Earleen Allen Francis Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Earlaen Allen Francis 28
A. lbm roarmate, thats all. We didn't have any social mrkers. I
didn't Emaw what one ws, tbn. R had no counselors or anything like
tlut .
Q. IIow many people shared a roam?
Q. Did you and yaur roarmate becaw god friends?
A. & yes, w always got along. M never had any trouble.
Q. At the the you finished your nurses' training, what expectations did
you have about where yaur career d d go?
A. All I thought about at the th ms private duty. They didn' t have
intensive care units at that th. Intensive care =sing is not private
duty; there is no mre private duty. I go into hanes naw and
relieve a nurse for four hours in the afternoon and that sort of thing.
My idea, when I graduated fran nursing school, was to make sme mney.
Private duty was very god, so I put my name on the registry. Cook
County is in a medical area. You have St. Takes Hospital, the dental
school, the University of Illinois Wdical School, Illinois Research
Hospital; all viere right there in that group. Its a Medical Center. All
these hospitals, like Presbyterian-St. Luke and others around the city
ran theb own registry for private duty nursing. After you wrote your
State b d s and got your licence, you could put your mte on the registries
for nothing. They muld call you for private duty cases. You could get
on a streetcar OK bus--= had wndmA11 transportation in the city of
Chicago at that time--and nobody ever snatched any purses or did what
they are doing nm. Killing people ar slapping them around, that didn' t
go on. So if theywntedm fran 7 at night to 7 in themrning, if it
ws dark at seven o'clock I didn't mind getting on the streetcar. I
wasn't &aid. I didn't think a thing about it. I even dght have to
change several places. I did private duty nursing until I wrote a Civil
Service &amhation for the United States Indian Service. I was called
up to go out to Lawton, Olclahm. By that tim I had gotten myself a
Plymxlth =--I paid cash for it, and had been mrking less than a year.
But I wrked all the tine. So I got into my little car and mt out to
0klahm-a. And dam the road fran Lawton there was an army post, Fort
Sill. The Uses Bunk at the Indian hospital had a bridge club.
d E d d
go aver to Fort Sill and the next wek they d d
caw over
to aur nurses' residence. Well, the chief nurse over at Fort Sill took a
liking to rrre . She said: What are you doing aver there?'' She asked me
to CCXE over to Fort Sill for lunch on Sunday. Well, I mt. She took
m into her office and asked UE what I ms doing aver there nursing those
Indians? I said "I am wxking for a living." "You are too young to be
wrking aver in that outfit. They will be shipping you off to the Boondocks
or sarrething." bhich they did; they d d
transfer you around. It's a
federal project, caring for the Indians. They have schools and church
and hospitals. And it wsn't very nice.
Q, Tell ICE about it? What kind of Indians =re ycru dealing with there?