Women of the St. Francis Hospital
By Mary Adamski
school of nursing class of 1949 will
gather for their 50th reunion
Star-BulletinA 10 p.m. curfew, bed checks in the dorm, no smoking allowed, no marriage or even engagement until after graduation -- those are restrictions no modern college girl would tolerate.
Twelve-hour workdays on hospital floors, folding mountains of cotton diapers, your pay docked for any broken syringe, thermometer or glass, and no matter the emergencies, patients expected a back rub and face wash at days' end -- it's a daunting career path.
Harriet Alves Miranda of Honolulu and Josephine Rodrigues Kell of Worthington, Ohio, both Maui-born, swapped those memories of their student nurse days this week. They will be joined by 16 other members of the St. Francis Hospital school of nursing class of 1949 at their 50th reunion Sunday. Miranda planned a four-hour luncheon at the Elks Club to give plenty of time to talk story about their mutual adventure which began just after World War II ended in 1945.
"By the time we finished school, we weren't afraid of anything," said Miranda. "There wasn't a medical school here yet, we did things interns do. Today nurses go to school, get the summer off. They're smart but they don't have the practical experience."
Although they only paid $2,000 total tuition, "we reimbursed them threefold," said Kell, giving free labor for the 3-year duration, which did not include summer vacations. Student nurses cleaned messes, emptied bedpans, filled baby bottles, sterilized syringes and other tasks that nurses aides and hospital housekeepers do today, said Kell, whose worst memories include cleaning toilets.
The hardships make some of their best memories. It started with a Quonset hut as a dormitory for their first six months on probation. Jewelry was forbidden, recalled Miranda, who wore her engagement ring hidden under her uniform. The rules also included a ban on fingernail polish, an age limit of 30 years and hairnets mandated on duty. Besides the Franciscan nuns, the upper classes imposed chores on lower grades in a structured pecking order.
"Our class was rebellious," said Miranda. "At the cafeteria, everyone above us could cut in line and eat ahead of us. As 'probies' we just had to keep stepping back, even if you were first in line." So, she recalled, in an ethics class the girls of '49 raised the issue of justice in the pecking order. "We said it wasn't fair for someone off duty to come first, when we had five minutes to eat and go back to work. We won."What made it all worthwhile was wearing that cap, the classic stiff white wings that are now a thing of the past: plain white for probies, a blue stripe added for juniors and, the badge of success, a black stripe for a graduate. It identified you wherever you went to work and the St. Francis graduates "were recognized and sought after," Miranda said.
"We didn't realize how fabulous our education was," Miranda said. "We were taught by doctors, some of the top doctors of that time." There was no medical school in Hawaii then and, "We did things interns do."
The eye-opening experience for the two students was a six-month senior-year stint in Franciscan hospitals in Missouri to get pediatrics and psychological nursing credit. "We were doing intravenous, lavage, tube feeding, we had so much better experience that the workload fell on our shoulders," Miranda said. Kell found the same respect when she started her career in Pennsylvania.
Miranda was in charge of obstetrics/gynecology nursing at Kaiser Punawai Clinic when she retired in 1989. Her career, which began with six years at Ewa Plantation Hospital, was interrupted to raise three children.
Kell, who married a Marine she met in Hawaii, worked for 35 years in Uniontown, Pa., retiring in 1985. She lives in Ohio with one of her six children, still applying her nursing education in volunteer work with senior citizens.
St. Francis nursing school, which graduated its first class in 1932, was closed in 1966.
