and I, when I got home. Well I could barely get home. I didn’t—I told the corpsman, I said, “Don’t you tell anybody. You didn’t see that thermometer.” And was not 2:30. I was so sick that by the time I got home—my roommates—I remember lying on the floor, and my roommates opened my presents for me and showed me what they were.

TS:Oh, my gosh. Well, I’m going to lose this. [Sound of object falling] GL:Well—there you go. And she said, “I’ll get you off the floor and take you to sick call”. And you had to be in uniform to go to sick call, of course. So at 4 AM, in the snow, in Boston, the day after Christmas, I went to the hospital. And I don’t remember the next few days, because they sedated me for pain.

TS:Oh no.

GL:They sedated and hydrated us. I remember being put in a little room, and there was me in the room. When I woke-up, the room was so full that I could barely get between the beds. We could barely get out of bed and go to the bathroom. So it just rippled through the hospital. So I wonder how many people I exposed. And then in the next six weeks—of course it takes a long time to recover from this flu—I had tickets to the ballet to see Mikhail Baryshnikov and Margot Fonteyn do Swan Lake. They had the flu and I saw their understudies. I had tickets to see Angela Lansbury in Madam of the Cha—she had the flu, and I saw her understudy. [Miss Lansbury was touring with the Broadway musical Mame in 1968.] TS:So everybody was getting it.

GL:I slept through Swan Lake, because I was just getting off of being sick and it’s very soothing and it wasn’t Margot Fonteyn [chuckles]. So yeah, I’m a proponent of flu shots, because I don’t think people understand how bad the flu is.

TS:Yeah.

GL:So that happened to me in ’68. And in ’69, I went overseas.

TS:So how did it come that you went to Guam?

GL:Well, they trained us. They kept—the navy—the army sent people to—sent nurses to—Texas, I think. I want to say Fort Hood. They sent them to Texas for six to eight weeks of training, gave them boots, and sent them to Vietnam; because the army had more hospitals in-country. The navy had Da Nang and the two hospital ships. So they trained us for a year. We were expected to spend a year in one of the big hospitals. And it was, you know—they kind of gave us an internship which was actually “trial by fire”. And then you knew you’d go. They gave you a little “dream sheet” which I can still see in my mind’s eye. And I think Guam was my third choice.

And I was familiar with Guam, because I had a pen-pal, a sailor, when I was in high school, who was friends of a friend’s boyfriend. So I had seen pictures of Guam. He had sent me things from Guam. I knew about Guam. And I think I wanted the tropical paradise. So it was third, because, really I wanted to go to Japan for the cultural experience.

TS:Okay.

GL:—or Naples for the cultural experience. So I think I had Japan and Italy and Guam, but I would have been happy with anything. And they called me in and asked me if I’d like to go to the ship, because apparently I was a good enough young nurse that they thought that I could handle the ship. And I turned it down. And I don’t regret it because my life is the way it is because of what I got from Guam. But in retrospect, don’t turn it down. And my advice to people going into the military: if they offer you something that seems a little uncomfortable, a little “out of your box”, do it!

TS:Why?

GL:Because you will learn something wonderful. It will, you know—may change your life. It will be the best opportunity. They are probably asking you because it’s a very challenging thing that nobody wants to do. [Laughs] TS:That’s true.

GL:And I kind of wish I had done it, because the people who served on the ships have a—got wonderful experience. And I say “wonderful”, and it’s not a good word. They had an amazing life-changing experience, and they’re all good friends still, because there were so few of them.

TS:And you’re talking about the ships that are off Vietnam. The— GL:Yes, the mercy hospitals— TS:Where they were bringing the— GL:Yes, yeah.

TS:—the men to.

GL:Yes. And when I went to Boston I was put on a forty bed unit—a medical unit. We had cancer patients, heart patients, and those are the patients that I saw die. We didn’t—and the other—it was a dual unit, the other half of the unit was communicable disease. So we had a hepatitis unit, and those were the days where we isolated them. It was really awful. And every time we had a new specialist in, they had a different idea about how we should isolate them. But basically, it was very barbaric treatment. And we saw a lot of communicable disease that we didn’t know what it was. 01:10:00We saw a lot of tropical disease. So everything was a mystery, so it was very intriguing. So one unit had cancer treatment, and the other unit had communicable disease.

And I was there six weeks. And the lieutenant commander, who was a woman—she was probably in her thirties. She seemed elderly to me; she had gray hair.

TS:[Chuckles] Yeah.

GL:She had gray at the temples, lovely woman, went to Da Nang. And I took over that ward. And I was six weeks out of college. And then there were three of us. And so usually on a day shift it would be a nurse and her five corpsmen. And on evenings that nurse would usually cover five or six units and the corpsmen: who were eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds right out of high school. And our job was to bring them to speed, because they were going to Vietnam, and that was the worst part of being there. Every Monday morning at muster, they would announce who had orders to Vietnam. So the weekends were very hard. And a lot of the corpsmen, you know, they were just so worried about Monday. A lot of them drank or acted out. You know, some of the ones who didn’t drink just had trouble functioning on the job. It was—because that was our job; bring them up to speed, so that they could go.

One of the things that we did, to bring them to speed, was prepare the body. And because I was on the cancer ward and the medical ward, occasionally we got a body to prepare. And so whenever that happened, “no grieving here, we’re having a class”. So you would call all over the hospital and say, “Free-up the corpsmen and to come on down, because we’re going to prepare the body.” And when I think back, I was twenty-two years old, and that’s one the things that I had to do—got to do—what do you call that? I don’t know. And we tried not to get too attached to the corpsmen, because they were going. I remember three years later, when I got to Bremerton on my last tour on active duty, there was a corpsman in the pharmacy who had been a corpsman on my unit in Boston— who went to Vietnam and came back. It made me cry to see him. Because when they left, you didn’t know. Those—the corpsmen were not likely to come back, because that was the most risky job.

TS:Right.

GL:So that was probably the hardest thing to do. His name is Doggett, his last name. I should look for him now that I’m thinking of him.

TS:Doggett?

GL:Yeah.

TS:That’s interesting. I remember one of the nurses told me that—I can’t remember if she was in Korea, or if she was in Vietnam—but she was talking about she couldn’t remember their names—or maybe it was one of the doughnut dollies [American red cross workers], because they knew them all by their nicknames.

GL:Yeah they did.

TS:This was in Vietnam.

GL:Yeah, they gave them nicknames. Well I think, I’m not very good with names anyway, but I truly think that part of us did not want to know. There was a man I worked with here at Rogue Valley [Medical Center] who was on my unit in Boston. He was one of those corpsmen. And he recognized me one night, when I said something about—he was respiratory therapist I think— “lets swab the deck”. And he took a good look at me. And we realized—and I looked at him—but, you know, thirty years later—twenty-five years later, we really didn’t look the same. And who would expect us to be here?

TS:Right.

GL:And he had, had a drinking problem then. And, you know, he talked about how his life had spiraled. But I didn’t remember his name, because—I know his name now— because I don’t think we wanted to get attached to them. And we really didn’t have a lot of time to get attached to them, because it seemed to me that we had them about twelve weeks before they kind of rotated through. It was—you just didn’t get attached.

TS:Right.

GL:It was like fostering a pet. You know, they’re going to go someday so don’t get used to them.

TS:Yeah, don’t get too attached.

GL:No, don’t get attached. And, you know, we had the fraternization rules, so you, you know, you had to get attached in a motherly way.

TS: That’s right. Well tell me about Guam then.

GL:So Barbara and I— TS:You’re still hanging out with Barbara?

GL:Oh yeah, we’re still friends. And I have two friends from Guam who live here.

TS:In this area in Rogue Valley?

GL:Yes. My mother says, “You went to Guam and brought three people home.” I brought my husband; my neighbor, who’s retired from the navy, next door; and the woman who is restoring the house. We were all stationed on Guam together. That’s what the military does for people. They make family for you.

TS:That’s right.

GL:So we knew that we’d be getting orders in the summer. I got orders about 01:15:00the same week men landed on the moon. I know this because I was working nights, and they landed on the moon while I was on nights. And I set my alarm—I was by myself, in my nightie, with my TV with the rabbit ears. And I remember running out into my driveway hoping that the lady next door was home, so that we could whoop-it together. But she had little kids and they weren’t home. So I experienced it by myself. And that same week we had a two week block of nightshifts that we did fourteen days in a row. During that same time period my envelope came with my orders to Guam. Barbara had gotten her orders a few weeks before me—two or three weeks before—and we were kind of tired of each other. We didn’t care if we went together.

TS:Yeah.

GL:So it wasn’t so important that we go together, but we did. I got orders too. So we made the trip together to Guam. All of my stuff got sent home. All the stuff that my parents had shipped to Boston got shipped back to be put in their basement. And that was August.

TS:So it was ’69?

GL:August of ’69. And we all came home to Oregon. And we had a big family party here, so that people could look at me and say, “Hi”, and send me off. We flew out of Travis [Air Force Base, California]. And Barbara and I—in the Travis terminal—looked over and saw a woman sitting with two enlisted men. And Barbara said, “Is that a navy nurse?” And I said, “I think it is.” And she said, “Don’t you think that we should ask her to join us?” That was Marty.

TS:[Chuckles] She’s pointing to her neighbor—that’s for the transcriber.

GL:She’s my neighbor who lives next door, who bought the house next door. And so Marty got on the plane with us and the three of us got to Guam together in the middle of the night. And getting off that plane at four in the morning and that humidity and the fragrance, I shall never forget it. And the people waiting for us had been partying. So we started out by getting in rickety cars with drunk people driving through the dark. You know, there were no streets lamps. We just drove through the jungle. And all I can remember, really, is the smell of the place.

TS:Can you describe that at all?

GL:It’s fragrance of jasmine and tropical flowers and warm mud. And I still drink jasmine tea, because it transports me. And they took us to the hospital to check-in, and then took us to our quarters. And we didn’t know where they were. We had no advanced pictures. Now with the internet we’d know what our room looked like. We’d have all this information, but we had no information. And the junior nurse quarters were on the beach—if you’re Guamanian I think you say, “Asaun”. We called it “Asan”. And now it’s the Pacific Park—Pacific War Memorial Park [War in the Pacific National Historical Park], now.

