Anna Louise Tittman Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Anna Tittm
A. Not In training, no, the basic trahing. CPI, I forgob the other
day to tell you haw I supported wself. I borrowed the ey and paid it
back when I was graduated. It happened this way$ during";t:gh school tim,
I went to hi@ school in the mrning and I worked in the qfternoon. And
when I was working in the mers Building, there was a man
i
pho tuned pianos.
I stayed there in the office Fn the afternoons taking his alls and writing
them all out. There was a lady dentist on that floor and he was a close
f'riend of Miss mntgomery who was the head of the teacher training school.
And I said to her--this was when I was a senfor, I guess, high school--
I said to her that I thou@Slt wbe I would have to teach ' order to get
some money to go into-training to be a nurse.
She said, "You don't have to da that. You can bomw the
11 Oh, I have no place to go and bomw mney."
out and see Miss Montgo~ry , the head of the teachers tr g school."
I thought I could teach. I had said to her that I thou&& rnaiybe I could
tgach in a country school or sawthing l&e that to &e rrpney. I bow the
requirements were not very high then. I mean if you were just out of high
school you could [teach]. So I went to see PEss Montgom~ to ask her about
teaching. She said, "Don't do it. You rfii@t becore sidetracked and conthue
Zn teaching, and you will not cbtain your real, eager, e est vocatian.
And she said, ?I'11 lend you the money. And she did an?$ did. And I paid
it back, the first thing I did [was pay the mney back] elqcept to buy a silk
petticoat. A silk petticoat gat In there. (lawter)
Q. What was lWss Ibntgomryts flrst nam?
A. I can1 t remenS3er. She was a beautiful woman, and her losest friend
was Doctor l%tthews, a woman doctor.
Q. Was this a worn doctor or a worn dentist?
A. A woman doctor, this was a woman doctor [Dr. Matthews and she was
mannish; the worn dentist wasn't rmnnish. 4
Q. Doctor Phtthews.
A. Matthews. And she took care of one of the religious npn in the Episccpal
Church. Where the museum is now, the State Museum, tkre were som big
old red houses, brick houses [set] way back in the yard, v@y back. This
man lived in one, and I think it was a Reverend Spaulding. I'm just guessing
now. But she [Dr. Fktthews] carried her gloves-she wove a horse and
buggy and she drove the buggy, too, you knowbut she had
She ' d corn in with a lllannish mat, she
today-and as I say, she carried her
But everything about hep-her MT was short;.
Q. DO you think that the male doctors wwe a ~ttle jealQ of a female
doctor?
F
Q. They did?
so;
perhaps they
that;
A. my I think so. Now in Johns Hopkins, where I had onei of post/-
I