But it’s a crescent on the beach with palm trees. And a crescent of Barrow’s Barracks: the two story World War II structures. And they were converted into quarters for us. And there was an extension of the hospital there. They called it the annex, and it housed a thousand people—patients. And these are not bedridden patients. These are up-and-about walking wounded. And today when you hear about the troubles at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] that they’re having I know exactly what they’re talking about, because we struggled with that. “And why haven’t they fixed it?” that’s the question, because we struggled with it forty years ago. Of people who are walking wounded—they cannot go to duty, they’re going to need ongoing care, they’re going to need some kind of board or dispensation. But they’re basically up and around with health problems, chronic health problems, or injuries that keep them from performing their duty, but don’t make them bedridden or needing nursing care twenty-four hours a day—kind of like a halfway house. Although they did have a fair number of surgical patients down there. They did have an operating room. Our post office was there. And we had our own club and bar—the nurses.

So the first night there we went to bed at four in the morning, in a hospital bed, in an un-air conditioned room with a tile floor. Woke up in the morning [thinking], “Well this is stark accommodation. It’s like girl scout camp.” But we had our own bathroom and two rooms. So we had lots of privacy. And air-conditioning went in that week. They were just in the process of getting the air conditioners in for us. I went to the end of the hallway and opened the door, and I was in paradise. I was looking out on the beach and Camel Rock and there’s a break so that the big waves are out, but, you know, I was in a tropical paradise. 01:20:00I was in heaven. I could not believe that I had been transported there. I hadn’t been to work yet. [Laughs] TS:What was the name of the place in Guam where you were?

GL:Asan: A-s-a-n.

TS:Okay.

GL:It was a town—a little village—south of the capital which we called “Agana”, and now I believe they call it in Chamorra “Hagåtña” if you look at it on Google Earth. And the hospital was up on the cliff, overlooking the ocean. It was wonderful.

TS:So you were feeling pretty good about it?

GL:Oh yes! How exciting! The big plane ride, dropped into a tropical paradise, with all these fun people [laughs]. The first day, of course, we were jet lagged. It took twenty-two—thirty hours to get there. And my friends, Marty and Barbara, and I were on the same floor. And Carol, who I brought home to Jacksonville, had already been there about a week—or a few days. So she was already oriented.

So the first night—the first day, they took us to Cocoa Beach, which is a white sand, private beach. It was not Cocoa Beach, I called it that because of the coconuts—[It was] Tarague Beach at Anderson Air Force Base. A beautiful private beach—did you get to go there?—with white sands. And we spent the afternoon there getting our first sunburn. They warned us, “Don’t get sunburned.” And then—in the military, a sunburn is a court martial offense. If you can’t go to work because of a sunburn, then you’re in trouble. So we were pretty careful.

And that night, the first night, we had dinner at the Crosswinds; which was the pilots’ club at the air station. Every night, on the island, there was steak night at a club and they rotated them. Sunday night was steak night at the Crosswinds. Monday night was steak night at the nurses club down on the beach. And we hadn’t been there yet, because we didn’t have to check-in—it was Labor Day Weekend.

They didn’t have anything for us to do. So that first trip down to the club, our first club, I met my husband. That first trip [chuckles]—because his ship’s men were being moved into nurses’ quarters. Well, I think they were still living on the ship then. They were decommissioning their ship. And the men would come there to eat, because there were women there, of course. And so we had steak and met that ship’s company. You know, it was an LST [Landing Ship, Tank], so I think there were six or seven of them there for dinner. My husband was among them, but I didn’t date him right away because he was slow.

TS:He was slow?

GL:Yes, he’s not outgoing. I dated the outgoing one for a month or so, until we figured it out. So I thought that I was in paradise. Our own club, drinks were a quarter [laughs]. The military encouraged drinking, because they didn’t have other ways of comforting us, quite frankly. We never got debriefed. Nobody ever said, “We’re sorry.” It was, “Go back to work!” You know the differences—there was no attention to our mental health. Zero. So if you were a drinker, and you were having trouble, you were going to drink. Or if you were going to act out—if you were going to seek sex for comfort—you could have that too. But there was no mental health for us.

TS:Did you recognize that at the time, or is this like in retrospect?

GL:I knew it at the time. We had chaplains. They didn’t help us. We lived with a navy chaplain, who was a Seabees [navy construction battalion] chaplain. He lived in quarters with us. He was a priest. He had a great experience [laughs]—poor man. And he helped his people. But the Seabees weren’t dealing with death and mayhem. They were dealing with women trouble, financial trouble. But those of us in the medical field, no. And I thought—We didn’t even comfort each other, particularly. It was “deep breath, and do it.” Now my friend Carol, if you would talk to her—she has written a lot. She is a very introspective, sensitive woman. And she handled it differently than I did, and she got out of the military. Because she worked intensive care, and so she dealt with it differently. I kind of ignored it, I think, and laughed. Thank goodness that I learned. My first week there I can remember thinking, “I am not going to be able to drink and do this”, because every night it was those quarter drinks. So I stopped 01:25:00drinking except when I wasn’t going to have to function. No. Then I didn’t drink to excess because A: I didn’t like to be out of control, and B: I wasn’t going to be able to function. So it wasn’t comforting to me to drink. So I never did that. But I laughed a lot. You know, I acted out a lot. I didn’t get in trouble, but I had fun.

TS:Yeah.

GL:And we talked to each other occasionally—I don’t remember—and, to tell you the truth, I don’t remember much comforting. It was stiff upper lip, very military, straight back, and we didn’t talk about it when we had patients who were having difficulty. I can remember two patients we had who were having quite a bit of difficulty. And I can remember standing in the utility room talking with one of the younger nurses and the corpsman about how we could approach it. But we weren’t very good at it. We didn’t have a plan for emotional support.

And on Guam they came twenty-four hours from the field to us—the bad casualties. We had people who were injured and lived on Guam, or injured on Guam, or injured on ships. But our mission for casualties—those men who came from Da Nang with a stop in the Philippines—not getting off the plane—the plane just landed in the Philippines, and then to us. So they were twenty-four hours post-Da Nang. So you had less than forty-eight hours post-injury, and then they came to us. And they were on a triage unit overnight—“casualty receiving,” I think they called it. I don’t even remember. I’ve been in the military long enough that they’ve changed the names. And then they came to our units. In that triage they decided who’s going into intensive care, who’s getting surgery tomorrow—well who’s getting surgery now—but who’s getting surgery tomorrow, who’s walking wounded and could go there, and so-on and so-forth. So everybody—they were kind of sorted. Then on these big wards, in the morning, they would bring us our patients. It was like playing that game where you move the blocks around, the little key chain game, where there’s only one space and you want to move everything around. So we were always moving beds around to find that one space that was right.

So in the mornings we would get ten patients out of casualty receiving for each unit. My particular unit was traumatic orthopedics, and it was amputees mostly. So we would get those ten patients—the ten bad ones. But before they got there, we had to move ten off. We had to decide which ten were ready to go to the sleeping porch. And then I’d move the beds around. And you could hear them coming. And I can still hear them. We used glass IV bottles and they all had the striker frames: the metal frames on their beds, you know, to give them bars to help move themselves. So you could hear them coming, “Clang, clang, clang,” while we’re making rounds, trying to decide who we’re going to move. And then we had those patients, those amputee patients were there for about ten days, and then they were shipped to the States. So in those ten days they got debridement, dressing, changes, antibiotics, and moved out.

So our experience with them was very short. And few of them got depressed before they left. They were still in the denial. Few of them got angry. They’re all in the denial stage when we have them. So we didn’t have too many taking depressive dives, unless we kept them longer than the ten days. And we did have some that weren’t stable enough for transport, or they had injuries that they thought that they could work on a little bit more before they moved them. Occasionally we’d get one that gave us a hint of what happened to people when they go to Oak Knoll and/or Philadelphia, where that’s the next step or a young nurse. You go get trained. You go overseas. And then you go to one of those places, where they have wards of amputees. And that’s where the men were very depressed and their other problems started surfacing.

So we were kind of the honeymoon. And we jollied them. You know, so it was very playful on the units. The corpsmen were very playful. Our job was to keep these guys “up”— keep them “up,” until we could get them out.

TS:Right.

GL:So there was a lot of cajoling and humoring. So [laughs] — TS:But how was it—because you talked about maybe people who weren’t dealing with it so much emotionally, but what did you think about it when you were first there? Do you remember— GL:Oh, my initial— TS:Yeah.

GL:Well—It 01:30:00was eye opening. What I remember thinking—I always was looking for somebody I knew. What I remember thinking is how young they are. And it was the smell. You know, the smell of pseudomonas [bacteria]. You know, my thoughts were that it was horrible and that it had to stop. It’s very—it’s a paradox, you know. That was the most wonderful time in my life, and the worst time in my life. It was the best thing for my career at the expense of so many. So it doesn’t feel good. I had the best time of my life because others were having the worst time of their lives. And so, I think I tried not to think about it too much. But working—We worked causality receiving as an extra duty. So you’d get off your shift at three in the afternoon and then you would work causality receiving until midnight and you’d get the weekend off. So we didn’t have to do it too often. I forget how many nurses were there—a couple hundred. So it didn’t happen too often. There were people who worked that unit continually, so that it ran like a machine—and those of us who had duty assigned.

And I remember my first time on it, being overwhelmed by the mayhem. And I think about an AK-47. I hate automatic weapons. And if people knew—and a lot of people do know, because they use them in cities and urban environments now— if you knew what an AK-47 did to someone, why would you point it at someone except you meant to kill them? You know, we really did horrible damage. And that’s what we saw a lot of—AK-47 damage that didn’t kill them. And I remember being overwhelmed by the despair in the patients. You know, they were very shocked. Well they couldn’t hear, because if they had been hit by a mine, or in a blast, their eardrums were gone. So they all had hearing damage. So they really couldn’t hear you. And they didn’t hear a lot of what was going on around them. Some of them couldn’t see—they had some flash damage. And they were just shocked, you know. They were dirty and scared and relieved. I mean most of them were just so happy to be alive, despite missing parts, and hurting a lot. They were just happy to see us. And that was part of our philosophy. And this is a picture of me on the unit.

TS:Oh.

GL:We were supposed to look like that. We worked the casualty unit in a white dress and a cap and white stockings. And the ones that felt better would tell you—they would say, “You smell so good. You’re so clean.” So we’re supposed to smell good and be clean. You know, “welcome home.” So there was that “welcome home” combined with that horrible feeling that you’re looking at somebody whose life has just been destroyed.

TS:Shattered?

GL:And some of them, you know, are going to go to intensive care and not live. And I think that’s what bothered Carol, you know. She saw them die in intensive care, and I didn’t see anybody die on my unit. They didn’t die on the unit.

TS:Oh, that’s where Carol worked?

GL:Yeah, she worked intensive care on Guam.

TS:Were the men—were they just in the navy, or were they in the— GL:They were Marines.

TS:Oh, they were Marines. I see.

GL:Mostly Marines, until—I left in the middle of ’71 and by the time I left—I would say in the middle of ’70 they became army. We had army patients, because they had pulled the Marines out.

TS:Okay.

GL:You know, Marines are supposed to go and get the job done and come home. That’s the mission. And then the army goes in and does the work. Well the army was in and trying to finish up. And the Marines were kind of finished. And they didn’t let us take pictures. So this is a patient picture.

TS:Okay.

GL:Somebody took a patient picture, and gave it to me. But I don’t have pictures of the patients, because we weren’t allowed to.

TS:Yeah.

GL:Because you didn’t want to exploit that, or it was bad press.

TS:That’s true.

GL:I have one other that somebody took for me.

TS:Yeah, well you’ve been talking for a long time. Do you want to take a little break at all, or are you doing all right?

GL:See, I told you I could [talk].

TS:Yeah. Do you want to?

GL:I’m good. If you’re good listening, because you— TS:I’m good. I’m good. So okay, let’s see where you’re at here.

GL:Well, [unclear] 1969.

TS:Nineteen sixty nine. Well, we’ve kind of talked about this, would you say was this the hardest emotionally for you?

GL:Yes.

TS:Working in Guam?

GL:Yes. Boston was hard, because, when I got there in August there were three men who died in May—the next May. So these people lived with us in the hospital and I knew them.

TS:Okay.

GL:One of them, his name was Calzone, and I don’t know 01:35:00why he didn’t have family. But he was twenty-three years old, and he was my first death. And he was a lovely sailor. He was just one of those very upbeat people who suffered with Hodgkin’s [lymphoma] with extreme grace. And he was my first death. And the two other men were older—one was elderly—I was pretty attached to. So that was—emotionally, that was new for me. I learned not to—my first experience, Calzone, was the first one. And I learned, from sitting with him when he died, not to be afraid of death. So it formed my personal feelings about death. You know, I just don’t have a lot of fear of death, having watched him. And my philosophy of nursing—of allowing people to die with dignity—of allowing them to make choices. So that was life changing.

The hardest nursing part and physically part was on Guam with the causalities. And I didn’t realize it, until I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 [documentary film about September 11th, 2001] that I had too much thought to much about it, how the smell of pseudomonas will set me off because they all had pseudomonas in their dressings and their wounds. But I did not dress the wounds. That was a corpsmen job, and they took great pride in it. They helped the surgeons in orthopedics. And we had a room, a dressing change room, on the unit. We gave them nisentil which is no longer on the market: it gives people amnesia and it’s fairly good pain control, but not—it mostly gives you amnesia so you don’t remember that it hurt. So they would go to this room and they would scream; while their dressings where being taken off and changed. Well, the men on the unit could hear the screaming. And we could hear the screaming. But I never went with them. We had this cadre of corpsmen for whom it was a point of personal pride. That was their job. They knew how to do this. They knew how to get it done quick. And they could tough it out. And I wonder if those men have nightmares now as grown-ups. But I never thought about it until a saw Fahrenheit 9/11, and they showed footage of casualties with the sound! And it is the screaming. And the screaming was awful. That is kind of what I remember most. And the guys knew it, but they knew that they weren’t going to remember it. It’s kind of like if you live on a farm and the kill-truck is there, and the animals kind of know that something bad is [going to happen]. Well they knew that something bad is going to happen, and that their turn in that dressing room is coming. And we changed the dressing sometimes twice a day. It’s the same as the people who work burn units. They have the same kind of experiences. You know, having to hurt people is the worst thing that we had to do. So I tried to avoid hurting them [laughs]. I supervised people who hurt them.

TS:Much better [chuckles]. Well, do you recall—you were talking about all these bad experiences, or sad, really, hard emotionally, but was there anything particularly funny? We talked about— GL:Oh, I have lots of funny things. Oh, but I have lots of funny war stories. I don’t know what the most funny is.

TS:Well, it doesn’t have to be the most funny.

GL:Well, anything funny? There is a veteran, I have looked for him but his name is Pat Hanley and he’s an Oregonian. There are lots of Pat Hanleys in Oregon, and I hope he’s still alive. But he was my most famous patient. He was on this unit. And my name tag said “Offenbacher” of course. And when I walked up to his bed—well the first time that Pat Hanley was wheeled on to the unit with those ten beds—and I had my back to him—with the senior corpsman and the orthopedic surgeon and the dressing team—and I could hear those beds coming—so I leaned back to count the beds to see what I was getting—you know, did I have anything really bad coming. And this Marine had a body cast on—a whole body cast down one leg, but his whole torso. And on his—Instead of a sheet across him, he was wearing a red and white knitted cap that the volunteers had knit to put on the toes over their casts. He was using his cap to warm another place on his body.

TS:Yeah [chuckle]?

GL:Well being—you see me, cufflinks, I lean back and say to the senior corpsman, “The next time I see that Marine, I expect him to be appropriately attired.” [Laughter] I’m so stuffy. Well of course the word got passed.

TS:Oh sure.

GL:That the nurse didn’t like it. She didn’t—I was very amused by it, but it was my job to be appropriate. So, of course, that started it. And the first time I walked up to his bed he saw my name tag. He was in a class at Oregon State [University] with 01:40:00my brother. So it was downhill from then on. It was his mission in life to “get me.” And I believe he made money, because he had all kinds of schemes to trick me. And he would bet that this is going to happen, or that this is not. And [laughs] my favorite one is of pulling the toe. And of course by now we all know what happens when you pull someone’s toe, but for some reason I don’t know why I didn’t know. Or it didn’t occur to me. Maybe I thought that he wouldn’t do that.

So he asked me—he’s crying out in pain. Well how can a nurse resist someone in pain? [So I asked him] “What is it?” “Oh, I have a cramp.” “Well, where is it?” He says, “It’s in my foot. Here push against my foot!” He says, “No, pull my toe.” He says, “No, push against my hand. Push your foot against my hand. No, that won’t help—you’ll have to—” He went on and on and we went back and forth like that. And I said, “No! To get rid of that charlie-horse you’ll have to push your foot against my hand!”—which is the appropriate way.

He says, “No, pull my toe!” I remember going and pulling his toe. Well you know what happened. I think he made hundreds of dollars on that move, because I’m sure he bet them “I can get her to do it”.

And some of them said, “She will never do that.” Because I was, you know— TS:By the book?

GL:By the book!

TS:That’s right.

GL:So that was very funny, and before he left for the states he gave me a present. It was a nice little box all wrapped up. And it had that sock-toe in it [laughter]. But there were many other things that he did too. Yeah, yeah, he was devious and clever. Barbara, my friend, saw him at the VA [Veterans Affairs] hospital—oh in maybe 1971—and he was upright, walking. But he had an AK-47 round through his femur, and they thought they were going to have to—They kept him there, because they thought that they were going to have to take that leg off. And so apparently, he did not lose his leg.

You know, I hope he didn’t turn to drink. My brother said that he was a screw-up in college. I mean he was a cut-up, a screw-up. That one time, in one of their huge classes in the auditorium, he was in the back and he screamed “Fire!” during an exam. Well you’d get arrested for that now.

TS:Yeah [chuckles].

GL:He just got in trouble, and went to the Marines [laughter]. But we had patients like that. And we had patients that weren’t coping very well. And, you know, it was shocking to me how many of them got “Dear John” letters [a letter signaling an end of a relationship]. You know, that was the worst thing. They had girlfriends at home. And that was very hard for me to kind of cajole them out of that. You know, a lot of them were really worried about their manhood and their future. I mean, “Will I be able to work? Will I be able to have children? Will anybody love me?” So I think we had to walk that line of loving them as women without fraternizing with them or having them fall in love with us.

TS:Right.

GL:So we had be those nice nurturing women. When you’re twenty-three, it’s hard to be a mother-figure. It’d be so much easier for me now. You know, I could just mother them and hug them and kiss them and love them to death. But as twenty-three year old, it was very hard walking that line of nurturing and comforting them without them getting the wrong idea.

TS:Interesting.

GL:Corpsmen didn’t have that problem. But the corpsmen weren’t very nurturing anyway [laughter]. I can remember if they could brush their teeth, if they had a way to brush their teeth, they’d brush their own teeth. You know, I can remember poor one guy, who was blind and he had a couple of fingers left, and remember we said, “Here Marine, you can brush your teeth.” You know, part of being a Marine is “can do”. So we wanted to show them that you can do something. And now I think we coddle them probably a little bit more.

TS:Yeah, you think so?

GL:I don’t know. If I lived in Washington D.C., I’d be at Walter Reed on my volunteer time.

TS:Would you?

GL:Yes. Yeah, I would be there, because I know. I’ve thought about volunteering here at the VA, because I know. And there were a lot of veterans who have no one to talk to who knows what it feels like. But I’m still working so— TS:Yeah [chuckles].

GL:Fully retired. [End of CD 2—Begin CD 3] TS:When you were in Guam, and you’re working on the ward, who—did you have supervisors that you reported to?

GL:Yes. We had a senior nurse who was probably in her thirties. And then we had house supervisors who were in their late thirties. And then we had big nurse. And they were older then, because they had been Korean War. And so they were older than you would find in the hierarchy in the nurse corps now, because we’ve had a full cadre all along. But, you know, there had been a shrinking of the nurse corps, so some of those older people stayed in to be our leaders. So you know, they were fifty—menopausal, fifty-five. So we had a director of nurses and supervisors. And then on this big unit that I was on there was lieutenant commander, one 01:45:00nurse senior to me, and then a couple of us who were more junior.

TS:And how did that—how was that relationship between all of you?

GL:It was—well, the junior nurses, were all parties and collegial. Then you socialized on your level. So the more senior nurses lived in the quarters up on the hill, and they did their own things. And of course they were beyond boyfriends. Some of them had old boyfriends, but they were beyond dating, because most of the people on the island were in their twenties.

TS:Right.

GL:And we socialized only at official events with the older nurses. One of the older nurses—older— she’s probably in her late thirties—befriended me. And she was lonely because there was a smaller, you know—as the hierarchy goes up, there are fewer people to select for friends. And she wasn’t a big drinker. So I would go out to lunch with her occasionally, and knew something about her. Some people thought that she was strange. She was very military and stuffy. And it was my job—she smoked though, kind of a closet smoker—it was my job I felt to get her to relax. So I ‘d pull her back and we’d have cigarette in the utility room. You know, we used to smoke, some of us. And then make her laugh, because she never laughed. But it was hard for her to find things to laugh about. You know, she was big-nurse. It wasn’t as much fun being big-nurse.

TS:Right, a lot more responsibility.

GL:But we socialized with the ships’ crews and the pilots.

TS:Now did you ever get to take any rides with the pilots?

GL:Oh, yes. I went to—I’ve been to Palau [island nation in the Pacific]. I’ve been to Yap [island within Micronesia] twice. Well I went to Palau with the coast guard. And to Yap on C-130s [transport planes] with the air force. They do little, like, milk runs—mail and movies. My friend Carol got to Kwajalein and Majuro [Marshall Islands], because she was more adventurous. In fact, she got stuck and almost didn’t get back to duty. I wasn’t quite that adventurous. And I always liked to go with someone. And she would just go on her own. We took one long vacation on the KC-135s, the tankers, and we could ride them when they were empty. And the way the hopping worked is that you went out to the air force base and said, “Where are we going?” TS: She has a big smile on her face [laughs].

GL:And they would look at us and say, “Where do you want to go?” And they’d sign us up on one of their flights. So people did it enough that you kind of knew some of the routines. We planned this trip. We went on the KC-135 circuit. So we went to Thailand, Okinawa, and Taiwan on this circuit. And we were gone about two weeks.

TS:Oh.

GL:But, you know, you could just get off and on the plane. And we flew to U-Tapao. And that made news recently. I saw it on TV, because they shut down the airport in Bangkok. You know, from the recent protests.

TS:Oh, that’s right.

GL:You know, they couldn’t use that airport. They had to go south and use U-Tapao. So I got look at U-Tapao today. And that was a nice adventure. And we stayed in Bangkok. I think we had to fly to Bangkok and then we flew back to Guam and then from Okinawa. And in Okinawa, that’s where we got our custom made flight suits, because women had only dresses to wear. We had no pants. And flying around, strapped—you know, hanging in the slings in the inside of a cargo plane in your skirt is not practical in the tropics.

TS:[Laughs] Right.

GL:So we had custom made flight suits. They were custom made flight suits. They had our name embroidered on them. They said, “US Navy”. And then we wore them over, you know, shorts and a t-shirt because it was hot on those planes. When I went to Yap and Palau, it was hot. You have to have something appropriate to wear, and they don’t want you flying not-in-uniform. So we weren’t in uniform, but we were in quasi-uniform.

TS:Yeah [laughs].

GL:So we got our custom made flight suits, for further hopping around, and then we went to Taipei. We spent a few days in Taipei. So I feel really fortunate to have had those experiences. When we flew over Vietnam, the crew called us forward to look. Because if you flew in the air space or were on the ground, then you got a six months tax exemption. And they stamped our travel orders, so that we could do that. I of course did not do that. There is no way that I’m going to be tax-exempt while I’m on my vacation flying over Vietnam. I don’t think I’m in particular danger. I have not heard of MiGs [Soviet aircraft] attacking, but, you know, you don’t know. But I’m not going to—so I didn’t claim my tax exemption. I just felt like that was such an insult to people on the ground.

TS:I see.

GL:But I knew people who took trips.

TS:Sure, to do that?

GL:Yeah. So that they could write off their taxes for that six months, but I didn’t think that that was 01:50:00exactly fair.

TS:What was it like though, when you were flying over Vietnam?

GL:Well, it was just kind of interesting. It looked just like you thought that it would look [chuckles]—rice fields and jungle.

TS: Yeah?

GL:And the pilots were kind of excited. You know, they were making a big “whoop-whoop” about it. Yeah, we’re close.

TS:Yeah.

GL:That’s where it happens. We’re close. I didn’t—I was just disgusted that I was going to get tax exempt status.

TS:Oh [chuckles].

GL:I remember thinking, “This isn’t right. Yeah, yeah, I’m scared, but this isn’t right.” TS:Yeah.

GL:The only danger I tell people, “Were you in danger?” I tell people, “Yes I was. If you’ve read The Right Stuff [Tom Wolfe book about the Mercury astronauts]. I was in danger from drinking, driving, and other stuff.” Yeah, we had lots of danger in our lives. But it wasn’t from being shot or captured or shot down. No, but we were in harm’s way, just because we were young people doing dumb things.

TS:Yeah. Now you said that you were supposed to go to Guam for a year. It sounds like you stayed longer.

GL:Eighteen months.

TS:Oh. Eighteen months, okay.

GL:It was eighteen months. And then I came home. I got married when I came home. I met him— TS:Yeah, talk about your husband.

GL:Well, I met him right away. And he left December 7th. So we had only dated a month or so. And he went from this decommissioned ship back to Florida and picked up an aircraft carrier and went back to the gulf of Tonkin. So he was only on active duty a little over two years, but he made two tours. One on an LST, when they were unloading supplies up the Mekong [River], and then decommissioned that ship. And then back on aircraft carrier back to the Gulf of Tonkin where he sat in the gulf for nearly a year, in the bowels of the ship, in the engineering department. He had a degree in English and was a naval officer assigned to drive ships. Whatever—he doesn’t like to get dirty.

He can’t hear a thing, and neither could the men at his fortieth reunion. Anybody—they didn’t worry if—It was “macho” and they didn’t use hearing protection. So all these guys at this forty year reunion said was, “Huh?” TS:Yeah.

GL:So he was gone. And we were separated eight months, and we met in San Francisco on leave. He got out, and I was on leave from Guam. And we came home and met my parents and got engaged. And I went back for eight more months. And then he went to Virginia, where he was going to start law school.

There he is.

Mr. Lewis:Hi GL:And we got married in March. But I had a few more months to do, so we went to Bremerton [Washington]. And that’s where I experienced—he was a naval reservist, but I couldn’t have a dependent.

TS:Well talk about that a little bit. Why couldn’t you have a dependent?

GL:Because it was the law. I was a woman.

TS:And what year was this?

GL:Seventy-one.

TS:Okay.

GL:So when we lived in Bremerton—He had grown up in the navy and had always had an ID card, because he was a dependent and then he was in the navy. But because I wasn’t allowed a dependent, we couldn’t have quarters. The male nurses on Guam lived in quarters. The male nurses at Bremerton had quarters. They had wives with ID cards who went to the commissary. My husband did not have healthcare. He got a special ID card that allowed him to go to the movies or into the commissary with me. He couldn’t put gas in the car.

TS:I have heard things like this.

GL:He was a non-person. That was ’71 and they were getting ready for the—I talked to some women about it: “We’ve got to do something about this law. This isn’t right. This is wrong.” And I believe Ruth Bader Ginsburg [later a Supreme Court justice] argued the case in ’73. So, you know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is my favorite justice [chuckles].

TS:I didn’t realize that she’s the one that argued that.

GL:She argued it. Yes, she did.

TS:Is that right? I’ll have to go look that up.

GL:Go look that up. She argued it. So she’s my favorite justice. And changed the law, so that women could have the same—by then some women were getting—a lot of us were married. If you got pregnant you got out. I forget what year we could have babies, but it was probably after that ’73 law.

TS:I think so.

GL:My daughter was born in ’76, and we didn’t have maternity uniforms in ’76. I was reservist carrying her, and it was kind of awkward.

But it was awful. And so I’m glad we, you know, went over that bump and really made it equal. Otherwise, as an officer, I felt pretty equal—I certainly felt equal with doctors, other than the differences in our professional hierarchy. But as a naval officer, you know, I just felt pretty good. You know, I’m like the guys, if I’m on a plane I’m an officer. You know, people treated me like an officer, but, you know, there was a lot more chauvinism. But I felt like I never felt that I was discriminated against, until I was in the reserves. I had an incident in the reserves where they didn’t think that a woman was the best officer. 01:55:00TS:Well, talk about that.

GL:In the seventies there were programs that allowed us to stay in the reserve. Because I guess because we were in the navy together, that’s what we did together— we stayed and we still got paid. So—and liked it. So we were this small reserve unit in Newport News, Virginia. People were rag-tag. The military was really not thought of as a great organization to be in. This was when people were wearing wigs in their civilian jobs. They were growing their hair long and wearing a wig. And people were not “strac” [military slang meaning “a well organized, well turned-out soldier”—an acronym for “Skilled, Tough, and Ready Around the Clock”], as we would say. They were putting in their time. They had an obligation to fill. Or they were getting a pay check, so they were there. They had an administration unit. [They were] typists, mostly. Paper-pushers who didn’t have an officer in charge, and they gave it to me.

They didn’t have nurse corps officers, so I didn’t have anything to do as a nurse corps officer. So they gave me this unit to be in charge of. Well, I can push paper and keep people in line. And they really looked sharp. We had fun. I was strict on them in their appearance. I would have inspections and I would “mom” them a lot. And cajole them into getting a haircut, and a clean uniform. So they looked good. So we had a nice, big unit inspection with an officer who came over from Norfolk, and I don’t know how many people I had. I’m going to say about fifty—three or four rows of people. And they looked pretty sharp. And for reservists, they looked really sharp compared to what was around. And I knew it. And this little man came up to me, to inspect my unit, and looked me up and down and didn’t say anything. And inspected the unit and we did very well. But then in the debriefing, with all of the officers, he didn’t even look at me. But he said to the CO [Commanding Officer], “I’m certain a suitable male officer can be found for this unit.” TS:He said that in front of you?

GL:Me and everybody else, and it was in writing. Well, you could imagine what I’d say now. I mean, even as a lieutenant I’d come unglued. I’d call him—well, he wouldn’t say it now. He couldn’t say that now. But I, you know—“Didn’t you notice how good they looked?” And he didn’t like it that I was a nurse. But, you know, it really doesn’t matter to that person.

That was my first experience. All the others were kind of like, “Yeah, girls can do it. Women can do it”. In the medical community, especially when they started putting us in boots and tents, they, you know— TS:Oh, you finally got your boots?

GL:Oh, I got my boots. I still have my boots. I can’t remember—in 1988, I got my boots.

TS:Well that was quite a while, Gayle.

GL:I know. [Laughter] TS:You got away with it for a while [laughs].

GL:I did get away with it for a long time. I love my boots. I have two pairs of boots. I have dress boots and work boots.

TS:Well, other than that, so you don’t think you experienced any kind of sexual discrimination or harassment? Like you talked about walking in that one room— GL:Oh we got a lot of that.

TS:Yeah.

GL:I remember being called—people saying things—women—we accepted it more. We got a lot of sexual innuendo. The movie MASH came out while I was on Guam. And it was forbidden for us to see it for quite a while. The military banned it.

TS:They did?

GL:As bad for morale. [Chuckles] So when it showed up, of course we went to see it.

TS:Everyone wanted to.

GL:I didn’t go to see it right away, because I was working. But I can remember a lot of—you know, I was a tall skinny blonde, and there were a lot of hot lips referrals. Even the doctors would say things. You know, you just kind of roll with it. I would say at work, no. And my reserve experiences were here in Virginia. And here—when you’re in a small reserve unit in a community, no, there’s not going to be any harassment because we’re family and they know our roles. And I didn’t have any problems. I had lots of responsible jobs. Jobs that men had, you know. [Jobs] that line officers had. I had a very good experience.

I remember a time when we were on an exercise with the California national guard, and one the highlights of my career was getting my own helicopter for a day. Because I had reached this pinnacle when they would take me out in a helicopter, so I could see what is going on with my people. But when I was on the ground at one of these hospitals, a California national guard general came in on his truck and was very upset to see a helicopter on the ground. He was told none were available [laughter]. And when 02:00:00he saw who had his helicopter, oh, he was so angry.

TS:And what was your rank at this time?

GL:You know, I think I was a commander. I wasn’t even—I wasn’t a captain yet. So here was an O-5 [officer pay grade five], and she’s got aircraft at her command. I mean he was so angry. And he was eating dust in 110 degree weather [laughter]. And I think part of it was that I was a girl. I’m fairly certain that a whole lot of it was.

TS:Did he get the helicopter, or did you get to keep— GL:No, he didn’t.

TS:Well good.

GL:It was mine. “No, that’s mine! Today that’s mine. I need that today and you don’t.” TS:That’s right [laughter]. Well, that’s pretty good. Well, how about mentoring? You talked a little bit about mentoring—as far as what you received from maybe the nurses that came before you— was that going on in the nurses corps?

GL:Oh yes. And Commander Schlosser was the first woman who was a mentor when I got to Boston. She was the lady who went Da Nang. She is still alive, but I don’t know if she’s okay. I wrote her a note and it didn’t come back but she didn’t respond. My thought is that she has no idea who I am. That she didn’t remember me at all, because there were so many young nurses. But I wrote her a nice note telling her how much her example meant to me. And there were some nurses who were not so much senior to me—who were lieutenants, you know, a couple of years ahead—who I remember gave us good advice and encouraged us. In Boston, there was a lot of emphasis on continuing to learn. So I remember going to seminars with some of the older nurses.

The chief nurse—at Boston, that’s what we called them—Captain Murray was very interested in my love life. I think this is kind of a funny story. She fixed me up with a man who was totally inappropriate. He was voted one of the most popular bachelors in Boston. Well, I know why he was a bachelor, because I went out with him a few times. And she was very interested that further my career by circulating with the right naval officers. And so, I guess that’s a form of mentoring [laughter].

TS:Furthering your career, sure.

GL:Furthering my career by circulating in the right circles. There was a lot more formality in the navy, I think, than there is today. You know, calling on the CO and doing the right things. I got involved with Navy League [of the United States], because I was such a party animal. And the president of the Navy League would call me and ask me if there were any young women who’d like to come to the parties. And I would go to this chief nurse, who was quite agreeable, because she felt that it was very important for you full career that you be circulating with right people. So I went to a lot of nice parties, because I hung out with the Navy League.

TS:Well, the socializing was certainty part of it.

GL:Well, it was part of it. And that’s the way— it was one of the ways that I coped. I had a nice social life to balance the work, because we worked hard. It sounds like I didn’t work.

TS: [Laughter] No, it doesn’t. It does. It does.

GL:“Did we work?” “Yes we worked!” TS:Well now, did you then mentor?

GL:Yes.

TS:How long did you say that you were in for?

GL:I retired in ’94.

TS:Okay.

GL:And yes, I have mentored. I mentored a lot of people. And they have told me that. I have a nice clock hanging on my wall from the nurses, when I retired from the fleet hospital. There’s a nurse, who’s now a retired reservist, who was in the army and I convinced her to go into the navy, in the reserves, and commissioned her. And she’s very grateful. And then my favorite, my favorite that I mentored all along has my bridge coat—she lives in Portland. She works for the Shriners [Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine], and she’s a navy captain. She never did any active time. She has been a reservist for, well, it has to be over twenty years now. She must be pushing retirement. But I remember the moment I saw her, and there was just something spunky in her and I thought she had “it.” TS:Yeah.

GL: And we became friends. Now she is a captain, then she was an ensign. And we’d laugh about the funny times. But she has a great sense of humor. She is very bright. She’s a wonderful nurse. And she was willing—she had that sense of adventure. You know, she was willing to stand up and say something.

Another of my mentors was Maureen Sandall. And she has a new name and I don’t know her—I can’t remember her newly married name. She was a reservist here when I first moved here. And it was the start of the Reagan era when they started throwing money at us to increase the reserves. Nurse corps officer who had been on the ship—one of the ships: 02:05:00short, fiery—well, she was a redhead. In one of our command meetings in Seattle, when I was a more junior officer and she was more senior, and there were very few women involved; she stood up and talked back to the command about their plans for the reserves—in a very nice way, very straightforward, forthright way. And I thought, “Now that is what we should be doing!” You know, and she mentored me. And she told me she said, “You know, you live in Medford but you can still have a good career. There are things that you can do”. And I always called her. And she always gave me tips for navigating the system.

And this Susan Labhard, she is my “last chick” I call her. Captain Labhard has done really wonderful things. And she’s had duty all over the world. She’s a great leader. She’s a wonderful naval officer. She’s wearing my bridge coat. And nobody wears bridge coats anymore, because they don’t bother to buy them. But we had to. And I think, I don’t know why, but my whole uniform allowance was $400. But that bridge coat was very expensive and it’s beautiful. And she looks like a princess in it.

TS:That’s great that you shared.

GL:And she hasn’t sent me a picture yet. And actually before she wore it, Patricia, the woman I commissioned from the army into the navy, she wore it. These are thin women. She wore it and when she retired I asked for it back. And passed it on. And then all I ask of Susan is that it not go to the Army-Navy store.

TS:Right.

GL:You know, if she can find somebody to wear it who deserves it, pass it on.

TS:What a great tradition.

GL:They don’t wear out. It’s wonderful wool gabardine. And it has no moth holes. It looks new. And I wore it quite a bit too.

TS:That’s a really neat tradition. I like that story.

GL:Yes, and part of my success is being mentored by wonderful people. There’s Marianne Ibach was on the ship, and she became one of our admirals. And Captain Peg Armstrong, you know, just outgoing, warm women—interested in seeing people do well. My philosophy in the navy is that if I take care of my people I will be fine. And you see a lot of people who are more interested in taking care of their career than the people who work for them. And so I take pride in the fact that I don’t have a lot of medals for my chest, but I have a lot of people who remember me and stayed in.

TS:Well do you have any awards or—that you are especially proud of at all?

GL:No.

TS:The people—that’s right.

GL:No. Just having, you know, been able to do it with good grace and get promoted and live to get my retirement check.

TS:There you go. Well how about—so, let’s see, you started out in the sixties and you retired in— GL:Ninety-four.

TS:In the nineties. So you must have seen some changes, especially the attitude towards women, of course.

GL:Oh, yes.

TS:In that time. Would you like to relate some of that?

GL:Oh yeah. It started—In the reserves they needed me as a woman and a nurse corps officer—two strikes—because I was able to hold things together and lead people. So I had the opportunity to do it. And so the men that I worked with treated me equally. And, in fact, we still get together with these men. We’re all pushing seventy. And so the men still defer to me and say nice things to me. Because I think they’re of an age where they’re kind of surprised that a woman could just do this—just, you know, just do it—do what they do. It’s not physical. It’s just talking to people and pushing paper and getting the job done.

By the time we started having big exercises—and that was in the late eighties—the Reagan administration started beefing up the reserves. There was a demand on us to train, but we had no resources. That was where people’s mettle really shows: when you’re training and you don’t have anything—you’re making it out of air, you’re making it up as you go. And that’s exactly what I did. I worked for a wonderful doctor, Captain Masar, who was from Orofino, Idaho. And he came down to inspect us and I had this little group of about— I had a medical unit of about twenty people—corpsmen and maybe a nurse or two. There were not very many of us. And an inspection is scary. I don’t care who is doing it, or how small [it is]. You remember what that was like. You know, you don’t like being looked over. So I was very uptight about it, but I’m very big into marching right, looking straight, and doing it by the book. I also made a recording of some John Phillips Sousa marches—a little 02:10:00diversionary thing— and put it on the recorder. So I remember when— I had not meet Captain Masaro, he was our big CO in the sky from Seattle [who was] coming down to look at our little detachment. And I had—They knew to turn the music on when he came on deck. And when he stepped up to me he got this silly grin on his face, because the music is playing in the background—“Stars and Stripes Forever”—as he’s going to do his inspection. Afterwards—several years afterwards—he said that, “I knew that minute when I walked up and you had the music playing and you all looked great that you were going to go with me. Wherever we’re going, you’re going with me.” And he did take me with him. My last duty was with the fleet hospital in Seattle.

And in 1990, that’s when [Operation] Desert Storm happened and we were Fleet Hospital Nine. Our hospital was supposedly packed up and it was headed for Cyprus for storage. And it was a big joke. We were trying to finagle a way to get to Cyprus to check out our equipment. But they were still in the process of trying to decide where to stage these hospitals. Now they’ve worn them out using them. And I’m sure they’re not staged anywhere. But they were big hospitals in boxes.

So in 1990—We always trained as a unit hoping to go as a unit, but that didn’t happen in reality when they deployed. And they cannibalized the people in our hospital— the jobs—they took OR [operating room] nurses and high value people, so that we didn’t have a full hospital. A lot of our people went to San Diego to man that hospital. And people from the [San Francisco] Bay Area came to Bremerton to man that hospital. It was very bad. It was very screwed up. But I got orders to go to Saudi Arabia with the fleet hospital. But it was right before Christmas, because we had company here. So I was ready to go because I had orders. I was packed. I had my bank accounts. I had everything tied up. My daughter was fourteen. I was ready to go. “Take me, I can do this.” I did not get to go. I did not have to go. I’m so pleased that it didn’t flare up. But it’s like playing on the “A Team” and not getting to go.

TS:Oh, Yeah.

GL:You know, it’s like being benched.

TS:Yeah [chuckles].

GL:And it was very hard. They needed me at home, really, because this hospital is being— you know, five or six people at a time—and I was on the phone all the time, because these people really needed tending. No one had had experience, except for those of us who were senior enough to have had the Vietnam experience.

TS:Right.

GL:So nobody knew—nobody had any idea—except those of us. And people were scared. And they didn’t go into the reserves thinking that would ever get called up. How—And even though I can remember recruiting people and saying, “You’re in the reserves because you must be ready to go.” And it just seemed so unreal to people. And we were doing readiness training—getting people even to a basic level of readiness training—to be able to go—in a month would be hard. But I don’t think they really understood. So I was on the phone a lot.

Like, “I can’t go. I have— “ TS:Right.

GL:“Well, how are you going to work this out?” I had one woman who was nursing her baby. She had a five month old baby. Well, I thought that I would probably sit on the panel to decide whether people would go or not. But my philosophy: “Do not give me that nursing mother. Do not take—I do not want to take her to Saudi Arabia with me, because I can tell you exactly what will happen to her.” This woman was—really wanted to go. I mean she loved it. She was patriotic. It was just untimely that she had a baby when she had to go. But she was so torn.

And she said, “I want to go but I can’t.” And I said, “No, if I have anything to say about it you won’t.” Because people who go into that situation with any obligation like that don’t do well. Mentally, intellectually, they want to, but their bodies won’t let them. Those are the people who get appendicitis. They get a chronic disease. They have an accident because they’re distracted. Why would I take a nursing mother with a five month old at home? It just didn’t make sense. So I was on the phone a lot trying to juggle and trying to find somebody— TS:Figure out what team— GL:Yeah, and who could go. Yeah, because they did it by numbers. We were not names. We were numbers that fell out—your rank and your job. And I fell out because I was an O-6 [officer pay grade six] administrator. “Oh we’ll take one of those from that hospital”. They— You know, they don’t know that it’s Captain Lewis.

TS:Right.

GL:And so when she fell out, she was a lieutenant commander unit nurse. And they pulled her out for the job. Well, let’s look for somebody else who could do that job who doesn’t have the encumbrance. She could go to Bremerton and work a regular shift job and 02:15:00get child care. She’d be fine in Bremerton. But please, don’t send her to a war zone. So that was pretty traumatic.

But by the time—we were talking about how women were treated—by the time we were there—in those early days of training we didn’t have separate facilities. We wanted them, but we had one little training exercise and my husband was with me with his Seabee unit. We were out here up in the rocks camping with our minimal provisionary gear. And it was cold. You know, I know it was thirty degrees at night. And we were in a big G.P. [general purpose] large or medium [tent], but we didn’t have [separate] tents and we had to stay awake all night. Well we knew that we were going to be attacked. I mean this was part of the scenario. We were up there playing war. We know that something bad is going to happen. So we all slept in the same tent: the whole hospital unit, officers, enlisted, men and women. And, you know what, it was not a problem. Because, guess what, we’re miserable. And we’re going to get killed. [Laughter] TS:Yeah.

GL:So it was kind of a learning experience, you know. That if you’re all doing a job—It’s when you have slack time that there’s trouble. When there’s work to be done people are not—they’re not messing around, because they’re too busy working. So we figured that out right away, and then we had to be more careful. We were more appropriate. But it certainly wasn’t a problem on that exercise. And we then we’ve had— I’ve had other times where we were put together. We just—you know, you just learned to share. And I think more and more and more of that has happened. I don’t— On other training exercises, certainly the fleet hospital training exercises, we were able to separate men and women pretty well. But you’re pretty tired. If you’re working and tired, you know, if you’re on an air crew or a detail it doesn’t matter. Did you see the series Carrier—the PBS series?

TS:I did not.

GL:You must take my video. I have a DVD to give you. Take it before you leave. Because for some of the people who watched that, they were dismayed: “That’s not my navy and I wouldn’t like it.” I looked at it and I was thrilled. I just loved it. I can’t believe—you haven’t had time to see it. It’s going to be—I’m going to ask you to mail it back when you’re done.

TS:I can actually get a copy made.

GL:Oh, well I’ll just give it to you. Don’t let me forget.

TS:Okay.

GL:Because we’ve come a long way, you know. And you have to handle situations. We used to brush them under the rug. And now they just deal with the male-female situation. I think women still have to prove themselves.

TS:You do?

GL:And I haven’t talked to anybody from the academies, but I’ve had an opportunity to sit on the academy board choice here for representing Walden [Oregon]. My husband has done it. And I was trying to think of some pointed questions, because I think that the academies are bad for woman still. After this latest flap at the [United States] Air Force Academy there’s still something wrong with the culture. And I would not want my daughter going there until they fix the culture. Just because I don’t—why put her through that? You know, she might encounter it someplace— TS:What if she wanted to?

GL:Well, I would say, “Okay, go.” I would. I wouldn’t stop a girl who wanted—I couldn’t stop a woman. That’s what I would tell her. You know, I was thinking of questions— scenarios that I could give them— “What would you do when this happens?” Because, I think the culture is still bad. I think it’s still frat-boy culture, based on this last round of incidents a few years ago. Maybe they’ve cleaned it up in the last five years. Has it been five years?

TS:It’s hard to gauge.

GL:Well, they needed to whack from the top, you know. And it does come from the top. The tone comes from the top. I don’t want the few bad apples blamed. It comes from the top. They set it at the command. So hopefully they’ve changed their— TS:Well, it’s interesting to because with the air force—you know, the navy with the Tailhook back—was that in the eighties? [In 1991, the 35th Tailhook Association conference was the site of a notorious sexual harassment scandal] GL:Yeah.

TS:I can’t remember exactly.

GL:I can’t remember.

TS:Yeah.

GL:Oh yeah, I know those guys.

TS:Oh yeah? Really, is that right?

GL:[Laughter] Well those were my peers.

TS:Well, but the culture of the navy has a longer history, and the culture of the air force is not that old.

GL:No.

TS:So you wonder about how— GL:I think it comes from our greater culture. You know, I think it’s the frat-boy thing. And I think you’ll see it in any all-male organization. You know, if you go to a football game now—a high schooler—you watch boys—I’m sorry it’s still there. So it’s a cultural problem. But you have to nip it in the bud when you get them in a group like that. And you need to get that out—zero tolerance. And you can’t take the hormones out 02:20:00of the mix. You know, you just can’t. So you have to find ways to deal and to cope with those things. My nephew is going to a college in Needham, Mass[achusetts]. It’s very small. And it’s fifty-fifty, about, gender-wise. And they live in the dorms. [It is] very close quarters. And I asked him up front, “How are you going to deal in a small school like that, with falling in love or lust with a classmate?” And he said that they did talk about it. They do talk about it on admissions. And they talk about how it’s handled, you know. And they give lots of warnings of what it will do. What it will not do for you. How it will complicate your life [laughs]. You can’t tell kids much. But you know when you see this Carrier you can see how it complicates their lives, and people find out the hard way usually. But there should be ways to deal humanely with it. You know, in an understanding way, like “I know that this happened to the two of you”. But it has to be a pretty serious open program. I’m still kind of unhappy that the culture still lingers, but what can I say?

TS:Yeah. No that’s true. Well you’ve actually answered quite a few of these questions— GL:Oh, good.

TS:That I didn’t even ask, but you answered them [laughs]. Did you feel that you were treated fairly by the military with pay and promotions and assignments?

GL:Yes. Because I’m a nurse corps officer, I had to work hard for my last promotion. I basically tell people that I bought it.

TS:Why is that?

GL:Because I had to commute to Seattle to drill for the job, and I needed this job to get promoted; so all of my drill pay went to airline tickets for a couple of years. But I got my calculator out and it was fun to do—It was something I wanted to do—but it would pay off in my retirement pay should I live to earn retirement pay. And I certainly—and it certainly gave me wonderful opportunities. And a lot of what I did was opportunity, but I had very—I worked with people who were eager to help me. So I got promoted on time.

The reason I have done so well is just luck, really. It has nothing to do with me, because in the seventies, during the Carter administration, they cut back funding to the military. And I was non-pay staff. I had eight years of non-pay status as a volunteer. I just did it, because I loved it. And because I had been in too long to quit and I didn’t know better, I guess. And I got paid for two weeks a year. So it was worth it to go somewhere. So during those years everybody dropped out. I mean, who in their right mind would go to drill-weekends, one weekend a month, and not get paid for that kind of aggravation? I don’t know who does that—very few of us. When I made commander, which is O-4 [officer pay grade four].

Mr. Lewis: O-5.

GL:O-5, oh the boss is in there. When I made commander—There were thirteen of us who made commander, and I think there were only thirteen of us to promote from left in the nurse corps. Everybody had gotten out of the reserves. So there were very few people who had maintained, had punched their ticket that far. So by the time that we got that far we were a pretty elite group. We were pretty serious patriots, or fools. So then it was, you know—I didn’t have any trouble, but certainly as a nurse corps officer it wasn’t—I didn’t have any trouble. You know, I looked good. I showed up, looked good, and did my job.

TS:Well when did you go from active duty to— GL:Seventy-one.

TS:What was the reason behind that?

GL:I got married.

TS:Yeah. Would you have wanted to stay in anyway?

GL:Yes. My plan had I not stayed in—this is no secret he knows it—I had a plan, I was going to get my last duty station in Bremerton, try to get my master’s program, and then teach, hopefully. Either get out and teach or stay in. By the time I got out, I liked it well enough. I tried—He was going to go to graduate school in Virginia, so I wanted to go to Portsmouth. But they wouldn’t send me from Guam to Portsmouth, because if I got out they’d have to send my stuff back to Oregon. “No, not really, I’d be living there.” But there’s no—it doesn’t, you know, go by rationale. So they sent me to my closet home of record, and I moved on my own to Virginia. But I would have preferred to stay on active duty and gone to Portsmouth, Virginia, and stayed in while he was in graduate school, and stayed in longer. And I might have stayed in. I don’t know. In retrospect, the way it was winding down, I probably would not have because of choices. And, quite frankly, I became an adrenalin junkie.

TS:An adrenalin junkie?

GL:That’s why I’m a labor and delivery nurse.

TS:Oh, are you?

GL:I learned that on Guam.

TS:Yeah.

GL:And— TS:My 02:25:00mother would have hate—hated—She got out of that, actually.

GL:She didn’t like it?

TS:No, she did not.

GL:Well, I didn’t think I did either. It was my last choice, but it’s the adrenalin. And so a lot of military nurses stayed in the operating room, the emergency room, or labor and delivery. Because we can’t get that rush, and labor and delivery gives you that rush. That’s why I tell people that’s why I look this way. I’ve shot my adrenals—too much surging. So I think I liked it. Well I think I would have stayed active duty—two of my friends did. Barbara did and it was very hard for her, because she got married and had a child and she had to make some career choices, which were sacrifices in the end. And my friend Marty went as high as you could go without being admiral. She’s the one who lives next door.

TS:Oh, is that right?

GL:Yeah. She was director of nurses in San Diego, and was on the cusp of the fleet hospital training in the eighties. So she was one of the nurses who designed the fleet hospital training program. So she had wonderful opportunities. She had broken service. She got out and taught university and missed the military family. She hated the military. On Guam, her hair is flying and she’s got a baby bottle in her pocket, and she says, “I am getting out of this Mickey Mouse organization. I want to be a pediatric nurse. They cannot tell me what I’m going to do.” And two years later she is back in and rises to the top [laughs].

TS:That’s not so unusual though. You find that— GL:And she was the least military. You know, the least strac. Barbara and I, you know, were very strac. So obviously we’re going to go to the top, but Marty—not so much. [Laughs] TS:That’s pretty funny. Well you answered a lot of these.

GL:I’m going to have to take a break.

TS:Okay, let me— [Recording paused] TS:Here let’s go back on then here.

We took a short little break. Gayle was just talking about the China Beach [television] series. What were you saying about that?

GL:Oh, I was saying that we would watch that and, at the end, be stunned when it stopped and look at each other--my husband, the naval officer—and say, “Why are we watching this?” Because I felt that they captured my life. That was my life. Each of those vignettes, you know, was—they never changed their uniforms and got the blood off them but—you know and there was one person—but it was—each episode was an experience that I had had. It was very similar. I have it on tape but I haven’t looked at it again. I think it was very good. And I think the people who did not have the experience enjoyed it, but [for] those of us who had the experience, it went one step beyond that. It was kind of healing.

TS:Right. Well that leads me to a question about the post traumatic stress. In that a lot—at the time that you were in, especially in the sixties and the seventies, it wasn’t recognized as such.

GL:No. Well we have—we had a friend, Lew Puller, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography Favorite Son [Fortunate Son]. Lewis Puller, Chesty Puller’s [the most decorated Marine in history] son, he was Jim’s friend in college. And they went to law school together, after Lou had lost his legs and his fingers and stomach. And he suffered for years and finally killed himself a few years ago. He was successful. And so we lived with him. I mean, we spent several years with him. And my relationship with him was a little different, because I was a nurse. And he knew I knew. Because that’s what I did, I took care of people like him. And so we kind of had some unspoken things between us.

And some of the men who were in law school with Jim were Vietnam veterans. And I don’t think any of them had any particular bad times. I have a good friend who was married to a man who was shot down twice, in his army helicopter, and broke his back. And I don’t think he has had any psychic damage. But I certainly know people who don’t sleep well who don’t talk about it. And I think a lot of us still have anxiety dreams. I think, “What am I worried about? What is my post-stress?” Well, I think it was 02:30:00the tempo of our lives, how fast we had to live.

I had dreams about Guam. And we went back in ’86. Carol and Jim and I went back—and took our daughter—mostly because it was a magic place I had to see again, but because I was also dreaming a lot—not bad dreams, particularly. But I would wake up crying because I had to leave. And I thought, “What is this?” So I think Carol might have been too, but she wouldn’t talk about it. But we went back to kind of tie it up and visit. And it did help. I still have tropical dreams, but they’re not about—not because I’m leaving. So I think it helped a little bit— TS:Yeah.

GL:To finish it—end it. But I’m certainty really aware of the post stress syndrome. We didn’t— it—it wasn’t addressed. [Sound of running water in the background] TS:Yeah.

GL:It’s just like men from my mother’s generation who were shell shocked. My dad’s cousin married a man she met in the psychiatric hospital. It was kind of a family secret, because he came home because he couldn’t cope. Well the poor man, he had PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder]. My father went down with the ship and was picked up, but he talked about it a lot.

TS:Your father did?

GL:Yeah. He processed it a lot more than some people. I remember we took him to Newport News and he was at The Mariner’s Museum standing in front of the ship—a model of the ship. I thought—He was there for hours. I thought that we would never get him away. So he wasn’t really done. But certainly those horrible experiences change people’s lives. And they need to talk about them.

TS:Do you think that helps?

GL:Yes. I think it helps a lot, or have—be with people who know.

TS:Well, do you think—we talk a lot too about the Vietnam veterans who are homeless. Do you have any thoughts about that?

GL:I think that they were damaged, probably, by their experience. But all kinds of people go in the service and we all come out different. And, you know, why are we okay and they aren’t? Well, we came from stable families, well nourished, physically fit, educated, non-dysfunctional, good sense of humor. If you went into the service because your parents were drunks, your girlfriend left you, you committed some petty crimes, and you liked booze or heroin—you’re not going to do very well wherever you are. So I don’t think that you can say that the Vietnam War was responsible. I think that we probably lost some people because we weren’t in tune with them.

And I see those people coming back, and I’m very distressed. I’m very distressed by this current use of our military. And have been before it happened. I am not connected to the military anymore. And I read the newspaper and I watch TV, but I don’t study, but, wait a minute, I knew enough to know that this was not going to work—that this is folly. I didn’t protest enough, I guess. But, you know, I was worried when they sent these people in prepared—unprepared. And we saw them in the reserves. If you send a reservist away for two weeks—I saw people under two weeks of training not do well. You know, you have to put a lot of mental health in to it. We weren’t prepared to do that. And I don’t think that they’re being well handled, yet, because it’s an overload on the system. And then people don’t understand. It is very hard to understand, when people come home, what those men have been through. You know, it breaks my heart every time a national guard unit comes home, because people have a big party and [think] they’ll be back to normal. Well, those of us who have lived in the military know that that deployment is just fraught with danger to families. I’ve often thought that if I had been a CO or an aircraft carrier [commander’s] wife, I would have been worn out, because part of their job is to take care of the troops.

TS:Oh, yeah.

GL:And you think of all the families that at home. It’s very difficult on them. I think our system is kind of overstretched right now.

TS:Yeah. Well, what do you think about the word “patriotism”? What does the word “patriotism” mean to you?

GL:Well, I will say right away that it has been bandied about and sullied by people who slap flags everywhere. Fat ladies who wear flags, 02:35:00I’m greatly offended by that. [Chuckles] Burning a flag to me is a statement for a purpose. I mean, burning the flag—we burn them to destroy them when they’re—to me, burning the flag, I just roll with the punches. But a fat lady wearing a flag, I just can’t do that [laughs]. That’s really disrespectful to those of us who have earned our flags. Patriotism to me is to give back to your country in whatever way that you can. So if you’re a good taxpayer, a law abiding citizen, someone who works at the Salvation Army or the food bank, or someone who drives veterans to their appointments, somebody who votes and participates fully—you know, that’s a patriot. You don’t have to carry a gun. You don’t have to wear a uniform. You just have to pay attention and vote and do the right thing. [Sound of objects moving] TS:That wants to end up on the floor for some reason.

GL:Yeah, we’ve had a–I think people want to be patriotic and they don’t know how.

TS:You think so?

GL:But I think the aggressive saber-rattling stance of our country has been kind of distressing to me. I think—I survived the Vietnam era and the Cold War, and it just seemed wrong to me. And it’s just not me. I’m a nurse.

TS:Yeah.

GL:You know, we should be able to do—diplomacy works.

TS:There you go.

GL:But I also believe that you have to have, because of the nature of humans and the nature of the world, you have to have a ready military because you may not be able to talk them out of it. So showing a little bit of muscle and might and being economically strong is a good thing, but scaring people and moving into their space is not a good thing.

TS:Well, what—so you actually have a number of years in the military.

GL:Twenty- eight.

TS:Twenty- eight, that’s right. Do you think that that has—it’s a silly question maybe— GL:It’s defined me.

TS:Okay.

GL:That’s who I am.

TS:Yeah.

GL:And I think I have been retired fifteen years and that’s still who I am, although I don’t long for it. I don’t really miss it. I’m a nurse. I’m a military nurse and that’s because that happened to me in that time. And you think, “Gee, I’ve been doing this—you’ve been doing nothing for a long time now. Can you get over it?” TS:How do you think, though, that it defined you?

GL:It’s how I describe myself. It’s how I view the world—it’s through that military readiness prism. It was very hard—when something bad happens I want to put my boots on and go. You know, what do I do? I think on 9/11 [September 11, 2001]—we had the same company that we had—my brother and sister were here, they live in Alaska—but they were here the day that I got orders for Desert Storm and they were here on 9/11 with us vacationing. And I was so antsy. I just knew, you know, I have to get ready. I have to get my boots. I have to go. But there wasn’t anything for me to do. So you kind of, you know, you have that readiness mentality. Now, I’m a member of the community emergency response team here in town. It’s “military light.” It solves my need for my readiness. [Laughs] I’m qualified to help should they call me.

TS:I bet they’re well organized, now.

GL:Well, Carol is in charge. We’re a pretty small group.

TS:Oh, you two. Oh, okay.

GL:And I decided that it’s—when I was getting my bag ready I thought “Ah.” When I put my boots in my bag I thought, “Ah. this is it, yeah.” It’s how I kind of see the world—it’s through that military experience. And it makes me the kind of employee I am. The kind of nurse I am. What I learned about leadership and taking care of people, you know, it was all good.

TS:Have you ever used any of your military benefits?

GL:I used all [of] my GI Bill. When I was in Virginia it expired. It expired, so my girlfriend was getting her degree in community health education at Old Dominion University and I started it. And I think I was very close, eight credit hours, very close to finishing when we moved to Oregon. And we moved here because I had—Remember all of these relatives I told you about in the beginning? Well, they got old. And so I came here to help my mom. And I couldn’t finish the program and I was taking it to use my GI bill. I love going to school. You see, that’s why I like talking to you. You know, if I could 02:40:00be a PhD student— TS:Come back with me in my back pocket.

GL:Yes, a student is a good life. I love school. So I used all of my GI benefit—my husband did. When we bought our house in Virginia I used my national GI bill, and I forget why we use mine instead of his. And when we moved to Oregon, I assumed an Oregon VA loan. So I have bought two houses and used my GI bill. And he went to law school on the GI bill.

TS:Excellent.

GL:So yes, we used them.

TS:Excellent.

GL:And now we have Tricare Insurance, which is not a very—it’s like national health care will be and people need to know that. We don’t have a choice of providers and it’s our secondary. And I keep working—I carry mine at work even though it costs money. It gives me the option to not carry insurance, or not take a job with benefits, because I am covered. And people who are retired feel that their coverage is good. You just don’t have the choice of doctors. I’m hooked on my dentist but the dental insurance—I’m not sure I can convince my doctor to take the dental insurance—my dentist. So it has some drawbacks. But, you know, we—Part of being retirees is that we have enjoyed that buffer, which allows us some choice in life, to have insurance coverage. And, to tell you the truth, when I was a reservist, insurance coverage was not on my list of reasons I stayed in. You don’t realize that. And that’s what I tell young people, “You never know.” You never know, and as a reservist our retirement is not a lot of money. You know, it’s like a pension—a small pension. But it makes a difference in life. And it makes all those years—Even though I did it for nothing for those eight years, so you can tell I wasn’t doing it for the money, but the money did make a difference in our life. You know, that extra money that we got for being ready.

TS:Right.

GL:And we were ready. We were so fortunate to not be called. And you haven’t asked me would I do it again. I don’t know that I could convince people to join the guard today, unless you’re really ready for this kind of disruption. They’re misusing the guard. As a navy reservist, I knew that we had not been called since Korea. And I felt that our nation was strong enough. I couldn’t imagine—and it would be short term.

TS:Right.

GL:It would be for some short flap. You know, the reserves were not intended to augment the regular forces, which is what they are now. I can’t tell the difference. And in some ways it’s been good for the reserves, because it’s boosted their equipment. Unless you’re a guardsmen in Oregon and they just send all of your equipment overseas and don’t replace it. But as far as your uniforms and your training, you know, it’s brought them up to speed. But people need to know, now, what you’re doing. If you joined fifteen years ago thinking, “I’m going to be ready for the big flood, the earthquake”, but you get sent away to Afghanistan for a year. Well, that’s not right. So I think that they’re going to have to do something about that if they’re going to maintain their recruitment, or restructure the military. Because I’m not sure that I would have committed to knowing that in a year I’d be gone for a year, and then I’d be home for a year, and then I’d be gone for a year.

TS:Yeah, I see that Ashland is— GL:They’re going again! And those people know it now. You know, they know what they’re doing, so— TS:Multiple tours.

GL:Yeah, multiple tours but you can’t keep a job. I’ve been very fortunate. My employer—Rogue Valley Medical Center—when I was in active duty, when I was a reservist, was very good. They have a military leave policy. But they were very flexible. The last few years of my career I was gone a lot. I had a lot of extra things that I did because of my rank and my job. And they were very flexible and let me go. They didn’t give me any kind of hassle, because it’s a big enough company—I could leave. And they were very supportive. But a little company you can imagine, like a cabinet shop that has eight people working in it and one of their men is gone for a year, how disruptive that is. Or a small town police department. It’s really taken its toll on municipalities, because people who are policemen and firemen are likely to be military. So that’s—they’re losing their— TS:That’s true.

GL:And if you lose a policeman in a little town, that’s a lot. That’s very painful. And to be able to take them back is hard.

TS:Yeah. That’s very—those are all very— GL:No. I don’t know what your question was, but we sure did go somewhere with it.

TS:[Laughs] Well, I was going to ask you about how the role of women in the military has changed.

GL:Oh yes, isn’t that exciting?

TS:Well, is it?

GL:I think so.

TS:Yeah.

GL: And I am not particularly bothered by women taking the risks.

TS:No?

GL:No, that has never bothered me. If a woman wants—if she signs up for it, [if] she can physically do the job—the hard part is that, physically, women do 02:45:00hit the wall. But if a woman chooses to do that—they’re in danger, they’ve always been in danger. They were in danger in the Civil War, World War I, World War II—they flew planes, they drove ambulances. They’re in danger. I would personally not choose to carry a gun. I would personally not choose to be a sniper. But, you know, there are so many jobs that they can do where if a woman has the mettle to do it and wants to do it—We have friends, a man who was in the reserves with us has a son who is a [U.S.] Marine Corps pilot. He’s a lieutenant colonel now—and I don’t think they’re F-18s [fighter jets] anymore, but you know, they’re big jets—his wife is in the navy. And they’re backseaters. They push the button.

TS:Oh.

GL:And after 9/11, she flew over Afghanistan. Now you would not think that this woman could do that. But it’s a video game. And she got out of aviation and went into intelligence, and I don’t know what she does. She thought she was going to stay home with her child; but she went to Iraq for a year, in Baghdad, in the green zone—in the bowels of the green zone, doing something. And he’s still flying. But she does what he does. She’s better educated than he is for flying. She has a degree in aviation. And she—and, you know, and she went to Iraq. They’ve done this same job, but she stayed home—you know, she had the baby. But he had to stay home a year with the two year old while she was— TS:While she was gone?

GL:Yeah. This couple is very interesting. But you’d never think that this little woman—that this is what she would want to do. But we have all—When you see this, you’ll see some of the pilots or the women on the ship. You know, if you have the strength to do it, why not do it?

TS:Right.

GL:I think it’s great that women have the opportunity if they want to do it. And there are some men who shouldn’t be doing it. There are some men who don’t have the mettle. They don’t have the strength. And there are not guys—He [indicating her husband] went to flight school and is broken wing—he begged to get out. He didn’t think that was a good way to die. They were losing a lot of pilots. And if you knew his personality, you wouldn’t put him in a jet. So they put him in the bowels of a ship. He was fine there. But, you know, I worked with some guys, you know—they really don’t have what it takes to pound the ground with seventy pounds on them. And you don’t ask those people to do it. You know, there are plenty of people that can do that job. And if a girl wants to do it, let her do it.

And I think it’s great to have women in command. I do think that they change the tone, for the most part.

TS:Is that part of that cultural change, you think?

GL:I think so. You know, the Abu Ghraib [prison in Iraq where prisoners were mistreated by American troops beginning in 2004] situation with that general. I wish I could talk to her. Because I wish I really knew. But the tone—I see her in a no-win situation—the tone comes from the top. It came from [Donald] Rumsfeld’s office. You know, I’m sure. I have no doubts—when it happened I said, “There you go”, you know. The tone just is—just filters down. I think she was in a position where she was just shut out. I would like to think that she didn’t know—that she was shut out, shunned, stonewalled, and didn’t know. Because I have seen her speak, and I can’t imagine that this woman could not speak up. And having known—I know National Guard people from around the United States, because we trained together. I know some people who must be generals now. And they were not shrinking violets. You know, they were people of honor. So I think she was scapegoated, probably, and being female made it easier for it. That’s just my take on it. Although, I think women are capable of bad decisions and bad leadership as well.

TS:Yeah.

GL:But poor Lindy—poor Lindy was a poor soul. She was a victim, that’s how I see it.

TS:Yeah.

GL:I think, “Oh not on my watch!” Would that happen on my watch? You just hate to be judgmental, because you don’t know.

TS:Right, right. That’s interesting. You think about it a lot don’t you?

GL:What?

TS:You think about it.

GL:Yeah, I do think about it.

TS:Yeah.

GL:Could that happen on my watch? Would that happen, I don’t know.

TS:Well, is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you would like to add?

GL:I don’t think so [laughs].

TS:Would you like to give advice to the current generation of women that are in the military?

GL:Don’t lose your sense of humor. It’s very good to have one. Have interests other than the military. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Always say when you’re asked to do something that sounds like something that you would hate to do, take a deep breath, and say, “Yes ma’am. Yes sir.” Fill your bag with as 02:50:00many tricks as you can. Be nice to your co-workers and you will go far. [Chuckle] TS:Sounds like good advice.

GL:[Laughs] I give that advice a lot. I always tell them to fill that bag with tricks, because it can always keep you out of a dirty job some day.

TS:[Laughs] That’s good. Well, if you don’t have anything else that you would like to add we can—We’re done, we can finish up. But thank you, Gayle, thank you so much.

GL:I don’t think so.

TS: Yeah, no, it’s been a pleasure talking to you.

GL:See if you can dig anything out of that transcript.

TS:I think that we will be able to find a thing, or two.

Let’s see here. [End of Recording]